A burnt stick: lessons in the art of friendship

"You don't need money to make art. All you need is a burnt stick and a piece of paper or the back of a brown paper bag."

The woman who stood in the front of the community room and uttered the words that gave my roughly nine-year-old soul boundless hope was beautiful. Bright, engaged, sparkling eyes. Terrific hair. Great fashion sense. Neat shoes. Most of all, she radiated warmth and fun.

For me, she was an almost instant role model - everything that I felt I wanted to become. And best of all, she was an accomplished artist.

A renowned Northern New Jersey artist, Carolyn had volunteered to teach an introductory drawing class as a program for my mother at the public library where she worked around 1986. That's when she talked about the burnt stick, showed us how to make a piece on a brown paper bag, and taught us how to use hair spray as a fixative. I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven.

Carolyn could see right away that I could draw well, and she could also see that my family didn't have the money for private art lessons. Given her own humble beginnings from a financial standpoint, she could relate. And the next thing I knew, my mom had been offered reduced-cost art lessons, just for me.

I didn't know I wasn't just getting the chance to became more skilled at the thing I loved most in life - making art. I had met a person who would turn out to be my personal "influencer" (before there was such a thing) around how to navigate life with strength and kindness. Carolyn would also ultimately become my lifelong cherished friend.

Carolyn started me off with pencils. Cross-hatching. Drawing circles and ovals and shading them in. Trying out the hard light pencils and the dark soft ones. At first, I didn't understand the tedious work - I wanted color, dramatic sweeping images on pages.

But no. She taught me that you have to learn the basics first and get really good at them, before you can have the skillset needed to craft onto the page the thing you really want to make.

I wasn't so enamored at the plodding start to this art lesson thing, but the hour with Carolyn once a week quickly began to make up for the exacting initial work. Carolyn's lessons fast became my happy place, my escape from homework and bullying, my weekly taste of fun, discipline, and creativity.

Carolyn saw the world so differently: not just through the eyes of an artist who picked up on detail, on the things that would move others, on how to convey warmth, and brightness, and even shadows - but she also looked with the eyes of a person who'd had to be strong in so many ways to make it in life, and could teach a young woman how to be open, fun, loving and also nobody's fool. Her lessons unfolded naturally, effortlessly, not even necessarily on purpose. I learned a lot just from sitting beside her.

When the weather allowed it, we usually worked outside - perched on big rocks, or on the grass outside the library. Observing and then capturing to a page things like darting bunnies, the way sunlight hits a tree branch, a little leaguer's red baseball cap abandoned near the trunk of an old maple - all of it was fodder for our work.

Carolyn was the type of teacher who enjoyed kids, listened to young people thoroughly, and genuinely reacted to their viewpoints. We clicked right away and she would often laugh her uniquely real, deep, whole-hearted laugh while I was telling her some story about school or my weirdo nerdy little kid's thoughts on life or even recounting (in enormous, gothic detail) my nighttime dreams. She had an incredible ability to be the teacher, be an adult, never cross the lines I see so many "educators" cross today in an attempt to be "one of the kids" - yet she was able to give a young person her full attention and her genuine reactions to their world in ways that helped her students gain new perspectives.

We also had in common from the word go one important thing: unabashed weirdness. The stuff that I was often made fun of about at school were the exact things Carolyn loved about me. She taught me how to take an oddball anecdote and make it into a brilliant story that others might just love (she's a writer and an author too). We talked about everything from ghosts to growing up without means and surviving to why it's important not to mess with toxic arts supplies in ways that might just kill you. Unsolved mysteries, weird people we'd met - we somehow plowed through it all as I moved from pencils to watercolors.

Carolyn was never harsh, but she believed in disciplined work. The only thing she was truly strict about was how I discussed myself. Carolyn never allowed me to speak disparagingly of me. She would spin around anything that I was down about into some sort of asset, fast.

As I grew up, I kept taking her art lessons - less often but always - through my teens and into my early twenties. Once life's demands necessitated those cherished sessions ending, our contact held firm no matter how sporadic - funny cards only we'd understand, great phone calls, visits whenever we could find the time (which wasn't often, but the shared adventures were always rich). During one of these now adult-friend times together, I mentioned that I wasn't sure how she had put up with the quirky little being that had been me, her student, back in the day. She immediately shut that down, "You were cute. You were ALWAYS cute and fun. You were totally you, and that's what was great."

I can't tell you how many times across life I've hung onto those words by my fingernails like an errant hiker clinging to a cliffside: she gave me the gift of belief in my unique strengths.

Life went on. Carolyn kept teaching, and became a grandmother. She helped me plan my mother's retirement party. Taught me a few lessons so I could work on a drawing of my fiancé's family-center Brooklyn brownstone. Suddenly she was attending my bridal shower, meeting my new baby, and eventually taking my daughter and I to museums, where she opened a second generation's eyes to not only all that's possible artistically, but how to lean into being a growing, evolving person. Carolyn can open eyes and hearts to the positive possibilities in a world that can be harsh and confusing. Sometimes, we were picking great things from her husband's garden on delicious afternoons of fun and learning about plants. Looking at painted rocks together. Figuring out (when my daughter was younger) how to not be afraid of jumping, barking dogs and learning how to make friends with them (lessons that stuck). And most of all, we were always laughing - now across three generations.

Carolyn and I couldn't be more opposite artistically. She relishes creating architectural drawings; perfectly measured brick buildings, churches, houses. I have over a lifetime learned that my medium is pastels quickly slurried across paper with wild abandon. Yet, the thing we share is total respect for one another's perspective. We shared it when I was nine. We share it now.

I'm not the only one - not by a longshot. Carolyn in her quiet way with art lesson after art lesson shaped a countless number of young people into more confident, more talented, happier humans. I just had the good sense to retain the situation permanently.

Any day we spend together has some sort of wickedly wonderful magic attached that can't quite be measured: more one of my pastels than her pencils - wild, freeform fun.

Our conversations have gotten deeper and darker in some ways as the years have marched on - maybe even funnier and weirder too. She was the person I called from my in-laws' porch the morning after my father-in-law died when I couldn't figure out what to do with or for my mother-in-law in her time of pain. Conversely, we routinely talk about frivolous things like "does that crepey skin cream you're trying work" and important things like the messy world of politics and fostering dignity for all people.

Sometimes, now, we add a little wine - and everything about talking as endlessly as possible across a mere few hours becomes somehow even more delicious.

Cheers, Carolyn - to many more playdates, clinking glasses, hikes, and museum moments. Maybe some ice cream, too. Thank you so much for so many things, but most of all for staying weird with me for 40 years. You've taught me a lot about the art of living well.

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I began my blog to share professional ideas. The blog morphed into a confession that I didn't have time to write for pleasure often - and by extension, an embracing of and reflection on the life of a busy working woman with lots of demands on her plate. But in the end, my blog has finally become mainly about the thing I love most - people and relationships. Teachers and students, mentors and mentees, friends, neighbors, and folks you only meet once who somehow stick in your heart forever. My blog is about saying thank you, you're welcome, hello, and sometimes even goodbye. I Don't Have Time for This Blog, but I do make the time to share with my readers the collection of people who shape my life.