Let's Roar

Like a Lion by artist Traeger Di Pietro

A week before last fall’s election, our daughter Cait passed an art gallery near her home in New England and texted a photograph of this painting in the window.

No comment, just the picture.

She knows her mother well.

Not because I frequently buy art, as I seldom allow such a self-indulgence. She knew I would find the image spellbinding. Look at that little girl in her simple dress, carrying her favorite stuffie and a pot of flowers. So seemingly unaware of the fierce and giant shadow she casts upon the wall.

I swooned and Googled the image. The artist is Traeger Di Pietro. He titled this, Like a Lion.

“Doesn’t it so perfectly depict Ela?” Cait wrote, referring to her seven-year-old daughter. Shy among strangers, so full of personality with those she loves. This is, indeed, our Ela.

My first thought: What a great thing for Ela to know, that we see her strength in this painting. My second thought: How wonderful if all our young granddaughters could regularly see this painting and imagine their own brave selves.

By day’s end, I was more honest with myself. Perhaps the girl who most needed to see herself in this painting, in this moment, wasn’t a girl at all. Perhaps she was me.

Six days after the election, I bought it on the gallery’s website. So unlike me, but in those first few days I was a stranger even to myself. This felt like a lifeline.

My series of emails with the gallery’s director felt like correspondence from an earlier time. Our exchanges were exceedingly polite and kind, with each exchange adding a bit more information and creating the space for gentle excitement. After a grueling campaign season with a devastating outcome, such a moment felt like a miracle.

Perhaps I was eager for a flurry of nostalgia, but our dispatches reminded me of the letters between American writer Helene Hanff and London antiquarian bookseller Frank Doel, in her 1970 book, 84 Charing Cross Road. (I recently reread this book, and it holds up.) It certainly did not feel like a simple act of commerce. We were strangers with similar sensibilities and a shared purpose. Two months later, the memory of our written conversations still moves me.

I admit to one hesitation in buying the painting. As you have likely noticed, the lion is male. Fortunately, a little research put my heart to rest. As NOVA reported for PBS in 2016, scientists documented five maned lionesses at the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana’s Okavango delta.

A “genetic component” likely produced this phenomenon, and that’s good enough for me.

The painting has been hanging on a wall in our home for weeks now. Our four granddaughters range in age from four to ten. Over the holiday, at my invitation, each of them studied the painting. Briefly. It was Christmas, after all.

They offered their reflections, and I shared mine. They noticed everything, from the polka dots on the girl’s tights to the color of her stuffed bear. So many questions. Why is she carrying that plant? Is she running away? Is she moving? Is she bringing it to her grandmother’s house? Does anyone else see the lion?

I wanted each of them to know how I see them in the strength of that little girl, in the mightiness of the shadow she casts.

“That is who you are to me,” I told them, pointing to the lion’s shadow.

I’m not sure any of them understood yet what I meant, but I loved watching their faces as they stared at the painting. Lots of laughter, too, when we talked about how there is more than one way for a girl to roar.

This is just the beginning of this conversation. I look forward to many more. “Grandma and her lion,” I imagine our girls joking long after I am gone. There are worse ways to be remembered.

That time baby Ela roared at the sight of her mother. It’s in our genes.

Meanwhile, I am going to do my best to fuel the lion within, and I hope you will, too. This is going to be quite the year for our country, and for each of us. Surely, we will have a lot to talk about. I hope to start some of those conversations, and then—my favorite part--read what you have to say. I am grateful for your willingness to engage here in the comments thread, and in private messages. I cannot respond to each one, but I read all of them. What a community we are building here.

The New Year is such a stubborn reminder that change is inevitable. It may be unwelcome, but it is unstoppable. How we respond to it determines so much about our lives. I’m right there with you. There’s a lot of change coming my way, and I look forward to sharing some of those stories with you, too.

One thing won’t change. My promise holds: You don’t have to pay to read my writing. I understand not everyone can do so, and I am grateful to those of you who do because you make it possible for me to keep writing.

Here’s to the roar.