Each One in Their Own Way Finding Their Way to Beauty

      It's a bright sunny January day. The new year has begun and I am beginning a new job at a new place in the same place I've been working for a year and a half. This time I arrive in the open room to do art with people who live in assisted living. 

     With hesitation a woman lingers in the doorway. I ask her;
"Do you want to do art?" She looks at me and says
"I'm still working it through in my head." She doesn't come back.

      A woman I've worked with before arrives and we take off like a rocket. She paints what turns out to be her first watercolor. I draw the fake lavendar tulips for the other woman who arrives. An older couple arrives and they watch. I encourage them, but they don't paint. I tell them that having an audience is just as important as anything. She tells me again and again that her husband has several degrees in art. He slumps in his chair, his eyes alive and curious, but he does not pick up a brush. 

    Later I hang up the tulip painting in the small gallery as well as the first watercolor by the other artist. The paintings shine with their own beauty.... Later the woman who did the tulips calls out to me in the hallway. Her eyes aglow with excitement, in disbelief she says she can hardly realize that her work is up and she wonders who will see it. I say, people will see it...don't worry, they will see it...

    These are my people. I sing to them from my heart telling them
"Each one in their own way finding their way to beauty" It is a song I have sung many times and yes I sing it again and again, weaving their name into the song and yes they are finding their way to beauty, past the walkers and the shaking hand, past the memory loss and the physical infirmities. Yes, they are finding their way to beauty. Yes and I watch them soar.