Nechama had always been a dreamer. She used to sit in the
back of the class staring out the window at the branches of
the trees arching towards the sky. Due to her frequent
daydreaming, she had a hard time following her schoolwork.
Nevertheless, she brought home average grades, and she was
blessed with parents who never pushed her to snap out of her
reveries.
When Nechama discovered painting, she was thrilled to finally
have an outlet for her vivid imagination. However, her early
art teachers were unfortunately intolerant of her uneven
lines and frequent pauses. They told her to hurry up and to
paint more realistically. When Nechama shyly confessed to one
of her art teachers that she wanted to be an artist, the
teacher frowned down at the little girl with dreamy, gray
eyes and told her that she didn't have enough talent to ever
be an artist. "Be practical," the teacher said as she drew
lines across Nechama's latest painting. "You still can't even
draw a straight line."
But Nechama refused to listen. Painting was her haven from a
fast-paced, confusing world, and she held on to it
tenaciously. When Nechama was ready to get married, her
parents found her a soft-spoken, undemanding young man who
encouraged her to continue painting in their new home. And
though they were soon blessed with a quick succession of
children, Nechama found time to paint.
Sometimes she painted in the middle of the night after
nursing the baby. Sometimes she painted in the morning while
the baby slept, and the water boiled. She hung some of her
paintings in their living room, and others she stacked in the
spare bedroom. Nechama's laid-back nature proved to be a
tremendous asset to her mothering, and she loved making up
creative games for her children and weaving fantastical
stories with them.
One Shabbos, many years later, when Nechama was forty-five
years old, one of the kiruv yeshivos nearby asked them to
have a couple of guests for Shabbos. They gladly welcomed the
guests into their home, and Nechama noticed that one of their
guests was staring intently at her paintings. It turned out
that he was a world-renowned art dealer, and he knew talent
when he saw it.
Nechama went on to paint and sell many more beautiful
paintings after that. She had never needed the fame or the
praise of the outside world, but she was glad that she hadn't
put down her brushes when her teachers told her she would
never be an artist. She listened to the song of her own soul,
and Hashem helped her turn her quiet, colorful dreams into
reality.
