My family is blue today. I have a cousin, Jim Powell. His only son Gavin died along with his best friend Matt in a rafting accident this week in Walnut Creek, California. He was 17, Matt was 16. There had been heavy rains in the area and after Gavin found an old inflatable raft in his garage they made plans to raft down a local creek. They wore helmets but no life vests and were unable to navigate in the fast rushing waters. Both of them died during their trip. Links to the story are below.
As any parent knows and will tell you, nothing in the complete realm of human existence can be more completely and utterly destructive to one’s soul than losing a child. I have not had that happen and I am very grateful. But I know the fear, as do all parents I have ever known. I may not be as controlling of my kids as my wives have been, I may say ‘you have to let them go do this or that’. I am that father who said that is how it has to be to my wives. But make no mistake, for every time I have said that, and I bet for every other spouse who played the role of the one saying it’s ok to let them go, we knew we were gambling a bit. All of life is a bit of a gamble, sometimes greater odds, sometimes lesser. It’s a sad, sad moment when the odds go bad and something like this happens. The essay below says it better than I can, I encourage parents to read it.
So, why did I illustrate a quote about a dog? I didn’t draw this to say I hope he has a dog. I drew it because ‘blue’ can’t always be explained, even when it is so obvious, as in this case. The pain, the suffering, the what ifs, the if onlys, the guilt, the loss, the anger, the hopelessness, the fear, the emptiness. They can’t be listed out like that in a broken heart. They can’t be categorized and compartmentalized and logically explained one by one. I can imagine that is what one feels they must do when asked ‘why do you feel blue’.
Maybe it’s best to be like a dog, not ask why, even if we know what we think the answer will be, but just comfort and be.
Whose world do you water? There is nothing wrong with watering someone else’s garden, but there is something wrong with neglecting your own. Whether it’s a wife, husband, home, children, community, family, friends, profession, team or actual garden, if you only pay attention to other ones AT the expense of your own, you will end up with neither.
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A shout out to the Napkin Kin from these countries in the Middle East; Syria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Israel, who have been coming to visit the blog over the last month. Thank you!
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote author unknown
Green color jealousy envy desire lust wishes hopes neglect 2011 grass greener
In snow and in life, purity is fleeting. It’s there and it’s good, but it doesn’t last. Those who try to remain and appear pure to others in all things, in spite of the truth being different, will start to draw attention to their blemishes.
How do you be who you really are, admitting to yourself your impurities, admitting them to others when appropriate, and still work to attain the good in yourself and in others. Maybe the act of confession is the freeing act that allows you to move towards the good. What do you think?
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A shout out to the Napkin Kin in the Massachusetts (USA) towns of Chatham, Brewster, Hyannis, Foxboro, Newton and Allton who visited the blog this week. Thanks for the visit!
I am not a fan of the Tiger Mom (from the recent book ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’) and her ways. I know American moms and dads are wondering if they are too lenient, and maybe they are at times. But coercing your child into becoming an exact duplicate of you, with no understanding or care about why they are and what ‘genius’ they have is akin to kidnapping.
You kidnap your kid to fulfill your purposes, your needs. After a while, the kid goes along with it and becomes the hostage influenced by his or her captors to have sympathy and regard for the kidnapper. The Stockholm syndrome for families. The child believes the parent (kidnapper) did the right thing because now he or she is good at violin or very interested in science.
I am not dissing helping to direct your child, you can’t help but do that, and you are abrogating your duty if you do not do it to some degree. BUT, if you aren’t paying attention or you don’t care who the child is and is becoming, or you are so insecure you need a little mini-me around to validate yourself, then YOU are the problem, not the child.
Quote by Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, Austrian born Physicist
A thankful shout out to my Napkin Kin in Perth and Adelaide, Australia; Charlie, Margg, Amber, Ebony and others. They are faithful readers and I REALLY appreciate them!
For all you out there who dismiss praise and compliments, think about this one. You probably will say no, I really don’t want or like compliments. But then ask yourself what you get out of rejecting them. What you get is ego satisfaction perhaps. Satisfaction that you are being humble, fulfilling the edict to not be vain or filled with self. And in turn you probably wouldn’t mind being praised for that.
