My semester was ludicrous. I took 18 credits and worked as a teacher for the Writing lab on Fridays. When my husband was employed, he was on a boat in the Gulf. Grades aren't in yet, but I'm hoping I did well. In one class we had writing exercises that my professor would pull from the ether and demand we excel. One of them was to describe a recent conversation with a confidant as well as describing the mood. This is the writing exercise. I think it describes my semester well. 

Mood- Relief.

Finals are here. Graduation is eminent. The reality threatens to crest the walls of my comfortable life in academia. What do I do? 

Go  get my masters, that’s what. Sifting through the overwhelming mountain of master’s program propaganda, I want to scream. I grab the phone. 

“Dad, what do I do?” 

As I spew the  impending doom of my emancipation from the womb of academia, by temporary separation from my husband, and my children's insatiable need to terrorize the house, my father meditates silently on the other end of the line 3000 miles away where the snow drifts onto the mountains. Envious, I imagine my dad on the other line in his Alaskan home. 

“Maybe I should just come spend some time in Alaska,” I say to him. Escape? Is that really the only option? 

My artist father listens patiently, composing genius in silence. Then he speaks. “What are you wanting, Rose?” 

Really? Is that all the genius he has to offer? I don’t want to tell him what I want; I want him to tell me what to do. What do I want? I need a job. I need something to alleviate the strain. Why am I on the phone? I have papers to write. Masters programs to apply to. Pressing deadlines. Pressure. Pressure. Pressure.  I concede, offering a weak answer to a complicated question. “I want to go to Iowa or LSU or UW to get my master’s so that I can write.” I’m spraying ideas in every which way, yet very few reach my father.  I can almost hear the plumes of thought wafting around my father’s head.  

He’s an artist. A quiet man. My friends have seldom heard more than a sentence uttered from underneath his mustache. But those that have the good fortune to hear him, love him. Growing up, I used to loathe Sunday evening salon at our house where an assortment of artists would come and grandstand in his presence, pontificate on the role of art in society and the lack of a solid artistic movement. Voices would get bolder hour after hour, but my father would remain silent, listening to the conversations. Then he would speak. The eccentrics would sigh, smile, and go home. Now I wait and try to grapple for his knowledge. 

I hear a sigh come from my father. 

“I had a conversation with Jacob once that really helped me,” my dad says. My father was the protégé of Jacob Lawrence. I knew this from my mother, but dad never felt right about dropping names. He continued, “He said, ‘Don’t prepare to paint. Paint.’” 

And there it was. With all of my confusion, I had forgotten why I was really in school. To write. To gain the skills needed to sculpt words, photograph an experience and paint images in prose. I had forgotten that the goal of school was to learn to write and not to make oodles of money with a rigid job. A great shroud of frustration lifted from  my shoulders.  A renewed sense of purpose washed over me. I’m going to be all right, I thought. 

Now, there is nothing left to do. No more preparations, excuses or rationalized deferrals.  No more preparing to write. Write.