A Glimpse into the Future?

I want to thank some of my blogging friends (as well my loyal sister/follower), who left nice comments for me yesterday when I was being a little too angsty (there's a red squiggly line under that word, but I'm using it anway) about the whole blogging business.  Today I feel compelled to look only for JOY in the process--and I know where to find it, because whenever I talk about my husband, my granddaughters, or art, that's the primary emotion I feel.

Yesterday, I was going through a binder filled with sketches I'd done in my youth, looking for a good one of my high school boyfriend (who also happens to be my husband).  Some years ago, I found a treasure trove of my old drawings from middle school and high school-- including the 1975 red ink sketch of my main man that I added to yesterday's post--stored away in rotting boxes that had been removed from the attic of my childhood home decades earlier, when my parents downsized to a condo.  Some of these vintage not-exactly-masterpieces were done on nice art paper, some were done on lined loose leaf paper, and some were drawn hastily in the margins of notebooks.  I slipped these pieces of my past into plastic sheet protectors and put them in a big binder, where they would be saved for posterity (or future laughs, or whatever).

I'm so happy now that I kept all those precious works of art and archived them with a healthy dose of TLC!  Because I found one little charcoal drawing that just about blew my mind.

As I was returning that red ink sketch of my hubby to its allotted spot in the binder, another drawing caught my eye and I was taken aback.  It was of a little girl's face in profile...and it reminded me so much of my twin granddaughters!  Although the twins are just over 2-and-1/2 and the girl in the drawing is obviously supposed to be several years older than that, the resemblance is almost eerie.  (Or maybe it isn't; family, does this look like the twins--maybe Cutie Pie more than Bonny Babe--or is it just me?  Especially from the mouth up?)

When I was first dating my husband in 1973, at 15, the four youngest siblings in his family of eight (who were between the ages of 3 and 8 at the time) got wind of the fact that I liked to sketch faces, and when I visited at their house they used to steal me away from their big brother with requests of, "Draw me!  Draw me!"  I drew their sweet little mugs so often that my mother claimed every face I drew from then on, whether I meant it to be or not, was a "Pearl face."

Of course, like any teenager in love with the boy she just knew was "the ONE," I used to imagine what our future children would look like, and many of the drawings I did reflected that.  I can just see myself sitting down to sketch this little girl back in 1976, when I was a senior in high school, and thinking, If we have a daughter someday, she might look like this.

So I suppose this face was a "Pearl face," even though I don't believe any of my husband's younger sisters posed for it.  It was a glimpse into the future--but not into a future that included daughters for us.  It was a glimpse into a future with granddaughters (three so far), who most definitely have their Papa's Pearl blood flowing through their veins.  Granddaughters with the Pearl name...and Pearl faces.