The Secret Nook - Chapter 15 (Brush to Canvas at Last)

Five minutes later, they found themselves in the same positions.  She had accepted his offer of a refill of her tea, but the entire exercise was testing her patience – which was perhaps what he had intended.“In the best possible way that you can imagine, how do you see yourself in the future?  What is it that makes you the happiest in that later time?” He then gingerly poured tea to let her deliberate.She thought for a moment and was amazed.  Meadow thought neither of romance or wealth, a home, children or joy.  The answer that emerged almost instantly was painting – nothing else.  The question, having never been put to her previously, gave her a moment of great clarity, like a billboard lit up on a lonely drive.What was transpiring in her mind in those intimate moments with herself was nothing less than an epiphany. She had always shoved the idea of painting to the periphery, sometimes violently so, or in a state of fear.  Now her mind ran free with brushes, the smell of oils, texture of canvas, and the sensation of creating something out of nothing.She was transported and, in an instant, she knew that she was happy, perhaps for the first time since the crash.  Meadow was dumbfounded how just the thought of painting transported her to a kind of paradise for which she was fully unprepared.  The very suddenness of the realization, the power with which it flooded her spirit, left her breathless.Staring now at her old instructor, seeing his keen and piercing gaze closely examining her, she understood that he comprehended what was taking place.  Of course, he would; Duyi Koay was a prodigy himself and would be no stranger to the ecstasy of that moment.“And now you know,” was all he said, in reverence, as if they were in the presence of God, which she realized both he and her father would likely believe.Saying nothing, he awkwardly moved his struggling form to an ancient Chinese desk, fashioned with exquisite and rare huanghuali timber.  A drawer slid silently open and he removed a small inlaid wooden box and walked towards her.Her eyes brimmed as she recognized it.  “You kept it?”“No.  You left it.  And now you must own it once more,” he said with a firm tone.She took it from him as though it was a newborn baby, running her hands over its contours, then opened the lid.They were all there – the round, the flat, the Filbert, the fan.  On some of them was the worn wood on the stem from her gentle grip of earlier years and tinges of paint at the edge of metal that refused to come out even after repeated cleaning.  Picking them up one by one was an exercise in discovery.  They felt alive, not just with history, but promise.  And then her soul opened again, filling her spirit with a light finer than anything the sun could produce.  Just as she had a few days previous, she felt the elation, as if she had wings.She was so fixed on the emotions swelling inside her, she hadn’t noticed Duyi moving towards the desk once more and returning with a small tabletop easel, covered with years-old paint, and chiseled with her initials on its base.  A moment later, he returned with paints and a generic canvas. He bowed with as great a dignity as his frail body would allow and returned to the kitchen, pulling the door closed behind him.Meadow Hartley was left alone with her destiny.  It was important, at that moment, that she not think of her past.  It never crossed her mind, regardless.  In a ritual she had not engaged in since the sound of grinding metal had marked the end of life, she mixed her paints on the palette, feeling the years fall away. Tilting the easel to her liking, she arced thin strokes across the surface until their combination formed the face of what clearly was a woman.  The mistakes she made out of a lack of practice, she efficiently covered with more assured strokes.One hour later, the refined features of an older woman emerged from the canvas.  The greying hair was swept back from the face.  The nose was prominent, the chin held up, almost as if in defiance.  The shoulders sloped away and what was almost a subtle smile spread across her lips. No makeup, no hiding, no pretense.It was the eyes that gave her away.  Green, clear and seasoned, they looked little like those that Koay had composed of the same woman the day before.  They had been burdened with living; these were aloft with hope.  They were pulled down in the corners through grief; these were lifted up through love.  They were of a woman imprisoned by tragedy; these were of a bird floating free from its cage.Meadow looked at herself, realizing that the figure was gazing directly back at her, as if alive and beckoning.  Why the grey hair and seasoned gaze?  She knew that it was her gift putting on canvas what Koay had urged her to believe in: her older self.  The woman looked so … satisfied, almost like she herself had been in a prison, captive until only her younger self could free her.  And now they were both aloft, liberated by the truth that until someone discovers their potential, they can never be delivered.The very action of mixing, painting, creating, layering, capturing the light and perspective, had slowed her wounded heart into a steady rhythm of work as she completed the canvas.  But now it raced, jumped – elated that it had been united once more with a gift that could express and capture it.  The innocence of her youth fell away as she embraced the innocence of her maturity. What she once painted only as a form of copying, she now had painted with the genius of empathy – of an artist who understood life and could depict it in depth.  Her captured heart was now free, and the beauty and knowledge of her were now themselves captured by her gift.Her hands cradled gently over her eyes, Meadow unleashed the tears of years, of relief, of a purpose now achieved, and an end now found.  To her delight, she thought of her parents without the accompanying strains of tragedy that had played their darkened melody across the scars of her heart.After a time, she rose, gently carrying the canvas by its edges, and found Duyi Koay sitting perfectly still and looking out the kitchen window as the wind began rustling through the trees.  He turned to greet her, stopped, and stared in wonder at what she was carrying.“As you gave me a gift earlier, this is mine for you,” Meadow said.A moment later he said, “Yes, and it is the same woman, I see.”“Same, but older.”“But far more beautiful and … complete.  Better than anything I could have done.”  His words had caught an edge of emotion.  “Hello, Ms. Hartley” he said through a smile.  “I have waited for this day.”Meadow burst into tears again.  “Oh, Duyi. You have waited for this woman and I didn’t even know she existed.  Thank you. Thank you.”  She embraced him and wouldn’t let go.“Welcome,” he whispered. “I knew you would come.”