Finding Harmony
A Lifetime in Search of the Girl Who Has Always Been Me
I am a young girl floating horizontally in crisp, clean water. I feel it’s coolness envelope my skin.
I hear the watery, muffled sounds echo as much I sense tiny vibrations of my own slight movements through to my eardrums.
I breathe in the petrichor reaching my nostrils—that earthy, grounding, lovely aroma after rain had passed and I decided to take a swim.
I am weightless in my temporary bed of water here at my final childhood home in east Orlando, Florida.
Carefree in these moments, I know peacefulness. I close my eyes.
I open my eyes after having them shut for some time to feel sensation of mud between my fingers and hands.
How different it is to experience texture with closed eye. How time slows down and reveals itself as infinite. Again, I can see the mud pies I had been making before me, seated just outside the backdoor of home with my whole world of wonders stretched out before me.
I am in the backyard of my 3rd childhood home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Summer is making its way into fall. The season is gentle in temperature and lovely in breeze. I am called to my favorite overgrown shrub—likely an old unmaintained Southern Azalea—which is my living room in nature out the backdoor of my house.
Its low hanging branches gracefully decorate the interior of this shrub like intricate molding might do for walls. The branches create a clearing for me to exist within the protection of its dark leaves. From the outside my little room made of foliage is cylindrical in structure.
I pop out of my living room shrub.
I am in a dark pink dress this sweet day with white, lacy trim to match my white tights.
My soft light brown hair is fastened up in delicate, shorter pigtails than usual from the circa 1980s foam hair curlers I had slept in the night before. I am no longer pretending to be Cinderella as I had during my early morning hours. That morning I had busily tasked myself to wash the wooden floor inside our house with a sponge and bucket of water… likely at the floor around the easel where my father had been painting inside, this day.
Outside, now, deeply rooted within in my ever-growing affinity for nature on the whole, I see distinct shapes of gloriously-hued brown and amber leaves on the next tree forward from my cozy favorite shrub-house.
I am reaching up to pinch one leaf between my fingers—not to pluck it down before its time—but to sense it. To let it know I am here. To show it how it is not alone.
I love so tenderly the nature of my sweet world amongst and throughout my backyard. I am grateful for its gifts, even if those gifts are just to admire, to sense, and to be present with them.
Balancing on one foot in my gentle gesture of reach of the leaf, somehow… I am still.
I breathe in sweetly scented wind. It fills my lungs and brings me such simple joy.
I am at peace; as peaceful as the bird I had found earlier this morning which had already transitioned from its life.
Upon having discovered her I had felt moved so to give her a special burial.
I made her a special resting place and nestling her into the ground I quietly sang and a sweet little song, patting earth upon her. I placed flowers and berries in a pattern I thought she might enjoy from above, forever. This led to a little happy ritual of mud pie-making in celebration her soul’s release and my honoring of her.
Present, still, below the tree of auburn leaves (and my recent memory of that sweet bird) I sway with the wind, now. I feel cooler temperature reach the skin just above my elbows. I feel blessed to be able to feel the sensation, to be in my body, to exist outside in my beautiful world.
I am comforted; as comforted as the loveliness of ladybugs who so often come to land on my outstretched fingertips, always confirming to me there is something about me they enjoy.
I drop slowly down to the ground and place both my hands on the earth. I thank her—the Earth—with whispers and innocent childlike meanderings. I am in love with nature and this place. Just one single leaf I had felt at my fingers moments before becomes one more significant reason “why.”
With eyelids soft, I close them intentionally and hope to stay here in my heart so long as I live.
I open my eyes. I am standing in a courtyard in Jamaica. Flowers are all around. I am thirteen.
On an excursion from our cruise ship, the mood and dynamic between my parents and I are refreshingly carefree. Mom has worked so hard to support my father and I, always, and we really need this time together out of the house partaking of our first real adventure. Without Mom, we would never have been here, traveling. Locals are telling me, “Peace, Mon,” and I am reminded. Yes. Peace. Love. Unity. Respect.
Sometimes those concepts feel lacking back at home. Things have gotten so tense lately as a teenager. Emotions do run high. I close my bedroom door every time I enter my personal space, these days, and I often find myself writing poetry to pass the time.
In Jamaica I know our time together will come to a close, but I close my eyes back again just be in the moment, absorbing my surroundings, the people, their uplifting mood and the spirit of this land.
Back home, again, I am 18. I open my eyes to the morning light in my twin bed and gaze over at this beautiful print I found somewhere. It is small and framed. I don’t know who the artist is but always being surrounded by artwork only beget of my father’s hand, the softness of this piece is extraordinarily easy on my eyes.
