It was 10:30 PM. The dishes were done, coffee was set up for tomorrow. And the sedimentary layer of Legos, puzzle pieces, and plastic beads covering the floor of every room in the house had been picked up.
I was sitting at the dining room table feeling like a lifeless husk with one more chore to do: create an Easter scavenger hunt for Mae.
I reached for my phone, devoid of the needed juice to do anything creative, and tried to outsource the task to an AI bot. I asked it to help me write a series of rhyming clues that would lead to an Easter basket.
What came back was pathetic. My brain felt dry and shriveled.
Then I looked up.
On the wall across from me is a painting my dad made as a wedding gift for Sue and me. Most of his work up to that point was amorphous, wiggly, and flowing, but this one has straight lines in it. It’s also unusual because it has a title, which most pieces didn’t: The Path Home.
The next morning, Mae stood in her pajamas reading her name on the first clue. I asked if she wanted me to read it to her.
“Sure” she said, with the enthusiasm of a preschooler who had been asked if she’d like to go to CVS.
Alas, I read:
Good morning Mae! Easter’s finally here. You can find your first clue where your reflection is clear.
“Huh?” I asked her, “where can you see your reflection?”
“In the water.”
Now I’m remembering that she’s not really tall enough to look in the bathroom mirror, even on her stool. So I gave her a hint.
“There’s a word that starts with M that also shows you a reflection.”
“Magic!”
…
“Let’s just check in the bathroom.”
It took some time, but along the way she started to get it. Her energy built until she was running from one clue to the next, deciphering rhymes, taking off for the next hiding spot without pausing. She could read some of the words in the clues herself.
And as I watched her, I settled into a peaceful, familiar space.
Mae said something last fall, on a walk we took together. I was telling her about how things in nature decompose and turn into something new. Then she absolutely wrecked me by saying “I think Grampa Dean turned into you.”
The full story of that walk: What Doesn’t Decompose, and what came after it: Two Artists. The salamander migration he took me to: The Big Night.
My dad was the one who brought me out to see the salamander migration for the first time. He showed me how to create art, not by teaching me techniques, but by putting materials in front of me and letting me explore. His whole philosophy was that you don’t think your way into making something. That the value of creating is in the process rather than the outcome. And that there is a well of intuition within each of us that we can draw from, if we’re brave enough to let go of the controls.
He would have turned 81 on Monday this week.
His paintings are everywhere in our house. So are her drawings. She creates the way he did, lost in making, no concern for how it’s supposed to look. I see him in how she dances, in her stubbornness, and in the fact that she is a complete goofball.
I miss him. But I’m grateful when I notice these Easter eggs, hidden in plain sight.
