Everyone is painting sunflowers to aid Ukraine. My heart goes out to those children I see pictures of on Facebook. When my gallery asked for a sunflower painting to help the children, I said yes right away, and for all the money from the sale to go towards the children. Then came the awakening, I have a real problem with yellow. It doesn't cover well, it easily gets caught by other colors turning it green or orange and it is the slowest drying color I use.
I look at a picture of little ones sleeping on the concrete floor of a basement and off the easel comes my present painting and up goes a fresh white canvas. I'm not going to just do sunflowers, I am going to try to do something different. Spinning in my chair I think about what the scene will be. Seldom do I have deadlines. This time the gallery has asked to have the painting in two weeks.
My Mom planted sunflowers for the birds . Every flower in mom's garden was planted for a reason, and instead of telling us kids the names of the flowers, she would tell us what birds each flower was meant for. Sunflowers for the Bluejay that nested in our pine tree, and for the Cardinals in the top branches of the same tree. Butterfly flowers and Honeybee flowers were my brother Frances's duty. I remember the year it was Teddybear Sunflowers for me. They would not get much taller than two feet, so it said on the package. Part of gardening was being able to read the package, a kind of reading & gardening lesson rolled into one. Each of us kids had a flower to plant and care for. My summer of Teddybear Sunflowers began with reading the seed package and softening up the ground. For the next week I was out first thing each morning checking for my flowers. Bumblebees and Honeybees were competing with my sisters for dandelions who liked to decorate our breakfast table with a jelly glass of them.
My very first friend, Donny, would come over and help with the watering before we would head off somewhere. Never any plan, things just came to us. One morning it would be the Pigeon Hill Playground where we would sit on the swings and watch the counselors - college girls who wore short shorts and tied their shirts up when it got hot. When older boys came we were usually chased off the swings and our watching duties were done for. We'd check the ground under the monkey bars for change before leaving. Cutting through the Cassady's field behind the playground, over to Gates Ave. we talked about which basketball team was the greatest. The Globtrotters could easily beat the Celtics, Donny told me. I agreed, since I knew nothing about basketball. Donny, a year younger than I, knew everything according to my mother. She had a way of saying it though that made me wonder if she meant it.... He pointed out the milkman's house as we headed to Garfield Park which was the boundary of where we could go.
Beyond the park were farm fields. An old fire truck was there in the park alongside the tennis courts. Wasn't much left of it, kids took the bell from it and the siren and other things that made the truck interesting. It was now just a red shell of a firetruck, a place to sit atop and watch more girls. We weren't sure why we were suddenly interested in watching these girls, we just did as we talked about fishing and who was the meanest bully. Wally Perze, we both agreed, was the meanest. Billy Hearst was the second meanest, and he seemed to be everywhere. Waiting to get a haircut once I got punched because he wanted the comic I was reading. Donny and I compared stories as we watched the girls bat the ball back and forth. When the girls were tired of hitting the ball into the net they left in a brand new 57 Chevy. Donny knew everything. I couldn't tell one car from another. We wandered over to the baseball field to check under the grandstand for coins. A couple dimes and nickels and one quarter. Of course Donny told me about the time he found the fifty cent piece. He always topped me even though I never saw the fifty cent piece or the catfish he caught.
We climbed to the top of the grandstand to see our little world. We could see into the backyards of the people who lived just the other side of the hedges that line the south border of the park. Looking East we could see the farms that still remained around Aurora. As we told more fantastic stories we spotted two kids playing in a hole just outside the park in the tall grasses that marked the boundaries of how far we could go . Back down we could no longer see these boys. Donny pointed to where he knew them to be. Into the tall grass we marched looking for this hole with its possible new friends, or two new bullies to run from.
No exchanging of names, just them telling us it's their hole and us asking why followed by silence. We saw the hole, saw the boys, and continued on our way. Well beyond the limits of where we could go, we sat down in the tall grass and wondered if anyone would find us if we died there. Looking at the blue sky, listening to the birds and naming them as they sang out, we did our usual wondering. Thanks to mom, I could name those birds calling out for their girlfriends. In the distance we heard those boys mimicking the sounds of machine guns and handgrenades.
The sunflower was looking better on my canvas as I left Donny in that field, and returned to my studio.
