Fifty-Year-Old-Sarah (a Still Life with Tornado fanfiction)
"What is art?"
I always start the semester the same way. In order to make art, you have to know what it is. Students always have the same answers.
"It's what's in museums."
"Art is creative output."
"So who creates art?" is my follow-up question.
"Artists."
"Who can be an artist though?" I'm trying to show my students what I had to learn through months of pain, when I was sixteen and remembered Mexico.
I love teaching. I think I found my calling. In a weird way, I think Miss Smith is part of the reason. I want to do more for the students than what she did: absolutely nothing. Teachers should be passionate about what they teach, and passionate about the futures of their students. Miss Smith didn't believe this, but I've moved on.
"Artists are the ones that make money."
"Not necessarily. When I look around, I see art everywhere. It's in the choices you make every day. It's what happens because of those choices. It's what you made for breakfast. It can be anywhere, as long as you look for it. Your assignment this week is to go home and find something that is art. Bring it to class and then present what makes it artistic."
Twenty-Three-Year-Old Sarah
I graduated high school, somehow. I never skipped again, but I never really excelled in my classes either. Once I graduated, I didn't give college a second thought. I didn't see the point, and my family didn't really have the money for it.
I hadn't found my happiness yet. I was still a little too focused on being unoriginal. I still wanted to be an artist. I painted everywhere, spent all my time after my minimum-wage job constructing. It was a long path to get to where I am today. Something else had to happen to turn me in the right direction again.
I was on the bus to work when I saw her for the first time since I was sixteen: ten-year-old Sarah. She was sitting in the seat across from me, reading a book. I decided to ignore her. My past selves showing up again couldn't be a good sign.
She suddenly closed the book and looked at me intently.
"Can I help you?" I wasn't in the mood to deal with a child's sass.
"What are you doing?" she was still staring.
"Going to work."
"No, like, with your life?"
"I'm working. Making art."
"Are you happy?"
I was about to ask how she could seem to see right through me, asking the same things I've been asking myself for over a year. But she's me, so of course she knows.
She got off at the next stop before I had the chance to answer.
I thought about those questions all day. When I got home after an especially miserable day at work, I called Bruce. Mom was living closer to him, and they both seemed happy. He graduated from college with a Master's degree and has a job, wife, and two kids now.
"What made you want to go to college?"
"It seemed like the most productive way to get away from Dad's bullshit."
He wasn't wrong. I thought about that for a second.
He spoke again after a short pause. "But I'm really glad I did."
"It's a waste of my time and money." I wasn't convinced.
"Not at all. I met a lot of friends there and found a good direction for my life. That's what college is all about."
I didn't need friends or a new direction in life. But I also wasn't satisfied with how I was living. My tornado was boring, only full of small work issues and what to paint next to pass the time. Nothing ever really happens.
I went for a walk that night and saw my young self again, sitting on a bench in the park.
"Are you just going to show up every time I have an existential crisis?" I seem to have had a lot of those for someone my age.
She rolls her eyes.
"What do I do?"
"You know I can't tell you that?"
"Then why are you here?" I decided that every conversation with this little girl was going to be infuriating.
"To remind you what not to do. You're missing out again. Just like when you started skipping school."
"I'm not skipping anything."
"You're also not doing anything."
She was right. My life wasn't headed anywhere. I thought about the times I was happiest in life. Even though it didn't feel like it at the time, I realized it was in a classroom, surrounded by other students passionate about art.
On my first day of college, I realized I had made the right decision when ten-year old Sarah and forty-year old Sarah sat on either side of me in my art history class. They both looked at me and smiled. It was the last time I saw any of my past or future selves.