Pat Bean's blog

Chihuly's Orange Herons. Photo by Pat Bean

Glass flower beside a waterfall. Photo by Pat Bean

In 2006, I spent six months traveling from Texas to Maine and back with my black cocker spaniel, Maggie, in which I avoided put-you-to-sleep freeways and crowed large cities. St. Louis was the exception.

I had decided this Gateway City to the West, where Lewis and Clark begin their historic trek to the Pacific, was worth enduring the hustling cacophony of a thriving metropolitan jungle. Despite the heat – it was July – and the crowded and cemented downtown RV park where I hooked up and left Maggie in air-conditioned comfort while I played the tourist role, I had a great time. I even found a place where man and nature came together: The Missouri Bontanical Gardens, where a Dale Chilhuly exhibit was on display in the gardens’ Climatron.

As I walked through the dome’s earthy rain forest, I couldn’t stop taking photos. I usually only snap a quick picture when sight-seeing, than bring out my notebook. While it’s said “one picture is worth a thousand words,” as a writer I appreciate that it takes words to express this.

But this day, staring at Chihuly’s colorful glass creations of reeds and Mexican hats and herons and meteorite balls plopped down among a bounty of foliage and exotic flowers, left me wordless. When I later looked at the images, I found I had mingled Chihuly’s art with the creations of nature so well that I sometimes had to stop and ask myself which was which.

That night, I pondered how a genius like Chihuly comes to be. The answer quickly came to me: Single-minded focus and dedication. For almost as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be a “great” writer, yet I was always finding excuses for not writing. I knew I lacked the focus of a Chihuly, or even that of an old boyfriend who religiously practiced his guitar four hours a day, seven days a week. I was always getting distracted, and when my writing suffered I flagellated myself.

Such abuse went on for years, until I finally realized that giving up riding roller coasters with my grandkids, arguing politics with my friends, exploring new hiking trails, white-water rafting with my river-rat buddies, mindlessly watching the sun rise and set, reading Harry Potter the day it came out, and sniffing every flower in life I came across were more important to me than being great.

Writing is a part of my life, and will always be, but it will never be my whole life. Knowing this, accepting this, and now content with this, I lay silently in bed listening to Maggie gently snoring at my feet and let the waves of sleep take me.