The First Time I Felt It

I have this memory of when I was seven years old. It was winter, and recess had just ended. I was sliding down the hill at my new school—Catholic school, which, I know, rough—and I remember the bell ringing. The lunch supervisor called us all in, rounding up the kids in their stiff snow pants and damp mittens.

I should have followed. But I didn’t.

Instead, I let myself slide a little farther down the back of the hill, just enough to be hidden. I listened as the voices of my classmates faded, their boots crunching away. The supervisor gave one last look around, then walked off.

And then it was just me.

I popped out from behind the snow pile, standing there in the cold silence. And in that moment, I felt something sharp, alive, electric deep in my stomach—like a beating or a surge. Not fear. Not excitement. Something else. Something I had no words for at the time but could only recognize as important.

And then, just as quickly as it came, I ran inside.

After recess, we had art class.

I remember sitting down with my crayons, pulling out a piece of paper, and drawing the moment I had just lived—myself, crouched behind the snow pile, hidden from the world. I recreated the feeling, trying to capture it.

And maybe that was the first time I understood what art could do—that it wasn’t just about making something look nice, but about translating something invisible into something you could see.

But looking back now, I wonder if it was also about control—about taking something abstract and uncertain and making it into something tangible. That time in my life was challenging and layered, full of change I couldn’t fully grasp. We had just moved from a farm to the suburbs. I had switched schools. Everything felt new, unfamiliar, out of my hands. But in that moment, in that drawing, I took something fleeting and pinned it down, like pressing a leaf between the pages of a book.

Art has never been an escape for me, but rather a way to allow the intensity of life to flow through me. It has come in so many forms—not just in painting or drawing but in cooking, baking, decorating, gift-giving, humor. Creativity moves in a million directions, and all of them matter.

Some things we make are better than others. But that’s not really the point, is it?

The point, I think, is in the act itself. In the idea that I could feel something, recreate it, and hold it in my hands—that I could remember not just what happened, but how it felt.

And maybe it wasn’t some deeply profound realization. Maybe I was just a kid having a moment.

But I was aware of it—of that connection between emotion and creation, between experience and expression. I knew what I was doing, even if I didn’t yet know what it meant.

And maybe, in some way, that was the first step toward everything that came after.