by Carolee Graf (3)

Today, my birthday, I officially became an elder. The first wisdom observation of life since being an elder was a realization that there is organic food and organic art. Remember the low, wrong kind of ‘slow’ feeling I had last night in this posting. Today, an active, alive day I still had a bad slowly turning stomach feeling. I realized that my feeling last night was physical and partially due to dinner last night. I had eaten too much of a beef roast that was already seasoned and processed. It tasted great but I should have known this kind of chemically treated food is not good for my stomach. I used to take some kind of medicine to offset the stomach problems of this non-organic food, but at the advice of one of my doctors I went off the medicine with the promise that I would watch what I was eating. Clearly I had not done this, and with two big helpings last night at dinner, had put my stomach over the top of its chemical balance. Organic food is good, non-organic food is okay in small helpings, bad in big helpings. The other part of the wisdom observation today has to do with the drawing (above) my granddaughter drew yesterday with markers.

Her style, as most three year olds, is a natural style that comes from a free type of scribbling. An artist friend Patricia taught my wife and I a style of drawing she used that was similar to this type of scribbling. She put a bunch of crayons in the middle of the table and as one person was telling a story, without looking, each took a crayon and started to scribble on the white paper in front of them on the table. Afterwards we look at each drawing from many angles to see what we could see in each. In many of the scribblings we saw a semblance of something that could be brought out and enriched. Her artwork begins with such scribbling and than she develops her art work from it. Looking at my granddaughter’s drawing today, my grandson, 10, my wife and I all saw an outline of a woman’s face. If she was older perhaps, like Patricia, she could enhance the drawing into a work of art.

But she is only three and today when I asked her how old I was she said I was “free”. She was repeated an old joke of mine to any three year old that I meet. When I asked them how old they are and they say ‘three’, I say I am ‘free’. They cannot distinguish ‘three’ and ‘free’ for the most part and smile when I say I am ‘free’. When my three old granddaughters today said I was ‘free’ with a twinkle in her eyes. My smart 10-year grandson said he was ‘four’. He was recalling a joke, the source of my joke, I told him about a prisoner digging a tunnel out of prison and coming up in a playground of children. He started to say: “I am free, I am free’. Finally one of the children came up to him and said I am ‘four.’

For a brief moment today, despite the non-organic food I had consumed to excess, my granddaughter’s artwork natural saying I was ‘free’ made me feel organically my age today, 65 and ‘free’.

I have added two other ‘works of art’ by my granddaughter, Carolee 3 and free, on the Graf Kids Art Gallery page.

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