Chapter One, Episode 69 - Dez's Art Work - Situationally Theirs

Review, Edit and Update:
This look into Dez's life only needed some minor changes. Except for one typo, there were improvements to sentence structure and wording towards the end of this piece.

Dez's Art Work

Desperanza Eliot was alone in her apartment. The last few months had been roller coaster months. She had been single and independent since getting out of high school at 18. At 45, there were days when she felt she had nothing to show for all the last 27 years of her life. But she really believed she had done all right. She was healthy, employed - most of the time - and always had a place to live. When she looked around her little apartment, she saw family in little things that had faithfully traveled with her. The one time she had to sleep outside for four nights, they were put in storage until she had a place for them. That was the scariest thing she had ever had to do. Her only other choice was to sell herself to get enough money for a room. For Dez, that was definitely not an option. In those four days, she was able to land a job cleaning an ancient motel. Lovely people, the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Singh let her sleep in one of the rooms. She liked to call it ‘the maid’s room’. Not long after that, she was able to get a better paying job and this apartment. All her things came out of storage and she was home once more. Grateful, she still did some work for the Singhs whenever they needed it.

Then there was the ‘bank robbery’. Dez laughed. Emelina just insists on calling it a ‘bank robbery’ and at least once every couple of weeks brings it up! Even after I explained it all to her. It was that incident that reunited the two sisters. She and her sister, Emelina Beaufort had been estranged for over ten years. Although they had kept each others phone numbers, they ignored them. So they did not know that they lived only five miles apart. Dez, a city mouse and Emelina, a country mouse. A rich country mouse in ‘hoity toity’ society - and that’s what Dez like to call it. She made sure to bring that up to Emmie whenever she brought up the ‘bank robbery’. If these two things hadn’t happened - being taken to jail after trying to take money that was just lying there and the Covid19 pandemic - they may have stayed estranged. This reunion could have gone really badly, but it didn’t. They were now closer than they had ever been. Emmie had come down from the high and mighty part of her life and Dez was more confident than she had ever been. They relied on each other. Although Dez still had a small job in the city backed up by the CEBA pandemic government aid, she also was working at Emmie’s estate developing her orchard and planning an apiary. When at home, she liked to paint, working in water colour or acrylic. In the last several weeks, she had finished five paintings. Two street scenes, a still life, a soft abstract of the orchard and Emmie’s back porch. The back porch where the sisters had had most of their ‘sorting out’ conversations.

Dez had a new moderately sized canvas. Blank. White. Waiting for an inspired painter to bring it to life. Waiting. And it really was a new canvas. She had been able to go to her favourite art store and purchase it.  They took call-in orders for pick up so that’s what she did. She had already covered the canvas with a soft multi hued background - reds, pinks, greens, yellows - all mixing and blending together. Picking up a clean large brush, she lifted light blue violet acrylic from her pallet. Not knowing what she would do with it besides getting it on the canvas, she let the brush sweep in a large arc. Each time the brush touched the canvas, it painted another letter in a diagonal from top left to lower right. There had been no conscious thought to it. 

C

 A

  L

   M

Definitely not great art, but I have been paying attention to Dr. Bonnie Henry. She's a pretty amazing Public Health Officer and guru since this thing knocked us sideways. Dez set her brush down, stood back and smiled.

“Make your heart like a lake, with a calm, still surface, 
and great depths of kindness.”

~ Lao Tzu