There Was Always Ellen - includes "Jay's Century" artistamp download packet

It's interesting to be in a group of creative people talking about their muse. What gets a writer in the mood to write or what speaks to an artist; what gives one the impetus to make art?

Sometimes what sparks the creation isn't important. Then at others, understanding what's behind the art is something in itself.

What spoke to me today came from a voice inside.
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There wasn't really room in his life for much more. After all - or perhaps before all - he was in love.

And first in his mind and heart, there was always Ellen.

He was the child  who did math in his head for fun; a branch off two well known families with roots in the earliest colonies. She was the laughing eldest daughter of an Irish immigrant and his Brooklyn-born wife.

He had met Ellen in kindergarten (God bless public education) in the horse drawn kid-hack that carried them to school in Lake county Ohio.

The class distinctions didn't interest him.

This girl was nothing like his sister or his cousins. And she would break out in song as often as she'd shoot him a dark look. Decades later his eyes lit up when he told the story.

And at least his shenanigans got her attention.She may have rolled her eyes. She may have turned away. But she laughed.

A World War he was too young to go off to got in the way of his fixation on the girl.

Then numerous preteen escapades careening over rutted roads in a new automobile took precedence.

A wardrobe of spats, golf knickers and jaunty hats followed, accompanied by more floozies with bobbed hair than his mother could count.

Throw in his father's death and a hasty marriage to - and divorce from - someone deemed unsuitable. Suddenly it was nineteen twenty-something.

Meeting again twenty years later he had come through his wild oats years and she had not only finished nursing school but returned from Minnesota after a Mayo Clinic post-grad in surgical nursing.

To him she looked as independent and exciting as she had always seemed. And to her he looked more eligible than others by a long shot; colorful past notwithstanding.

They eloped, then lived with the fallout from both families.

Maybe it was because of that that they became inseparable. In any case, the living of a life entirely hand in hand became their way forever after.

In his older years he seemed to often be at loose ends and in deep thought about the past. I know he missed the land he'd grown up on; the acres of orchards and fields, barns, crops going in or rotating out, animals, and the lake nearby.

Melancholy or not, the man was always a tinkerer and although office-bound for most of his life, carpentry was second nature to him. That never changed. A voracious reader and baseball fan, if he was alive today I'm betting that he would be a 24 hour TV junkie.

Friends came and went throughout his life but his main relationship stayed the same. If you wanted a connection to him, well . . . you know who you had to go through.

Besides Ellen, he had room for the love of dogs - and other animals in general - but owned them very rarely after his marriage. His grandson Ryan's dog sometimes served as an amusing substitute, much to Ryan's delight.

He loved a good drink and a good joke, and in his way he loved the first daughter from his first brief marriage, and me - the surprise child from twenty years later when he and mother were in their mid fourties.

But first in his mind and heart - until well into their eighties when they died within a short span - there was always Ellen.

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He was born Jay McMackin on April tenth, Nineteen-hundred Six. On the centennial of his birth I've issued an artistamp sheet commemorative with a vintage photo of my father as a child, complete with long curls which were the Edwardian fashion of the day.

Download, save, print and use it with a smile in your art or other creative projects through this PDF download file ->. Download 2006.04.04_JaysCentury-packet.pdf

Here's to you, dad. I miss you more than I can say.