Margaret Lough

Editor’s note: This is one of the three runner up pieces in Storied Stuff’s first annual writing contest.

I have newer paint sets now, and brushes and pens and paper fine enough to frame. But I still like seeing this one on the shelf. I take it down, test out the colors. Something like twenty years old, but the red is still red. The blue is still blue.

I wince a little at whatever anxious moment put that double name and silver exclamation point on the cover. I must have feared that it would be taken away. Maybe I just loved the way it connected me to art. I wanted to protect it. I also like to imagine my mother’s mix of exasperation and understanding as she wrote it out. She knew that I needed to color.

In the end, I have to admit that I was the one who stepped away from art. Oh, I dabbled for years, but it always slipped away from me. Something about the Army seemed to keep it just beyond my reach. More likely it was me, letting one vision of my identity control another.

Until finally a day came when I wasn’t wearing a uniform, and there was a night class at the local art collective. And while it didn’t exactly stick right away, and the lines were rough and the likenesses pale, and I doubted anything would actually work the way I wanted it to work. But slowly, my hands and my eyes felt a little more alive again. And when I was ready, this set was waiting for me.

One of the things I like about watercolors is the way they can blend and fade seamlessly into the paper. The lines can be gentle, can even disappear. I’m learning now to blend some of the harsher lines I held onto for so long.

Watercolors don’t really expire. You just have to coax them a bit more as they age, ply them gently with water and patience. I don’t use this one much, but when I do I feel like I’m painting next to the girl who worried and wondered and imagined so much. I want to tell her that a soldier can be an artist, too. And that an artist can always come home.