28 years ago- Happy Birthday, Megan!

28 years ago today, our daughter, Megan, was born in a Fort Lauderdale hospital. She was 6 pounds 6 ounces, had a fuzz of blond hair, these incredibly blue eyes, and the most beautiful skin I’d ever seen. The first thing I did when a nurse handed her to me was take in these details and then count her fingers and toes. All there.

Then I really looked at her hands, at the delicately formed fingers and thought, Are those fingers going to be typing away before too long, writing books? At the time, I had no idea what talents her soul held or how deeply I would come to value her quick laughter, her ease with people, the way she would shape her world. And I certainly didn’t have a clue that one of her talents would be art.

That elephant, the first in a series of wildlife paintings she’s doing, left me speechless the first time I saw it. Those eyes. The detail. The incredible color. The utter majesty she has captured of these magnificent animals. A friend asked if she did her paintings on photographs – in other words, painted on top of a photo. She does not. Megan has a blank canvas in front of her, her phone to the left with a photograph on it of whatever she’s going to paint, her paint brush in her right hand, and her easel of paints wherever they’ll fit.

The photo of the elephant she had looked nothing like her rendition. It was in black and white. She studied the photo for awhile, then she looked at her easel and started mixing colors. Since I’m not an artist, I don’t have any idea how she selects colors, how she sees it all in her head, how her unique perceptions result in a painting like this. But perhaps it’s like writing. When you’re really tuned in to what you’re writing, when you’re in that creative flow, the words move through you and out of you, just as the colors do for Megan. As she says on Instagram, “I’ve never met a color I didn’t like.”

She’s also writing a novel and from what I’ve read of it, the words flow out of her just as the colors do.

So Megger, here’s to your 28^th year and may it be the best year ever! You are our greatest creation and we can’t wait to see what other masterpieces you create in this wildlife series and eagerly await the completion of your novel!

Happy birthday!!