{read}: “By now Henri is used to the nasty critics. He knows his shapes are simpler and flatter than everyone else’s, but he thinks that makes them lovely…every morning he wakes up and smiles at his pictures.” – The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau, by Michelle Markel
{wrote}: I’m telling Jesse about Annie* and the fairies* when I spot a dark door, grimy, but with light blue flyers on the front. The pop of blue is what catches my eye. I stop, and, still holding Jesse’s hand, take a step toward the door because what I think I see are pointe shoes.
“Is this a ballet studio?” I ask.
***
I am probably too old to wear a red bow in my hair, but I love bows and the lady across the street with white hair has a florescent pink streak in her hair, and I think that’s pretty brave. She waters her plants, and sits on her bench out front every afternoon, waving to us when we get home from school, and once, I saw her standing in the back of a red pick-up truck with her two friends, our neighbors. Three old ladies hootin’ and hollerin’ in the back of a pick-up truck like they’re 16. They all seem to have so much fun, and I think it’s the pink hair, so I think I’ll wear a bow in my hair every once in a while.
I am probably too old to start ballet, but I’ve always wanted to try it except the one lesson I took when I was 5 and I didn’t. Besides newly sharpened pencils, a freshly poured mug of coffee, I think ballet must be the most beautiful thing ever. I don’t know if I can do it, and I don’t care. I’d like to try.
This month it is Henri Rousseau’s birthday, so I introduced my library classes to the self-taught artist whose paintings critics hated. He was 40 when he decided he wanted to try to paint, and for decades the experts called him a fool.
I wonder sometimes what is more agonizing – pursuing a thing you love even when you don’t know if you’re any good, or deciding not to try at all.
*Annie McGeary, from Joy in the Morning, and the fairies who live in Ann Arbor (yes, they do).
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