Christina – Page 14 – Nancy Tart: Writing for Life

June 2, 2017

Sooty Makeup

I’m not really a makeup person. (Okay, I almost never wear makeup.) Someone says “makeup” and I think sweaty post-workout drizzle where my face looked like a tie-dyed T-shirt (which was my teenage inexperience with makeup). Rebeccah, however, is very artistic and does makeup well. It’s an art to her. Makeup is just another type of paint and human faces are her canvas.

Loving, excited aunts have made sure the girls have a colorful assortment of fun, safe makeup to play with as they enter the teenage threshold. They’ve taught the girls many makeup techniques and how to match colors. (Sometimes the craziest of color contrasts emerge, but that’s all in the learning game – and clowns need makeup artists too.)

One afternoon I was busily canning marinara sauce (a family staple) when I heard Kimberly announce from the front door, “Mom, come see, we’ve done our makeup in your style!” (Christina was just beginning to explore makeup)

My style? I was busy, but curiosity won and there’s little I could do before the steam finished exhausting. I peek and they are coming from outside, where they had discovered some soot from the outdoor kitchen. All three of them are covered in smeared soot.

“My style?” I laugh.

“Yes!” Christina says, “just like in the army!”

Camouflage! That would be my makeup style. Just let me blend in with my surroundings and disappear – that about described my normal interactions with most other humans. I didn’t realize my children knew me so well!

“Yes,” Rebeccah adds, “we can look up now, and no one can see us.”

Turns out they were playing spy games, based on the recent string of military movies we’d watched over that weekend. Of course, in black-and-white, all the face camouflage looks just like soot.

They took off to “finish their mission” and I returned to my hissing canner. At that point, I was trying very hard to do more than blend in. That doesn’t come easy for me. I can write all day and interact with imaginary people in my made-up worlds, but interaction where I make myself open to others is not easy. I love teaching, playing with, and guiding children. My own age group? It’s not easy for me.

I’m learning how to wipe off the sooty face camouflage and try my hand at real makeup. I’m learning how to be open to others and allowing myself to invest in them – to be real, invest time, to speak instead of being silent.

I’m enjoying this “be the canvas” stage I’ve entered. Plus, it’s an extra time to listen (and talk) to my daughters because I always want to be open and real for them.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~ Nancy Tart

May 30, 2017

Building Katy Bear

“Tell me a story about creation!” Pipes Christina.

“Animals!” bubbles Rebeccah.

So began a little story about a bear named Katy who wants to see God create something. This story was told for about three years before I wrote it down because Rebeccah wanted to read it to her younger sisters. We added Ralph Bear and the raven changed to a wise old owl. Ralph was added because the girls wanted Katy to have a brother. Rebeccah said we had to change the raven to something that lived longer so it would be more believable. (Animals talking and praying is believable, but an old raven isn’t)

They had lots of discussion about different birds but the owl won. He could be very old. Birds were made before mammals so he could remember God creating. The Bible calls owls wise. Kimberly was the toddler when we wrote it down on paper (okay, typed it on the computer and printed it out) so Christina wanted another bear. Rebeccah said bears have singles and twins, so a third bear wouldn’t really work. Christina reasoned it was a fairy tale and anything could really happen. We looked up lives of bears. Because they usually do just have twins, Christina pointed out that this story takes place before the flood – maybe pre-flood bears had triplets and quadruplets! Rebeccah wanted to know why bears would have more babies before the flood. Christina’s reply was that they were obeying God’s command.

“Which one?”

“Being fruitful and multiplying and filling the Earth.” Christina said, “that would easily explain why animals in olden days had more babies.”

“Mice live today and they have tons of babies.”

“That’s because they have lots of things that eat them. Who eats bears?”

Well, that prompted some more investigation into the lives of bears. We learned a great deal about bears in the few days while we wrote “Katy Bear’s Request.” Christina and Rebeccah even bought a National Geographic DVD special on bears from the resale store because now they love bears. (Kimberly LOVED watching this movie, along with the VHS tape about African lions – zoologist in the making)

I learned a lot about bears. What I really like about researching for a book is that I can drag the girls into it too! We all take a few days and launch into learning about whatever subject. For Daydreamer, most of our knowledge was already there (farming, food without processed flour, community) but for Pirate Child, we dove into learning about “the deep” ocean; building challenges, what kinds of creatures Ethan would see, basic physics of underwater travel.

For Katy Bear’s Request, we learned about bears. I always wonder what subject we’ll become “little experts” (as Rebeccah calls it) on next time!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Tag: Christina

Sooty Makeup

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Building Katy Bear

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