When I created my first piece of art at the age of five, I didn’t know it could make someone cry. 

I gripped a red Prismacolor colored pencil, flipped open a fresh sketchbook resting on the coffee table and drew. I smiled at the paper in front of me like an old friend. Even though we’d never met before, a mutual trust hung between us. I didn’t need to scream or cry to convey anything to it. The pencil became an extension of my arm and the drawing was an extension of my voice. What resulted was a mismatched mess, mangled into what could only be described as the blueprint for a winged creature. 

Really, it was a common kingfisher, my mom’s “soul bird” that she regularly debated having tattooed. I couldn’t see her face behind my outstretched arms, but I knew what she was feeling. I knew that my drawing was more than a few illogical lines, and I knew how to replicate it.  

From there, my view of the world shifted into focus. A simple stroll down the beach became a gallery walk. Waves glided across the sand and left their mark, wetting and drying the surface again and again like watercolor paints. Shells buried themselves and engraved their unique patterns into the soil. A donkey, a kidney, Mount Olympus, Jim Carrey; in the clouds, I saw things only I could see. I didn’t see a mass of water and land on the beach, but a fruitful ecosystem of harmonious life and death. The artist’s vision is a superpower, but one thing I couldn’t see was my future.

What did I want to do with my art? What was the point? On the days my imagination waned, the paper and I argued until it crumpled itself into a ball and leaped in the trash can. Pens and pencils carried the weight of tens of thousands of scrapped ideas. I thought I was doing art for myself, but I couldn’t even find pleasure in that very same art.

Then came my mom’s 50th birthday. Much older now, many sketchbooks had been plowed through, but the common kingfisher was stained in my mind, so that’s what I drew. Once again, I clutched the sketchbook in my hand and held it out for her to see. But this time, she stared back at me. I could see a tear fall down her face. I had found my hope. I hope my art can make people shed tears.