Carli’s Pros and Cons List: Having one arm, I literally have to do everything at half the speed of everyone else. (Con) Having one arm means constant staring from the likes of everyone. Literally everyone. (Con) Without my dominant arm, I’ve lost my ability to continue my passion. (Con) Cute guys help carry out my luggage to my taxi for me. (Probably pity, but I’ll take it - Pro) Shutting my laptop, the view from my hotel room plagues me. It’s beautiful. A tiny cobblestone pathway snakes its way through the town. If I were one of those girls, I’d buy an over-sized, flowing gown and run down the path with my hair falling behind my shoulders. If I were one of those girls, I would spend the day living out my childhood fantasy of running around like a princess. I’d catch the eye of the most attractive man in town and together we’d have a summer romance that would be so beautiful, it’d get adapted into a movie. But I’m not one of those girls. I’m the girl with the missing arm. The one who wears Velcro orthopedic shoes because she still struggles to tie a lace. The one who has lost her ability to draw a simple circle anymore. Moving across the room to rummage through my luggage, sitting on top of my clothes is my old watercolor pad. I don’t remember packing this. Running my fingers along its worn spine, this simple tattered book has split my life into the before and the after. It’s been so long since since I last acknowledged it. Portraits of my parents and my pets, sunsets that I painted slowly as the sky itself unveiled them, and my personal favorites - my loose floral interpretations. I should have burned these pages when I burned all of my other artwork. Now they only serve as a painful reminder of what I could’ve become. Staring at the pages, tears well in my eyes, and before I have a chance to blink them away I do exactly what I shouldn’t do. Grabbing my purse, I make room for my pad, one brush and a handful of tubes of paint, and head out to the coast. * Bending to grab a handful of sand, it’s unexpectedly cool. There’s no one else for as far as I can see, and I waste no time in taking my shoes off. The foam kisses my toes and, for a second, I pretend that I’m still normal. Memories of playing volleyball with my friends, holding my first love’s hand while reaching for shells that peek out from the sand. Everything is so vivid I can even hear their voices. Then I realize that those voices belong to two women just down the coast. One is pulling a wagon behind her, while the other walks alongside her. They’re heading straight towards me. My attempt to mind my own business fails when they park their wagon too close for my comfort. Sneaking a glance, the woman pulling the wagon sets up an easel, supplies and a stool. She’s far younger than the other woman. It’s probably her daughter, I think to myself. Taking a seat beside her mother, the daughter removes the geo-patterned shawl from her mother’s shoulders. I don’t believe it. Her mother doesn’t have any arms. I know how rude it is to stare, but it’s so rare when you see someone like yourself. Her wide-brimmed hat covers much of her hair, except for the tiny end of a braid sticking out. She flings her sandals up high into the air, where they fall not too far with a solid smack against the wet sand. She and her daughter nod their heads together, laughing. When the daughter flings her own sandals off they erupt into more laughter. I can’t help but notice her mother’s canvas isn’t on an easel. Hers is laying face up in the sand. Her daughter wipes at the tears from her mother’s eyes. Steadying her breathing, her mother picks up a brush from her jar with her toes and dips it into a puddle of paint. Her strokes are effortless and elegant and fill my chest like a hot air balloon. It’s incredible to see even from this distance. It’s as if she’s been painting this way her entire life. When she looks up from her work, she offers me a sympathetic smile before calling out to me. “Would you care to join us, dear?” She asks. Her voice is gentle like chamomile tea. Her daughter waves me over, already pulling out a fresh, clean canvas and stool from the wagon. Shaking my head, I point behind me to my bag laying in the sand. Leaning back, she stares at my bag. Clearly unsatisfied with my lame excuse, she wears me down with her kind eyes. Sighing, I accept defeat and make my way towards them. Taking a closer view of her painting, it’s stunning. She adds some flying gulls near the top, and asks “Do you like it?” I nod before staring down at the empty canvas in front of me. Every reason for why I can’t do this circulates through my mind. I’ll ruin a perfectly usable canvas. I’ll make a fool of myself. These are acrylic paints. I used to paint with watercolors. I’m not an artist anymore. The woman leans towards me, her voice gentle. “You’re wasting time dear. This sunset won’t be here forever.” The brush shakes in my hand and a large dollop of paint falls into the center of the canvas. I’ve ruined it before I’ve even started. The woman stops mid-stroke and stares wordlessly at me. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do this. I’m not an artist anymore.” Getting up, the woman grips my ankle with her foot. “Sit down.” I do as she instructs. Her toes wrap around her brush and she cleans it off in the water. She whispers something to her daughter and her daughter nods before setting two new canvases in front of us. “You remind me a lot of myself,” she says. “A lost artist.” It isn’t the way she says the words, but the words themselves that make me cry. How did she know I was an artist? Maybe I’m not as hard to read as I think I am. Maybe coming to a coast with a backpack on your shoulder to stare at the sky says more about a person than I think. “I lost my arms in a car crash seven years ago,” she says. “For months following my recovery, I cursed the world for taking away my gift.” She’s silent for a moment, watching the twigs and algae roll against the shore. “I tried prosthetics. I even tried painting with my mouth. Sort of like an elephant with its trunk.” Her daughter stops painting and I wonder if this is the first time she’s hearing this story. “But then I realized, art is an expression. There aren’t rules - if there were, we’d never meet so many unique artists. So I began to learn with these.” She wiggles her toes and I stifle back a laugh. “Go ahead, laugh. It’s funny.” She picks up another clean brush with her toes, nodding for me to do the same. The brush feels far too small in between my toes. “You had your chance,” she says. “Your chance to do art like a traditional artist. Now it’s my turn. My turn to show you how women like us can still create beautiful pieces.” Women like us. Three words and yet I feel them deeper than anything else I’ve heard in the years since my accident. We both begin with the sunset. Halfway through, a cramp builds in my foot and the older woman - “I’m Flora,” she says - shows me how to loosen my grip on the brush. “I struggled with that too,” she says. “But you’ll learn.” My painting looks nothing like hers - hers has an elegance that mine lacks. But I don’t hate it. I think I actually like it. The three of us worked to the sound of the waves slapping the sand. The sunset was quickly fading, but my confidence was growing. Staring down at the mixture of blues I used for the ocean, I had an idea. Dipping my brush into the mixed colors from the sunset, I slid my brush from one side to the other on the canvas. The shakiness from my foot gave me a scattered reflection of the sunset coming off of the water. I looked at Flora. She stared at me but she stayed silent. Her lips turned up at the edges and I returned her smile with one of my own. An actual genuine smile. One I hadn’t felt in years. As the sunset cast its last glow along the water’s edge, I helped return all of the supplies back into the wagon. Flora’s daughter began tying Flora’s shawl in a knot to keep it in place. Thanking her, I watched Flora walk down by the shore. Part of me wanted to walk with her, to know what she was thinking. Her daughter gave me a gentle nudge. “Go ahead,” she said. “Go talk to her.” Without wasting a moment, I ran down to the water’s edge. “Flora!” I cried out. “Wait!” She turned and watched me run up to her. We were only separated by a few inches, but I suddenly became very consciously aware that she couldn’t return the hug I so desperately wanted to give her. She closed the gap between us and smiled. “I may not have arms dear, but I still love hugs.” With tears staining my cheeks, I pressed my chest to hers. Her heart beat was strong in my ears. And that’s when I felt it. The pressure in my neck. She was using her chin to hug me back. I could feel every ounce of her kindness seep into me. When I pulled away, she was crying too. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for…everything.” Flora’s words were soft and intentional. “You sweetheart, are an artist. An artists’ gifts can never be taken away. Always remember that.”