There is something about her. Something I recognize. Something I love to wake up to every new day. In a significant and meaningful way, she is me. I see her expression. Her slight melancholy. Her choice of feminine dress and to be surrounded by flowers, choosing subtle but bold colors at the same time, to wear a necklace so simple and delicate and true. I could go on.
Every day, I see her… And I think, somehow, she sees me too. To witness her there in her frame on my wall inspires me to feel acknowledged in a deep and archetypal way.
Dad had done drawings of me some years ago when he photographed some headshots for me and drew from those as reference. Those sketches coincidentally which remind me very much of this different piece on my wall I love so much.
There is a sadness to the eyes, and somewhere, just beyond the windows of the soul my father William Jerry Mix depicts by all these sketches—a glimmer of hope still resides.
As I lay waking within the covers of my bed I think of putting my feet on the floor. I think of the day ahead of me, and I close my eyes again one last time, perhaps to catch a little more of a snooze before I set out from my house.
In the year 2006 I was 25 years old.
My artist father, William Mix, had spent one solid year homeless on the streets of downtown Orlando for an entire year, already, a few year prior. The injunction in place for that year expired, finally. It was understood he had nowhere else to go, no capacity to become gainfully employed, and he would be indefinitely as the mercy of what it is to be homeless if a new injunction was set.
A decision was made to allow him back home on my mother’s stipulation he never drink alcohol again. That story is for another date and time. The reason I mention this is because he never—not once—lost his artist spirit out there. He wrote about it when he returned along with a list of every name of every human who helped him somehow or showed him kindness.
We left my father’s art studio untouched, frozen in time until his return.
My father and I spent an entire year after his homecoming not speaking much at all, living in the same house… And then one day it occurred to me the grudge I held toward him was hurting me more than it hurt him—and also the grudge was something I realized was no longer my own fight to fight.
I announced forgiveness to him one day—and that is also a story for another time.
A few years later I think my father new how much I admired the different kind of print on my bedroom wall.
He often would do renditions of other artists’ work in his own style to show how that style was specifically or subtly changing over time. I find it quite interesting. He would always give credit in writing to the original artist on the back side and keep these practices to himself for his own files.
Not so with this rendition. We did not know the artist of my beautiful print at that time. My father did a rendition of it purely for love and I suspect because he knew I was so fond of this sullen figure. On the back, he wrote:
It was the only piece he had done a rendition of and wrote a dedication on the back to me rather than an annotation for himself or for whoever might happen upon it.
I know this was a gesture of love and forgiveness back toward me, too. I was an investment of peace and harmony continuing between us.
I will show now the rendition. Please be prepared. Dare I say it is not “pretty.” It is not meant to be. My father was more than capable of “beautiful” work.
This type of drawing came as a culmination after decades of work. This rendition style did not deviate much from the plethora of drawings he completed, daily.
The aesthetic here was his choice—not a sign of reduced ability.
Its meaning for me as his daughter after years of struggle… after his experience on the streets and coming back to love, always… my feeling about his gesture is the same as if he had done a rendition with otherwise remarkable, pleasing-to-the-eye quality.
Recently and since our move last year, this mysterious yet familiar small print I acquired around 1998 has been gracing my presence again more frequently. She isn’t hung on the wall, yet, but the figure in the print asked me with her eyes to find the original artist.
I completed a reverse image search and found its artist to be that of the one and only Susan Krieg. This piece, a small print of its original lithograph, is entitled Harmony.
I became so excited to know not only the artist’s name, but her name: the name of this beautiful figure who helps me to feel seen when I look at her. Harmony.
I had to know more. I found Susan Krieg’s website and blog. Even closer, still! This was getting so good…
So, I took a chance! I navigated to the “contact” portion of her website and I reached out to her by email.
Just two short days later, Susan Krieg, herself, wrote an email back to me! I felt astounded! My day and week were made all at once. (This was, in fact, just last week.)
To have had a few exchanges now, back and forth with Susan Krieg I feel a part of my heart unlocking about her piece, Harmony, and my connection to it.
Harmony kept me feeling grounded time and time again. I have felt so akin to her. And once my father thought to complete a small drawing rendition for me of this special piece, it was a sign between us how any previous qualms were mending as well as they could, all things considered.
And so, today, I take another glance at Susan Krieg’s Harmony, I breathe in… and I close my eyes. I am grateful for this life and all its challenges. I am grateful to be love.
I don’t know what I will open my eyes to, next, but I am certain looking inward for both peace and harmony in my life will serve me well as though I am still that child in Charlotte, North Carolina… amongst and within my whole wide world of wonderous nature, full of possibilities... Still that teenager loving a carefree adventure... Still that young girl floating so peacefully in her pool, sensing the aroma of earth after the rain.
That child, that young girl, that teenager is and are all still me. And so is Susan Krieg’s touching lithograph, Harmony.