HER WINGS is among 20 works based on inspirations from my twelve-year-old daughter.  When I went through a life-changing event, I became consumed with how the experience affected my kids –– this collection specifically focuses on my youngest child.

Underneath the kitchen table, peering into the waxy ear of my dog, was my favorite place to be at dinner time.  Preferring to position myself by the feet of my family, opposed to attempting to converse with them, became my daily dinner post.  During these meals, my parents had a secret language, that eventually my older sisters decoded and understood.  A language that sounded loopy and repetitive as everything ended in “phi” and began with “alpha”. Maybe it was a frat language daddy picked up in college. It came and went as needed in testy dialogues above my head. I had no interest in comprehending it for I had my own language with the animals on our farm ––especially Fifi, my big, black, dog.

No one seemed to mind or even notice that I had slinked off my kitchen chair into my world where I was the white princess and Fifi was the black princess.  Our kingdom was there, under the table, and during the day our kingdom was the vast expanse of land outside. 

Under the massive cathedral of weeping willows, we would swing on the branches that hung low enough for my scrawny arms to reach. We spent hours in fascination of the swirling green moss, around our feet, in the riverbed or took lazy respites in the barn, hidden in the hayloft, where only mice and cats resided. 

In a family of five children, I am the youngest.  As a child, I loved feeling invisible. I was not bothered by family issues at hand. No one ever listened to me - I was too little - my opinion carried no weight and I was happy with that arrangement.  I was quiet and in my dream state.  My siblings were caught up in Jim Morrison, burning bras, sex, drugs and protesting war.  I felt very lucky, Fifi and I had our kingdom. I relished in our secret world and being invisible.

Of course, time passed and we moved away from our beloved farm and all the animals. My secret world became ineffective and even awkward. Instead of an oasis, it became a hollowed-out sphere where I was lonely and unseen. Instead of Amish neighbors who sheared their sheep and made hand-made soaps, I experienced a different kind of neighbor –– they drank gin and tonics after their match on their backyard tennis court and swam naked in their swimming pool with ruckus laughter in the sexually-charged air. 

Being invisible was no longer a portal to my magic kingdom, instead it became a strange feeling of not belonging. An unfamiliar pressure of wanting to fit in yet preferring to escape instead. I was no longer a princess, and the world became filled with a harshness. For the first time I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t look with curiosity, instead I looked with judgement and self-criticism. I had lost my child.  I had lost my spirit. 

When does this moment of self-evaluation happen to a human being?  My dear spiritual friend, Jan, says it happens to all of us around age 7, we grow away from God.  Does it occur more easily, depending on circumstance? Maturity? Imagination? Does it have to happen?  Is there anyone that has escaped it?  Children do seem closer to their spirit. Is that why their art feels so fresh and uninhibited? 

When my daughter was seven, she too, due to circumstance, grew up quickly.  I watched as her spirit slipped away and she became responsible and self-reliant –– she is one of the strongest people I know.  I do not deny that this was remarkable, yet of course, I often wonder who she would be had she held on to her spirit just a little longer.

Johanna Furst

November 2015