My grandmother stayed up half the night to do her creative work as an artist
Risks, trade-offs and the little quotes that fueled Grandma's do-it-anyway approach
“When did Grandma do all this?”
I was thumbing through several large portfolios of black-and-white newspaper ads and courtroom drawings with my sister, learning as if for the first time just how prolific and diverse our grandmother’s career as an artist had been. We knew about the hundreds of oil and pastel paintings mounted in her home and, by then, in each of ours too. But the reams of paper before us—so many depictions of midcentury women sketched in the latest fashions with impossibly narrow waists? The dozens of courtroom sketches accompanying articles? When did she do all this?
“She’d stay up half the night,” Mom said.
Grandma had always been a night owl, but I didn’t know until then that she had essentially worked a night shift to make her artwork possible when her kids were young. The way my mom told it, her mother would burn beyond the midnight oil to finish sketches on deadline for The Wichita Eagle, the paper where I later worked during journalism school. Then she’d get up long before her preferred time to see her girls off to school, sleep while they were at school, and wake to greet them as they got off the bus. Once the house had gone still, she’d get to work again.
It wasn’t easy or romantic. It was practice. It was a practice. It was nitty-gritty art completed on coffee fumes and deadline fuel. And it shows me that—beyond financial compulsion (there would have been easier jobs and times to do them)—she felt compelled to make.
In her later years, the years I knew her, those long nights of pencil sketching had paid off. From my perspective, she could effortlessly draw anything I asked of her in any medium. She had more hours by then to devote to studio sessions and gallery meetings and sidewalk chalk drawing sessions with us, her granddaughters.
But after inheriting a box of her journals and notes, I became fascinated with the before years I had not witnessed and, after my mom’s death, could no longer ask either of them about. What was it like to hold the work you love in tension with the family times you fiercely protected, the housekeeping duties you often resented? What would my grandma say to me now, trying to do many of these same things at the same time?
These questions that rise with the seasons and go unanswered are one of the hardest parts of losing loved ones, of losing in my case a lineage of mothers I can only now relate to in certain ways. All this makes what they’ve written down so dear, not only because handwriting is such a personal (and increasingly lost) art in its own rite. But also because now I can read as I mother and work to create what they wrote down in the midst of their mothering and creative work.
Maybe I can find again, as I stumble into summer with my own kids, the words that once fueled my grandmother’s art during her own young-children days.
To that end, here are a few nuggets from my grandma’s scrap pages, notes to herself (so many of those) and notes she made during seminars she attended as a lifelong learner:
“Art is the byproduct of our refusal to acknowledge the hopelessness of the human condition . . . [It’s] seeking after beauty.”
Notes from another seminar:
“Myths about creativity:
Education needed
You’re born creative
Art just happens (it’s lots of work!)
Too old
Too young
Must work alone
Must have lots of time
And a few notes that feel written right to me:
“We fly in the face of solitary artists.”
“We would never have a show without deadlines!”
“A special room would be nice (6 ft. in diameter).”
“Be patient.”
“Patience is as important as talent.”
And one of my favorites that is signature Grandma (a woman who loathed housework and took copious notes at a Gloria Steinem presentation at Wichita State University in 1984):
“Creativity means someone else takes out the trash & does the dishes.” 🤣
This week marks the last week of school for my kids and the beginning of an unpredictable summer season. Over Memorial Day weekend, I felt a keen sense of dread over my ability to “balance” it all: my journalism job, work on a new book manuscript (Hooray! More to say soon!), and a seasonal desire to just sit on the porch eating cherry cobbler and reading books aloud to the kids.
I don’t know how it will all shake out. I don’t know how I will be able to manage all the mysteries of God I’ve been given, for now, to steward. But I’ve been mulling that phrase, “managers of the mysteries of God,” which Paul uses to describe himself in 1 Cor. 4:1-5. Paul goes on to say that it is “of little importance to me that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don’t even judge myself.”
“In this regard,” he says simply, “it is required that managers be found faithful.”
God is not surprised by the mix of talents and callings and burdens and bright faces that have been set before us. I don’t know if managing them all will look like going to bed earlier or, like Grandma, burning the midnight oil. I don’t know if it will involve leaving dishes in the sink and laundry piles on the couch (both of which would be Grandma-approved). Or maybe saying no to a few more commitments and repeating to myself what I teach my kids to say: “I wish I could, but okay.”
I may never know the sleep my grandmother went without or the tasks she chose to leave for another day so she could make art. I’m just grateful she left the marks she did, especially on me.
I’d love to hear what you’re setting aside to still make (whatever the creative things are for you) this summer.
What I’m Loving Lately✨
LISTEN 🎧 For more inspiration on this front, this podcast episode featuring
on Nurturing Creativity in the Home looks excellent. See also her book Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood.WATCH 🎥 Speaking of grandmas, I loved the heartwarming movie Thelma, streaming on Hulu/Disney+ and recommended by
’s Favorite Movies of 2024 list. A mostly funny (But did I cry too? Yes) flick about a grandmother’s last hurrah of independence and the family struggling to loosen their grip.READ 📕 Speaking of
, I inhaled TGC’s latest book of essays, Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in the Digital Age. An utterly timely revisit of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), this collection is a helpful introduction to what a particularly Christian response to our technological moment might look like.MORE PODCASTS 🎧: I’ve been on a few more podcasts recently and felt so warmly welcomed by the folks behind the Culture Matters podcast. You can catch the episode on Facing Death with Loved Ones and Caring for the Caregiver here.
POETRY 📖: When
put out a list of 25 Poetry Books of the Century, I pulled up my library page and put several on hold. I’ve been savoring Richard Wilbur’s book of poems, Anterooms, and especially this poem that starts the series entitled simply “The House.” (I imagine it would be especially dear to those who have lost spouses.)
When I was writing my poetry book, I met up with my grandma to hear some of her stories (with an alcoholic husband), and she read me her stories through poems she had written then! Turns out when my grandfather was sober, he had invited her to take a poetry class with him, and they had both written poetry. Tears streamed down my face as I listened. THIS WAS WHERE I HAD COME FROM. And I had no idea. I love that you discovered something new (and old) about your own grandmother🫶🏻
I’m reading this while at my grandmother’s house and this blessed me so much! Thank you for not only giving us a glimpse into the life of this special woman but for also encouraging us to press on faithfully committed to stewarding whatever God’s laid out for us!