A Paint Project for Lucy – a Small Labor of Love

Lucy is a creature of habit. She likes things how she likes them, and that is that. There’s not much changing the mind of that girl!

She’s pretty particular about how she wants things done. Whether it is wearing shorts every day, (although she’s in the process of realizing that’s not the best idea up at college right about now since I bet it will start to snow up there very soon!), how she arranges things, how being “independent” means you do NOT have your parents visit you in college. No matter how lonely you are.

Yep, this girl has some ideas I tell you.

One of them is how to decorate her dorm room. She wants things just so, and one of the things she was pretty determined about is that she wanted a duplicate painting for her dorm room like the one she has here at home hanging in her bathroom:

But she did not want to bring it up there.

No way.

That sucker needed to stay exactly where it is so it would be there when she comes home.

The problem? Who knows where we could get that art, and have it be a little bigger for her dorm room.

So I told her I’d paint it for her. No big deal, easy peasy. I mean, it was just lines and shapes.

At least that’s what I thought.

But of course, like most things in life it took longer that expected. To find the right size canvas, to round up the paints from my sister, to find a chunk of an hour or so (so I thought) to whip that thing up.

I have to say though, I loved every minute of it. It gave me a chance to give my heart to that girl in a way that she would let me.

Here we are at the beginning when we were up in Utah for Ada’s baby blessing. This would surely take less than an hour or so…

The process:

Yow. Can you see how dark it is outside by this time? It definitely took longer than an hour 🙂

But I have to tell you, that was pretty special time sitting there painting for my girl. I listened to my book club book (The Correspondent, so good), and as I painted my love for my girl was planted more firmly than ever in my heart.

I love that she likes things just so.

I love that she wants to be so independent.

I am in awe every single day that she is doing this. That through the ups and downs, she is managing to get where she needs to be. To find the office of her academic counselor. To find the writing lab and the extra piano class and her professor’s offices on that giant campus.

And I realized sitting there at that table that when your mama heart is so filled up with love and admiration and worry, one of the best things you can do is serve them in some kind of way for a few hours.

Of course, I couldn’t go up to drop that off for her, because heaven forbid that a mom come up to visit her college daughter. Ha! Luckily my friend was headed up to babysit her grandson and was able to drop it off for me. And Lucy’s response was the best payment I could get, so thankful and happy.

How I hope she will remember the deepest love of her mother each time she walks into her dorm room and sees those happy colors greeting her.