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| "Broken Hearted" pastel on bristol 9x12 |
When I was 10 years old, my friend and I
were trying to shake a young pest named Ruthie. She was half our size and
followed us everywhere, dragging a teddy bear behind her. In our attempts to
shake her, we ran headlong into a field of scratchy hay stubble. Ruthie
followed us, anyway.
Out of breath, we stopped beside a rotting
shed that looked like it was on the verge of collapse. When Ruthie caught up with us, we shoved her
inside. She pulled the teddy to her frightened face; her blonde ringlets
cascading like a waterfall over the bear’s fuzzy body.
My friend banged the door shut, and we
leaned against it, waiting for the screams of desperation from within. We felt
powerful and sinister. At first, the silence startled us. Why
wasn’t Ruthie yelling at us, pleading for us to open the door? Her silence
seemed to grow like a dark menacing cloud ready to pounce. We flung the door
wide.
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| I plan to paint this glass jar of flowers. Loved the shadow on the table! |
The bright sunlight lit up Ruthie’s wet,
tear-stained face making her squint. She seemed to shrink before our eyes;
appearing smaller than we remembered. A second shaft of light fell on the floor
beside her where a dead rat sprawled among soiled rags and rusting
tools. Feeling our cruelty in the pit of our stomachs, we fled across the
field, leaving Ruthie far behind us.
As a young mother, I sold cosmetics door
to door. I never got used to being rebuffed, and dreaded ringing that bell or
making that first knock. “What’s behind door number one?” I joked to myself,
trying to turn trepidation into adventure?
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| A favorite scene I may paint yet! |
In sales, you hear terms like the “door
of opportunity,” or when “one door closes, another one opens.” Doors do play a
significant role in our lives, whether in selling or working to provide a
service or a product. In one of my crossword puzzles, the clue was: “Means of
access.” The four letter answer was “door.” What is your current “means of
access” to opportunity?