Have you ever realized that without some of your faults you wouldn’t have developed some of your strengths? That’s how I feel about my pursuit of truth and beauty. I may not be the best business guy in the world, not high powered, not driven in that way, and it is a fault in some of my efforts. But that lack also has allowed the door to remain open for me in my other pursuits, those of beauty, truth and love. I am not making an excuse. I should, and will, be better about those other areas. I am working on them and want to work on them. But, nonetheless, it is true that lack in one area can be the cause of abundance in others.
What lacking in your makeup has allowed other strengths to come out, other doors to open?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
I wrote on top of drawings often in 2004. I was paying a lot of attention to colors and details, listening and absorbing, that I wasn’t going to get in the drawing so I thought writing about those things right on the drawing was an interesting way to do it. I wrote stream of consciousness, not trying to be grammatically correct. Transcript follows each drawing.
The Reading Woman
The reading woman with the nice forehead and small glasses and the wonderful ear and the revolutionary looking boyfriend and the blue t-shirt and the thin hands and fingers contemplating an article on common language while a silly girl laughs in the distance and her purse just sits there looking smart at Barnes & Noble on Prom Night for Chelsea and Carolina at Union High on a cool April night after a week of wicked weather including tornadoes and gardening in Tulsa, OK.
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The Classy Student
The classy student studying with grey eye shadow and glimmery lips while her boyfriend, who looks young and too young for her reads a magazine with 3 bug bites on his left ankle in a row looking like a constellation and she uses a blue and red pen and huge earrings, the biggest I have ever seen with her left hand and very small delicate fingers with no polish in Norman, Oklahoma on a summer’s night that threatens to rain while the girls behind her wear red sooner shirts and read and talk about the young star who is too thin and I draw instead of read the manual of the class I am here for while I catch a bright pink purse pass by a tall guy sitting in yellow.
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The Chunky-Haired Woman
The woman with 10 colored markers and some paper she is highlighting with chunky hair with lots of highlights in it and sun coming through the window highlighting her cheek and shirt that has pink highlights in it among white and big lips with frosted lipstick that is sparkly and has highlights of the same color pink while I wait for the agent to be done so she can give me my new ticket and voucher to take a later flight and still make it into Seattle for the conference that I am going to in July after my Uncle’s funeral yesterday in Ft. Worth that I drove to with Linda the night before and visited with long-lost cousins and Aunt Jean.
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The Ugly Woman
The ugly woman with the ugly words coming out of her dark mouth while she stared at nothing with her glaring eyes and heart while all around her love lingered and waited until she finished but she never did on that September night.
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The Two Woman
The woman with more hair who could do flamenco curls on her jaw if she wanted talking hesitantly to the friend with the thin eyes and arched eyebrows and lower lip that jutted out who was judging her friend’s mascara as too thick and dark (but I liked it) about why her boyfriend won’t commit and not knowing what to do and how she wakes up at night sure that someone is b
reaking in and she wonders if she should get a boob job to be more sexy for him and if that would help and her friend says maybe.
I was thinking yesterday what keeps me from being more successful in my various efforts to create my Napkin Dad transnational mega global world dominating corporation and I think it’s because, cliche of all cliches, I am afraid of failure. What? who me? Not me. I try all sorts of things. I have done the most outrageous things to get jobs, publicity, girlfriends, wives, kids (well, ok, what I did to get kids wasn’t all that outrageous).
But what I really mean is what this quote is saying. I don’t like being embarrassed. Now, that is funny because anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t get embarrassed easily. I was raised in a pretty immodest family so being naked never freaked me out. I can talk about any topic under the sun, in most any circumstances, and I won’t become embarrassed. I will try physical or mental challenges that I have no reason attempting. IN general, I don’t think about embarrassment.
But here is the key: I don’t know it’s embarrassment that I am feeling and fearing. All I know is I don’t want to do something. I avoid it. I distract myself. I do work-arounds. I do it myself instead of asking for help for fear of looking stupid in ways I think the person I am asking would never think I was.
There is one quote I didn’t use this week that I really liked. It’s by Lynn Swann, the famous football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Here it is: ‘Some people play very, very well just so they won’t get embarrassed.’ People tend to be one or the other, the high achiever to avoid embarrassment, or the non-achiever. But I am both, just depends what day it is.
It’s easy to tell someone to avoid predicting failure. That’s the solution to the embarrassment above after all, right? Yes, maybe. But don’t you also abrogate your responsibility if you aren’t honest in your evaluation of someone else’s chances of success, if they ask you for your opinion?
