Beech Tree News Network

 There’s a verse in Ecclesiastes that reads, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”  I heard someone say once that what your hand finds to do is generally in the area of your natural surroundings, something or someplace you’re born into.  This verse reminds me of my dad and the story he told us about the first axe he ever got.  His grandmother ordered it for him when he was in his early teens.  That small gift translated into a lifetime in the timber business that took my dad into his early seventies.

               When my friend, Mattie was in her twenties, she moved to Chicago in order to look for work.  She tried several places before finding work at a drycleaners.  While there, she learned the trade of re-weaving.  She would turn that skill into a small business that she and her husband ran together into their late sixties.

               Sometimes, what we end up doing in life starts with an inner spark or a pull in a certain direction.  You pick up an axe or a paintbrush or a guitar.  You sit down at a sewing machine or get behind the wheel of a big rig or ride in your grandfather’s lap while he drives the tractor.  Often, you don’t even know the attraction is there until you start.

               In high school, I remember attempting to get the attention of a boy I was interested in by writing down my thoughts on some of the mundane subject matter we had to go over in class.  I would slip the notes through those little slits at the top of his hall locker.  I would sign them George Tarpaper, because that was the answer the boy had given to the asinine question asked by the teacher in physics class: Who invented tarpaper?  Because of those notes, I discovered that I love to write, and yes, I realize my first pen name was George Tarpaper.  (I tried to find out who really invented tarpaper, but all I could come up with was a 1932 reference in the New York Times that read: Elizabeth Man Invented Tar Paper.  I should have paid more attention in class, albeit Elizabeth Man would have been a much more suitable pen name.)

               In the book, THE TREASURE, author Uri Shulevitz tells the story of a poor man, Isaac, who is inspired by a recurring dream in which a voice tells him to travel to a far city, where he will find treasure on a bridge near the palace.  Isaac travels there, and on the bridge he meets a guard.  The guard asks what business he has there, and at the risk of sounding ridiculous, Isaac tells the guard about his dream.  The guard scoffs and says, “If I believed everything I dreamed, I would journey to the city where a peasant by the name of Isaac lives and find treasure in the wall behind his stove.”   Isaac thanks the guard and returns home, where he finds the treasure, right where the guard had dreamed it was.  The book ends with the words: Sometimes you have to travel far to find what is near.

               Many people have found those words to be true.  Grandma Moses, the painter of primitive folk art, was inspired to paint as a child.  She used lemon and grape juice to make colors for her landscapes, and ground ochre, grass flour paste, slack lime and sawdust for the subjects.  Because she was born into a large farming family, Anna Mary Robertson sought employment as a live-in housekeeper when she was just twelve years old.  The family with whom she lived, the Whitesides, saw how interested she was in their Currier and Ives prints, and bought her chalk and wax crayons, so she could create her own drawings.

               When Anna married Thomas Salmon Moses, her artistic dreams were sent to the back burner.  She and her husband raised their five children (five others died during infancy) on a farm in Virginia.  She was in her late seventies when she got the opportunity to pursue her passion once again. She created over 1500 canvases in the remaining three decades of her life (dying at age 101 in 1961).  She painted images of the farm life she had lived and observed during the years in which she had little time to paint.  One of her biographers remarked, “What appeared to be an interest in painting at a late age was actually a manifestation of a childhood dream.” (Wikipedia.com)

               Sometimes, who you are is right within your reach, but sometimes you have to travel far to find it.