36x48 Acrylic/ Glitter/ Mirror/ Art Resin/ Canvas

To me, you looked like a tiny witch the day you were born - and as an Aries, Leo, Scorpio - I was right. You were all black hair and big green eyes - glowing like the moon. They say your eyes weren’t green when you were born, but I swear they were. I didn’t know how to hold you, and I had so much fear that I would fall in love with you and change my mind that I left the hospital early. I swore I’d shop at Banana Republic someday and be a lawyer or something acceptable. 

I was 18 years old and hadn’t ever considered what I wanted to do with my life - but in that moment, leaving you in that hospital, I hoped I’d be someone acceptable to you someday. As you know, this ideal took a sharp left. 

I got clean 8 years later. I stayed clean because you asked me if it would be 8 more years until I came to see you again. 8 year old you has the same direct tenacity in your words and delivery as 22-year-old you. I love that about you because it saved my life. You’ve always been an angel of mine of sorts.  Dark and sparkly, with excellent taste in wigs, crystal spheres, and costumes. What more could I ask for? 

I remember very little from my life unless I’m locked into a creative process, but I always go back to playing Guess Who, hide and seek, and dress up with little you. It’s weirdly comforting, even though at the time I had no idea what I was doing. Kind of like, no matter what - life will work it out.  I had never been around a kid and had no idea what to do, but it taught me that you didn’t care what job I had or what my clothes looked like. You just wanted me there with you. And I got to be. 

A perfect storm, all of it, and living proof that no matter what, one way or another - all the love you give is returned tenfold, even if it wasn’t reciprocated at the time. We always giggle that you have my face and his eyes. You say “I hate my eyes” as you look down and I remind you that I don’t. Because your eyes are all that love I gave to the wrong person coming back to tell me I wasn’t wrong. Not for a second.

I’d do it all over again if I knew I could be at the lake house with you, falling off of a paddle board into all that mud and staying up like bad kids until 5 the morning before your college orientation. At your college graduation, your Dad said: “You two NEED TO SLEEP tonight.” 

We were driving as you laid out the entire plot and every character from the Japanese murder mystery novel you’re writing. I kept crying in that driver's seat, choking on my tears behind my sunglasses and pretending I had a cough. Crying because you’re so excited to create things, and tell me about them, and ask me what I think. I almost missed this, but by some grace I will never be able to grasp or define, I didn’t. And here we are. 

You’re a space witch in a perfect storm, just like me. We understand ourselves better because we have each other as a mirror. I never made you much of my art because I thought you thought it was stupid. Then one day on the side you said “Someday I will have an entire house of your art when I can afford it. I can’t wait for that day.” 

I thought; “Oh my god. I think she just said she likes my art!!” So I had to get my shit together to make you something exceptional. A portrait of the magic, the storm, and the beauty of the scope of space, spells, time, and reflections that you and I have become. 

You’re an official adult now, and everything is changing. We have so many more versions of this life to live. I’m so proud of you, and so excited for your future. You are my crystal baby forever, no matter how old we get, my Aries Leo Scorpio. 

I hope that light attaches to this painting the same way that to me it would attach to you every time I got to see you moving, living, being. It’s a different portrait of light every time. The darkness is what highlights the light.  A perfect storm, as it all falls apart, and back together, and apart, and back together again.