Its work to have fun.

Its work to have fun.

I almost missed this deadline because I was too busy working at making fun for others. Summer in Pagosa is about entertaining guests. They need to get away from their busy lives, so they come to vacation in our lives. The problem is, we’re too busy working making their vacation enjoyable.

Each week I teach a beginner’s watercolor class at the resort here in Pagosa. Some guests in the class have had a desire their whole life to learn how to paint. This is their chance to have fun and learn something new.  Others who come to my class every year forget everything they learned the year before. So, I start all over again teaching them the basics of painting with watercolors.

I was telling my friend Sheila, who has learned the art of retirement, how my Wednesdays are. They are like 49 first dates too many. It’s like how Adam Sandler felt in 50 First Dates. Lucy, Drew Barrymore, doesn’t remember him. It seems Henry can’t get Lucy out of his mind. Lucy has no short-term memory. So he keeps working at making her fall in love with him time and time again?

That’s how I feel. It’s my job to teach them how to paint so they will get excited about painting.  I work at making them fall in love with watercolors. My friend from Denver comes once a year, she tells me when she comes to the class, “I only paint when I’m in Pagosa with you.”

I tell her, “I’m flattered, but don’t do me any favors. You’ve forgotten everything you learned in class the year before. Get a good art teacher in Denver, learn something new, so I can take you to the next step and you can really paint. I have to start all over again with you.”

“I only paint here, so I can be with you. It’s not about painting for me.”

I drove to class feeling like it would be so easy not to teach and maybe it was time to eliminate some of my busyness. I have a lot of things I could do on Wednesday mornings.

The class that morning was full, with one no-show. At 9:15, a woman stood at the door. I opened it and recognized her from another watercolor class from a couple of years before.

She said, “They told me the class was full, but maybe you had a cancellation. I took a chance. Do you remember Brian?”

“Of course, I do. I invited you, your son, Brian, and your husband out to the Blanco to fish and have dinner with us. It was a fun day. I also remember how Brian would forget to wash his brush and kept turning his yellow into green. He called himself the “Yellow Terminator.”

“You have a good memory. You have no idea what it meant to us to spend that day with you. We’ve talked about you so many times and what we experienced in Pagosa. Brian died last year.”

“What happened? When?”

Another woman in the class said, “I lost my son the same time but 3 days earlier. “They bonded in their grief. They became best friends in that moment. One came from Albuquerque, the other from Houston. It was all about meeting one another.

Another woman, who was there with her granddaughter, sat quietly. During the break, she said to me. “This is what I needed. I have been taking care of my mother who has dementia. I was starting to act like the people around me. My daughter insisted that I come to Pagosa with her family. That’s why I’m here.  I desperately need this class and what you’re teaching me. I think I can go home and do it.”

I said to her, “Take this watercolor class, build your life around it, so you have a life within the life you’re living and waiting on someone else.” That made sense to her, She grabbed me and hugged me and said she could do it. 

When the six students left after three hours of learning how to paint in watercolors, they each thanked me for sharing my knowledge with them, being there, and remembering Brian. They all promised to see me next year.

Again, it would be so easy not to show up on Wednesday mornings for watercolor class. I know it’s important for the guests to touch a friend, a familiar face and feel like they are the most important people around.  Somehow, just being there in our place makes a difference for someone else.

My Sweet Al asked if this article was funny. I said no. He said people won’t like it. They won’t read it if its not funny. I said its work to provide fun for everyone all the time.

Final Brushstroke! My fortune cookie said, “You create your stage and your audience is waiting for you to speak your lines. “ Really? Now the cookie is telling me what to do. It’s hard work to be important.