Rough seasons, smooth seasons, and everything all at once...

... and the steadying gift and grace of art

Every morning, as the house and I wake up, on my way to the kitchen and the coffee, I’m met by the unblinking dark eyes of a stone sculpture on the living room hearth.

We met him in the courtyard of the Victoria Falls Hotel, nine years ago this month, and it was love at first sight.

Our first sight of Changing Fortunes in Zimbabwe

His name, given by his creator and renowned Zimbabwean sculptor Richard Mteki, is Changing Fortunes. His distinctive face, an elongated pyramid shape, is about 24" at the base, maybe 8" at the top, and approximately 30" high. Maybe I’ll measure it sometime to that I can describe it more accurately.

But accuracy isn’t my objective in telling you about this gorgeous sculpture.

Changing Fortunes sits majestically, the back of the head as flat as the wall behind him. The two sides of his face meet in the front, forming the long nose above a proportionally small mouth which neither smiles nor scowls.

The right side of Mr. Fortunes’ face remains rough-hewn while the left side is smooth and polished. His eyes are wide open, almost perfectly round, and they don’t give much away. Sometimes I think he looks surprised, sometimes pensive.

What does he see? What is he remembering, or wondering, or hoping?

Sometimes I wonder what he could tell us, given his eons-long history of silent presence on the planet?

He seems to be looking into the far distance. 

I wonder what the sculptor, Richard Mteki, saw and felt as he was carving, and what he hoped others would see and feel.

How did he discern this beautiful and wise face, those wide-open eyes, as he began to shape the raw stone?

And could he imagine that a couple from Dallas would be captured by his art, and ship it across the Atlantic, and that it would one day grace a hearth in the South Carolina lowcountry?

Could he possibly imagine that this 100 pounds of stone would evoke memory upon memory? That it would bring frequent smiles and occasional tears and daily gratitude?

Can we – any of us – know what our words or our work or our artistic endeavors might mean, some day, to someone we’ll never know?

Mr. Mteki comes from a centuries-old tradition of Zimbabwean stone carvers. The stone – called spring stone – is a dense but soft-enough-to-carve stone which lends itself to the beautiful highly polished finish on the left side of Mr. Fortunes’ brown face.

Is that smooth cheek intended to evoke youthfulness and strength and ease, while the rough side shows the ravages of time?

Or maybe it’s the other way round? Maybe the rough edges of immaturity are smoothed over time to create that polished side?

Either way, while each side shows a unique surface, the figure stands strong and quiet, unmoving; he’s unlikely to change in any perceptible way in the centuries to come. His essential nature and outlook are permanent now.

Did the artist want us to see an individual who had gone from hard times to a gentler life?

Or perhaps the other way around?

Ah, but his name pluralizes those transitions, so perhaps he, like all of us, experiences multiple seasons of the alternating smooth and rough rides through life’s journey.

Maybe he hoped to remind us that after all those moments and forces that shape us, for better and for worse, we might remain; we might remember our strength, we might keep looking forward.

Maybe the artist hoped we’d see how the experiences, the struggles, the elements, the tenderness, the long passage of time can carve a peculiar sort of beauty.

And maybe, like Mr. Fortune’s, it shows on our faces, or in our steady gaze. Or simply in the fact that we are here.

The sacred gift of being…

Other photos from that trip remind me how healthy Tom was then, how unsuspecting we were of the journey ahead. And I’m grateful for that.

We were still newly-ish married, we were so giddy about being together and doing life together. We shared a deep curiosity about the world and her diversity of cultures and landscapes and histories and wonders, and we made travel a priority. It required some budget creativity and “deferred maintenance” at home but we found ways to explore and we had remarkable adventures together.

We loved being. Wherever we were, we knew the gift of simply being. Season after season.

The memories are eternal treasures.

In retrospect, I can see that those seasons of smooth sailing and the seasons of rough challenges never “took turns”, but instead existed simultaneously and we gave our energy and attention to what was most essential at any given time. We focused, often, on the short game, the immediate, the tasks at hand. But we kept the long game in mind too; we imagined and tried to plan for later, for that unseen and unknowable future.

We didn’t know what we didn’t know. For that, I’m immensely grateful. We lived in the bliss of being.

What if, now – in this season of life as the long game gets shorter – we keep our eyes fixed, like Changing Fortunes’, on the far horizon?

It’s not about knowing what’s next or what’s coming… it’s about the gift , the being, the wonder. This season of life is full of unknown challenges and lovely surprises, gentle breezes and wild storms, and all of it, all of it, all of it is grace.

Thank you, Mr. Mteki, and Mr. Changing Fortunes, for reminding us, again. And again.