Children's Art 3: My art after Maeve

After Maeve died, Raquel let me participate in the small children's art class we still attended with Tara. The three of us were all a bit numb, I think, and flying by the seat of our pants, as one often is at the cutting edge of life. I know that Raquel cared enormously for Maeve and for me, and I know that she felt that being in the class would probably be helpful to me, that she wanted me to have the chance to grieve through the medium of art, although this was never overt.

The first project 'the kids' were doing was an earthenware bust: African, Grecian etc. I sat on the child's chair at the low table and worked the gritty clay, and what appeared under my hands  was... the baby Maeve's head, slippery with water, as she had emerged from between my legs nearly eleven years earlier, eyes wide open, into Frank's waiting hands. It was baby Maeve's little head, and also all the hundreds of babies heads I have been privileged to hold as a paediatrician, have cradled, feeling their unique energy ...

I had not intended to do a bust of Maeve, but there she was emerging through the medium of touch, the first sense; water and mud, the first elements; and the tears began to flow from my eyes, and I sat in the middle of the children's class weeping and moulding and weeping and moulding, and Raquel moved nearer but didn't interrupt my work or ask me to explain what was happening.

And that was essentially what happened at the classes, which I attended for about 9 months. Once 'the kids' activity was to make a mexican 'retablos' (memorial shrine) out of plaster: Raquel may or may not have had my journey in mind- but I shied away from the overt memorial- it was never completed, although I used the ideas in the 'bumblebox' we made as a memorial activity at school.