art history (or coping with change)

i think i was always drawn to art. i remember making a get well card for my dad, who'd had a serious wreck on his motor scooter and was in the hospital. i was a 2nd grader. in the 6th grade i won some city-wide art contest with a poster i drew of austalia and some sheep. i got to take art classes at a junior high on saturday mornings for maybe 6 weeks. it was brockton, mass., and i had to walk to the school (it seemed very far from my house) so,  while it was an honor and i made the weekly trek, i would have preferred a trophy. in high school, i loved spending as much time as possible in mrs. wetherall's art class. i especially liked drawing sketches of people in either oil pastel or charcoal.

in my 20's i stopped painting...these were turbulent times for me, painful and, at times, self-destructive. but i found art again in my 30's. mostly water color, because i could afford the paints and because there was no 'down time' for drying. i drifted to acrylics.  i liked the intensity of color i could achieve without the wait oil required for drying. during my late 40's to a few years ago, i painted quite a lot. but this brain disease has slowly affected my ability to control a paintbrush. my motor skills are not what they once were. when i first noticed this, it was depressing. i didn't mind not being able to button shirts or put on necklaces but not being able to create? 

i tried to paint the way i always had but the results were frustrating to me. but one day i bought a box of colored pencils. for some reason, it worked. maybe not the paintings of my 'acrylic period' but drawings that i was proud of.  now i carry colored pencils with me whenever i feel creative. here's the deal: things change. you either dig in your heels and spend time being miserable as you lament the past and refuse to embrace the change....or you pick up a box of colored pencils and smile.