LuLu has taken an increased interest in drawing these days. She goes through artistic spurts. I don't know if it's the effect of The Listening Program or something else, but every morning she gets up and draws. The improvement now is that she rarely gets frustrated as she's drawing, rarely rips up the picture in disgust. For whatever reason, she is showing more patience with herself.

The topic of her artwork is always the same -- hospitals, specifically babies in hospitals. Sometimes she identifies the person (baby) as herself, sometimes it is others. Sometimes she is the doctor or nurse caring for the babies (or operating on them). She draws with great details the hospital equipment, the tubes, monitors, surgeries. I especially like it when she draws x-rays and gets all the bone structure in such detail. (Can you say medical illustrator as a career option????)

There is much about her trauma to analyze in her artwork and it doesn't take an advanced degree in psychology to see that. But LuLu isn't focusing on the trauma as she draws it, instead she's focusing on the details and trying to make the details of the hospital as realistic as possible.

Because it happens daily, I have become accustomed and accepting of the abnormal topic of it all. Others look at these pictures and are often taken aback that this is a "not normal" artwork topic. Those who try to dissuade her to draw instead sweet pictures of a loving home, butterflies, or happy sunsets, can not.

But her pictures are not drawn for the shock value or because she is always in a morose mood. They are drawn more out of an obsession for all things medical. It is the variations of what's happening that day in the hospital that clue you into LuLu's mood.

This morning the hospital picture was quite different from the usually surgeries. It showed LuLu in a wheelchair (naked so you could see her stitches, of course) being pushed by a nurse (in full surgical gear with cap, scrubs and boot coverings), with a surgeon in the background waving goodbye. At the doorway was a car off in the distance and a large bearded grandfather-looking man peering into the doorway with a large smile on his face.

LuLu narrated the picture this way:

"This is me, leaving the hospital after my surgery. This is the nurse pushing me out to the car where Daddy is. And the surgeon waving goodbye. Look at the smile on his face. And this is God, waiting to take me out to eat with Daddy on our way home."

After chuckling about God taking her out to eat, (eating out is the biggest treat you can give LuLu), I asked her if God was really going to do that.

"Yes, Mom, God is with you everywhere!"

Duh - stupid question. Then LuLu pointed out one of the details I had missed...even the elevator was smiling in this happy discharge-day pictures!

This armchair psychologist can't begin to analyze all the meaning of the details of this picture. But one thing is certain, it is a happy picture and God is with you everywhere!

This is NOT one of LuLu's pictures, but courtesy of Royalty Free Clip Art for English as Second Language Instruction.