Rainbows in My Book

After reading Felicia's amazing and brutal post about her childhood yesterday, I went to page and began writing ferociously about a time in my childhood that was bleak and lonely. Suddenly what came was a song, more formed than any song has been in awhile--which isn't saying much, but when the hat fits, you friggn' wear it (and say thank you). The chorus came to me whole. It's very simple, but as soon as I sang the words, I began to well up. It reads this way:

Still I drew rainbows in my books,
I don't know where I learned it;
Don't know how I found them,
or how they found me.

What little girl didn't go though a drawing rainbows phase or horses for that matter? Where does that come from?

When I was 9 years old my mother moved us an hour and a half north from where I had been living all my life. I'd already had a pretty rocky childhood having lived in several different houses, with different parties. I think the thing that saved me was the school I went to. I'd been with the same group of people since I was three years old. Peninsula School was the only real constant in my life. When my mother decided to relocate and take me with her to Fairfax, it was nothing short of traumatic. For the first time I was in public school with a HORRID teacher (I still HATE her) that couldn't handle an emotionally whacked out kid, who cried easily and had a hard time concentrating. It was the first time I had ever dealt with bullies--boys would wait for me after school and try to push me off my bike. Every ride home after school was a mixture of relief and terror. I was relieved to be out of school, but I had to face another battle, before I could get home. My mother worked an hour away, across the Bay, and often wasn't home until 8 at night. We had very little money and sometimes as a result, very little food. More than a few times the power or the phone was shut off. I sometimes skipped school or made up illnesses. Like usual, I drew pictures, but drawing became increasingly more important to me. I think that's when I began to live mostly in my imagination, because I was alone and didn't have any choices.

When I wrote the words "Still I drew rainbows in my books," it hit that deep truth in me that art has literally saved my life. Like for so many people, it was a way out, it was a way to hope, or to literally CREATE something different for myself. There are people in my family who didn't have something like that and are struggling deeply with life, in ways that I don't. So when people find out the whole of my experience, they always ask me, "So how'd you make it?" Truly, I think of two things--Peninsula School (which I returned to for the last 3 months of that school year and remained until I graduated fom 8th grade) and art. As it happens, I am still very close with many of my friends from Peninsula School, and art continues to be the red thread through my days, tugging me forward, keeping me going.

And I still draw rainbows--the ultimate metephor for something magical and beautiful. It's how nature makes lemonade out of lemons. It takes the downpour and mixes it with sun to create something beautiful. No one taught me that and I don't know where it came from, but it got me through a lot and everyday I am grateful.