This week, a friend from my last-ever job will retire. The workplace where we met was undergoing a time of change, when angst and tension ruled the day. She could do no wrong in my book, though, from my early days there when she rescued me from an environmental disaster. Always somewhat ignorant of trends in popular culture, I'd put the wrong kind of detergent in the dishwasher (who knew there'd be two kinds?), and immediately mega-suds erupted up and out onto the kitchen floor -- endlessly, it seemed.
Coincidentally, she walked through the kitchen at that moment, realized at a glance what must have happened, and dropped everything on her busy to-do list to take charge of clueless me and the frothy flood. In retrospect, it was just a hint of the wonderful supportive friend she'd be, when we shared an office in my last difficult year of working part-time and juggling home responsibilities.
What else could I do, then, but send her a card that said: "May you have as many happy times in retirement as there were bubbles when I used the wrong detergent and you rescued me."
As I evolved this playful Work of Art, I thought how easy some things have become since my childhood. All I had to do to create iridescent bubbles was to mix and layer blue-green-red paints with some Pearlescent White, Interference Blue (which contains mica chips), Silver -- and even a splash of "gold dust." (Dried pigment in powder form)
The colour silver reminded me of a poster I painted in Grade 4, when our class was collectively entered in a March of Dimes publicity contest. I didn't know the word "banal" then, but it's definitely what I thought about both the contest and my own entry -- a band of humanoid (?) dimes, each a cross between Smiley Face and Mickey Mouse, energetically marching around the border of my paper.
The one satisfaction I had from this dubious project was imitating a credible silver colour by carefully blending white and grey crayons -- no iridescent anything in those days! Oh, and I even won a prize for it. "And look at this!" the award-presenting teacher gushed. "Dimes that are actually marching." Oh, my. Banal. The prize, though, was my own choice from a stack of new books -- and I selected "How to Make and Use Marionettes." Except for the papier mache puppet heads, the process was disappointingly beyond my capabilities. (Is this the source of my fascination with the artist's manikin of my previous post?)
A final thought on change and silver. I couldn't help remembering the song we sang at summer camp: "Make new friends and keep the old/ One is silver and the other gold." The words have quite a different ring to them at age 68 than at age 8. Who would have imagined then how far back the Golds would go, and at what an advanced age, I'd still be lucky enough to find Silver?
