I learned how to draw trees in grade school art. Trees with intricate branches – forked, forked, and forked again until they taper to a thin point. Intricate is too fine of word for the final product of these foliage pieces: I am not an artist now and was even less so when I was nine.
But there is something simple about the process of drawing all those branches – unique each time yet holding to a pattern. For my final piece in our drawing tree unit I drew a tree that stood by a small pond. It had a swing hanging from it’s lower branches and a girl – me – leaning against the tree trunk. She might have been reading.
I never enjoyed art class. I quit as soon as I was allowed in middle school and spent more time goofing off in the band room instead. My mom framed that picture but that will be the beginning and end of my art career.
Drawing trees stayed with me. Specifically that scene – a tree, a swing, a pond. I added a bench. Some ducks in the water. Rolling hills on the backdrop. I don’t usually draw the girl. The scene is there though, waiting for her.
Usually I write the word Peace above the scene. I write it in a symbol language I made up with my best friend in seventh grade. That way it feels just for me; I’m the only one who remembers the strange alphabet.
These days, I skip the detailed branch work and draw the scene simple and quick when I have an opportunity to doodle. On a whiteboard at work. On a post-it notes on my desk. When my anxiety rises, it’s a meditative act to draw the same thing over and over; forces me to remember what it means. Calm, peace, a sanctuary I can come back to, a stillness that waits for me.
I am not an artist and these are not works of art. Not rough drafts of a larger masterpiece within me. It’s just a doodle of a
Breathe in. Breathe out. Write Peace in the sky.
With Love,
Natalie