Reverence

Steph has been one of my longest and dearest friends. She was my maid of honor. She is the godmother of my daughter. But before all that, we were young girls together.

I met her in the middle of an asthma attack in the front seats of our school bus. I was new to the school and I was having some painful adjustments to the "big school" environment. I wasn't exactly friendly (I know, right? ME?!?) so I was wary about starting conversations with people. But she was so tiny (smaller than I!) and she was wheezing like an old woman. I said, "Are you okay?" and she just nodded. We spent the rest of the long ride home in silence.

We saw each other again in the hallways and we would say hi. Later on, she auditioned for the drama club when I was president. I don't remember what she did, only that she looked so sad and vulnerable. I could say she was beautiful (still is, incredibly), but there was an effervescent quality to her beauty; if you blinked, it might vanish, and so you wanted to look at her and just look, and look, and look.

We finally became classmates during our senior year and that's when the cab rides and long afternoons (which turned into late nights) at each other's homes started. Little by little, I realized that this tiny, silent, and white creature was much, much, much more than her porcelain-ness. She had been through so much and managed to stay unbreakable. Fragile, but unbreakable.

In college, people immediately noticed how quiet she was -- perhaps because we, her friends, were so noisy compared to her. We used to rib her about her demure ways, but really, she was all our alagain.

She was the refinement to my crassness. The delicate to my rough. Still is. But oh, how this woman is strong.

She left her job to become an artist. And not just any artist, a sculptor. (Because, seriously, how many sculptors do YOU know?) She left simply because she wanted to start doing what she loved to do. Crazy, right? My dainty friend, who constantly fretted about having "dirt" on her face, got down and dirty with wire, resin, epoxy, and other things I'm afraid I'll just name wrongly. She has since sold many pieces, been commissioned for museums, and goodness knows what else (because she is always too modest to talk about it).

Tomorrow, she will have another exhibit, called Reverence.

It was called something else in its inception, but she decided to go with "reverence" because the pieces all represent people and events that she thought had mostly gone unnoticed. See, she has a heart for those things because she thinks (and this is me psychoanalyzing her here) she goes unnoticed. Or that when she does gets noticed, it's only because she's beautiful. Or when she does gets noticed for being beautiful, people don't take the time to see what truly makes her wonderful. 

And so instead of asking for people -- someone -- to notice her for the right reason, she goes on ahead and pays homage to people, events, and things that she thinks need to get noticed.

When I told friends about what happened to me, how I suddenly had to stop teaching, the only job I had ever truly loved, they were sympathetic, they consoled me, they told me I was going to be all right. Steph? She did all that...and made a sculpture for me. 

That piece you see on the cover? That's Ma'amsupial. 

It's one thing to have someone sympathize, empathize, with you. It's a whole new level when someone ingests your pain and your heartache so fully, that she lives them along with you. Fights them along with you. Incinerates them along with you. And then with their ashes, creates something so beautiful that, well, just about rivals her own beauty. 

So please, come to her show. Her pieces are amazing, believe me. But come because the real show is the person who is often gone unnoticed. And if you look really closely, you'll see what an extraordinary human being she is. And then maybe reverence shall fall gently and silently upon someone worthy that night.

I love you, Steph. You are incredible.