I was surprised to get a message from Sabasa today. For the past few days every time I have offered to help her with Allen, she has very politely told me that my presence is not needed. So I have stayed away. But today she asked me to come and join them, and so I did.
I was also surprised by how much Allen’s surroundings have changed. His desk at home, which he normally keeps so tidy, is now covered in books and papers. The books are mostly from the library, about calligraphy and handwriting analysis—he even had an elementary workbook that teaches children to write. The pages vary, some of them being articles on these topics that he printed out, some being blank pages with a few lines etched across them. None of them looked anything like art to me. I thought that was my untrained eye for a moment, until I saw how frustrated and sad Sabasa looked.
“He’s resisting me,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”
I know that frustration, certainly—there were moments with Shannon when I almost wanted to tear my own wings out by the roots. So I went to find Allen, who was in the kitchen doing meal prep, although that is usually something he does on Saturday or Sunday.
He, too, looked frustrated and sad. His aura was frantic with ideas and thoughts, but doubt weighed him down, keeping him from reaching for any one of them.
“Usually an idea with this force will overcome any kind of self-doubt,” Sabasa explained, hanging back while I examined our charge. “But it’s been years since he’s done anything, and there’s so much emotion tied to his art that it is hard for me to get him to just begin.” She looked at me with her eyes huge and hopeful. “I needed a new angle. A pair of fresh eyes on the problem.”
“Then I’m glad you called me,” I said, and I meant it. “But first things first.” I went back to Allen, and I put my wings around him. I told him that he was loved regardless of his success, and that it would all come out all right.
“Oh—” Sabasa protested, “if he loses his drive he might lose the idea!”
“He won’t lose it,” I said, without letting go of Allen. I told him to take a deep breath, and he did, and his spirit began to settle. “And if he does, we can bring him back to it. But he needs to calm down. You’ve really been keeping him wound this tightly all this time?”
Sabasa lowered her gaze, embarrassed. “Usually it is an effective motivation,” she murmured.
I did not chide her any more than that. I stayed with Allen for another moment, until he was breathing easily and felt calmer than he had all week. Then I drew Sabasa back to his desk. “Now,” I said, looking down at the sketches that were half-begun. “You said something about a new angle. Is it possible that is what he needs, too? Something else that is compelling that he can add to his idea?”
Sabasa studied the sketches for a long moment. “There is a great deal of work that has been done with line and pattern, especially in modern art,” she says. “Mondrian, Sol LeWitt…and then there’s minimalism—”
“Something that has meaning,” I pressed. “Something that we can connect to his memories, his identity. Maybe even something connected to a place that he can go.”
I was watching, and so I saw the moment when the idea came to her. She looked up with eyes shining, and I couldn’t help but smile.
I was the one who encouraged Allen to get out of the house. None too reluctant to be somewhere else, he finished up with his food and went out for a drive, with no particular destination in mind. It was easy enough to persuade him to drive in the direction of the National Cathedral—it had always been one of his favorite places as a child, and even as an adult he has often gone back to sit in one of the pews and just listen to the echoes of tourists’ voices from the stone ceiling.
The cathedral was closed to visitors when he arrived, but he parked his car and walked along the street nearby, looking up at the towers and the windows. I started him thinking about stained glass windows—most particularly, the lines between the colored panels, how unless one looks particularly at the shapes of the lines, the pictures portrayed in the glass disappear in beautiful but meaningless patterns. Without any urging from me, he started then to think about the lines that form in our souls, the way they give us shape and boundaries, and whether those lines are good things—do they compartmentalize us? Divide us into individual pieces? Or do they give us shape and form?
I had him think then about the forming of his own personality—of the way his father had helped him learn how to write, painstaking lines drawn within the designated spaces of a colorful workbook. Of the way he had gone to church with his mother, leaning against her side as he looked around at the beautiful windows.
Sabasa, who was listening closely to this entire exchange, protested this. “I’ve already tried reminding him of his mother, it only put him off.”
I ignored her, more because I did not want to interrupt Allen’s memories than because I believed her to be wrong. Allen did not seem put off. He took a deep breath, turned and went back to his car. He drove straight home and sat down at his desk the moment he walked through the door. Pulling a sheet of blank paper towards him, he began to sketch, and he was still working when I left him an hour later. Sabasa stayed with him, silent and watchful.
I cannot wait to see what he comes up with.