All one has to do is look at all the poor schmucks who have auditioned on American Idol thinking they have great voices. Who gave them that idea? parents, friends, loved ones who were either tone deaf or unable to be honest in telling them the truth about their ability. Being a coward in communicating with a friend is being no friend at all.
On the other hand, what’s the point of making some ignorant or snap judgment about someone’s abilities? There is room for giving someone hope, for encouraging and believing they can accomplish what they are setting out to do. With me, if I am not completely sure, if there is any glimmer of hope, I always err on the side of ‘you can’ over ‘you can’t’.
I like this drawing, it’s indicative of something important for girls (and women who didn’t learn it when they were girls) to remember. In general, men don’t have the guilt and embarrassment gene at the same level women do.
We have the gene, some more than others, but it’s my experience at least that women have it in a much larger dosage. So, girls, beware when you enter into a situation such as is illustrated above. The guy might be kind, nice, thoughtful, understanding, etc. But don’t expect him to feel or understand the level of embarrassment or guilt you feel in having done something you think is wrong. He might think it was wrong as well, but it is unlikely he is going to feel as strongly about it as you do.
We have one Mr. Eric Burns of Tulsa to thank for my topic today. When I asked on Facebook and Twitter what would be a good topic, he suggested ‘farting in public’. I took it as a challenge and here is the result!
In 2003 I took my daughters to Europe. We flew into Munich, took trains and cars through Italy, France and Spain, leaving from Barcelona 2 weeks later. I spent a great deal of time drawing in my sketchbook during that trip. Often it would be early in the morning before the girls were up. I would wander about whatever city we were in, find a place to sit and drink some coffee and draw.
Here are a few of the drawings I did in those early morning hours.
The Train Station Coffee Lady
In Munich we stayed at a youth hostel close to the train station. I came over to get my morning joe and sat watching this woman buzz around crazily getting coffee and other goodies for the train riders. She knew I was drawing her and would come over every once in a while to see what I was doing. She thought I made her look bustier than she was, but she said she didn’t mind.
The Grand Canal – Venice, Italy
We took the overnight train from Munich to Venice. When I awoke that first morning I went to find coffee and came across the grand canal and the famous commercial bridge that have shops all along it. I stood and sipped my coffee while I watched the shopkeepers start their day. Then I turned my attention to the still quiet canal for my drawing.
Bed and Breakfast, France
In the south of France we rented a car so we could travel a bit off the beaten path. We stayed at this wonderful old chalet, up on the 3rd floor. It was gorgeous and very relaxing, just what we needed after almost a week of intense travel and sightseeing. I took the opportunity to get out early and sit in the open field next to our accommodations and draw the building.
Barcelona, Spain
We finished our trip in Barcelona. We stayed in an apartment B & B owned by a retired professor who now was writing books on folk art in Catalonia. The place was filled to the ceiling with books and incredible objects. I took a walk early one morning and came across this beautiful scene of a woman doing tai chi while the monument in the corner appeared to be watching her every movement.
Here is a slide show of all the drawings from our trip.
It’s pretty simple really. Compassion is like many other things, you might not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it. And you know it when you are doing it, and when you aren’t.
I tried a different style today, that’s why it looks a bit different and rough.
On a day when most of my city is still snowed in, I thought about how we want so badly to control the winter weather, the clouds, the rain and snowfall, the temperature, and we can do none of it.
But what we can control we have such a hard time doing. Kindness and compassion and understanding to our neighbor, assuming the best, helping out, befriending. Those are things that we can control. But do we? Or do we follow the path of least resistence. Now that we need paths shoveled for us, do we know our neighbors enough to ask for help or give it? …………………………………………………………………………..
If you are in the position where you live with, deal with, suffer with, a person who is deep into addiction, sin, mental illness, depression or any other emotional/psychological/chemical trauma, you should have been able to tell by now that the simplistic anger leading to condemnation has really done nothing to help that person. It may seem like the way to proceed; it’s easy, feels good, feels morally right, but it isn’t and it won’t help that person, or you, in the long run.
Try compassion instead. That doesn’t mean you aren’t strong and it doesn’t mean you don’t hold them accountable. But you do it with love and understanding, not anger and self-righteousness.
Quote by Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887, Congregationalist, clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist,and speaker. Very interesting guy, check his bio out when you get a chance.
Actually, I think winter is when we hope the most. I believe hope (or its absence) is the quintessential element underlying everything within the human condition. What do you think?
