Growing up, well having four or five, my mother and father kept having children and you know it ended up being five of us. The life at the house was this little kind of crazy and I figured the best place to get the attention I was needing and seeking, would be school. That started the whole ball of wax and it, my experience at school was somewhat difficult, to say the least.
I failed the third grade, which I’m not proud of, but it was that type of trying to understand what I was feeling inside and my parents were frustrated, because here’s this child that just wouldn’t act right, just wouldn’t go down the Golden Rule, you know stay in line. I was always popping outside of that line, trying to figure it all out, I guess.
I was a child that was just inquisitive and I loved the attention. So I would kind of do whatever it took to get that attention. And as a result, I could, it came at a cost, again, failing third grade. By the time I reached sixth grade, I was a mess. My grades finally got to the point where I could actually reach the sixth grade. But by that time my parents were taking from one psychologist to the next, trying to figure out what was going on. Fortunately enough I had, there was an experience and I tell when I go to schools. So you’ll have to come to schools for me to finish that story. But it was that experience led to my uncle realizing that I was drowning and that I needed help.
So the man that he was, I just lost my uncle last year. He decided that he was going to do something that was going to help me out and help his sister’s son, his nephew. And so what he did, he left New Jersey, I was living at the time with my mother and father in Philadelphia. He left New Jersey, crossed the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge into New Jersey and knocked on my front door and said, come with me.
He picked me up and he took me to art class and what was amazing about this, that he did this for six years straight. He had three other children; he had three of his own, three daughters. But he would leave his three daughters home, on a Saturday morning, and he would sacrifice his Saturday to be with me, amazing.
When I had stayed with grand-mom and grand-dad, my uncle would come down to visit his parents, right? I knew this. He would come down and he would spend countless hours with me, looking at the drawings that I produced. He would go through each drawing and sit down and say, and ask the question like, “This drawing that you have here, I love it you know, but explain to me, what was your patience?” And I was like, “Excuse me?” “You know, your patience.” I said, “I don’t understand the question.” He says, “Well, for example, the clouds that you painted here, are those clouds you saw or are those the clouds you just made up?” I said, “Oh, no, no, I saw those clouds.” He said, “That’s what I mean, your patience.” I said, “Ah!”
So I was having those kind of deep, rich conversations with my uncle and so that was part of, I’m sure, he had a plan there and you know didn’t let me in on it but, I’m sure what he did, it changed my life.
