Who am I?

My name is Edie Cohn. I have two children, a husband and numerous pets. I live comfortably in Durham, North Carolina. I earn a living drawing newborn babies at a local hospital and my big interests in life (besides my art, writing and people) is traveling and playing volleyball.

Shooting the Moon

It took a lot of gumption on my part to decide to do this project. In a way, I felt like I was a little kid again, playing the card game Hearts, going for the moon. To shoot the moon one had to have nerves of steel and a willingness to lose everything. That was a big deal then and it still is.

The game is no longer called Hearts. To be honest, I am not really sure what it is called. But I do know that I have put myself in the position of either sinking or swimming. And if I survive, it will be because I had the right cards and I played them well. Nobody told me to go for the moon, nobody saw all of my cards -- not even myself. But I took the chance and now I must play it out.

 Dead-Dog-on-the-Road Routine

This afternoon I got my first rejection from a publisher. This evening I discussed the event with my husband over the dinner table.

Although he is in the publishing business, he has never read my manuscript. He believes that I am a good artist but probably not a good writer. And that is why I don't want him to read the manuscript; I'm afraid he may convince me he is right.

He tried very hard to make the best of what he saw as a bad situation -- I am sure I did not look very happy about the rejection. So he started in on what I would like to call the "dead dog" routine. Instead of saying how good our dead Rover has been over the years and aren't we lucky we had him, he says "Well, Edie, you've done a lot of good work on this project and it's helped a lot of people . . . " -- as if the project was as dead as Rover.

I told him to cut the dead-dog-on-the-road crap. I told him that what I have written for this book is the best thing I have ever done, and that it is better than anything he could ever imagine me doing.

He just shrugged his shoulders and gave up trying to talk to me.

My Son

"Did your son come home for the Holidays?"

"No."

"Where is he?"

"In Colorado."

"What's he doing there?"

"He lives in a junk yard."

I was on my way home, mulling over this conversation. A conversation that ended something like; you never really know what your kids are going to do. . .

But I had known for years.

My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a dead white cat on the road, less then a block from my house. It wasn't ours, but I feared it was the mangy, white stray cat we had been feeding for months, along with our own cats.

I drove home, got a snow shovel, loaded it into the car and went back to the cat. If my son would have been home, he would have done the same, but not with a shovel, with his hands. Not that he knew this cat, it could have been any animal -- he always stopped to carry them off the road, to lay them under a shade tree to rest, to rot.

He's that kind of a kid. Too sensitive.

So now he's on his own, been traveling for about two months -- bringing love into other creature's, other people's lives -- but barely getting by. He no longer asks us for money -- but he knows it's there for him. He says he has enough to eat, but a stranger had given him cans of vegetables -- the stranger said they were extras his family didn't need, from the government, he said . . .

Tonight, after our family has settled in for the night, we will probably go out and bury that cat, take care of that cat.

Is my son the heart of this project?

Sitting in Front of the Telephone

Here I am, sitting in front of a telephone at the Hampshire Hotel in DC, contemplating calling Alan Fern of the National Portrait Gallery and/or Tracy Schpero of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I want to see if they would be interested in having a show of "The Homeless People Project" in their museums, after the book comes out; a sort of collaboration / fundraiser with local homeless advocacy groups.

Although I said I was just sitting here in front of the phone, I didn't mention the intense feelings that were with me at this moment.

Do I have the guts to call these people? Again, I have the sensation of tears and laughter washing over me -- as I realize what a little person I am and what a very big thing I am trying to do. The tears are from being over whelmed, the laughter from seeing what a fool I am to be even thinking of doing this. But I go on anyway -- perseverance is the only thing that will get this book published, this tour moving.

The Box

Today a young African American man came up to me and asked me what was in my cart. At the time, I was in the lobby of a local hospital waiting for a family to arrive with their baby. For you see, two days a week I am in the business of drawing babies. The cart he was referring to contained all of the supplies I needed for my job: charcoal, erasers, fixative, drawing paper, cardboard, plastic bags, pens and papers for record keeping and so on. I explained most of that to him.

He apologized for barging in on me, but said my cart reminded him of a story he had heard just last week -- it was a story about a large box. Self conscious at first, but persistent -- he launched into telling me the story, assuring me all along that he was sure my cart was not the same as the box in this story.

The story went something like this:

There was an old man who carried a large box with him everywhere. He would never tell anyone what was in that box, not even a little boy who tagged along with him on his journeys. As the old man grew weaker, the boy offered to carry his box, but the old man said "No, I must carry it myself."

Finally, the day came when the old man felt he would die soon. He asked the boy, "Do you want to know what is in this box?"

"Yes, please, tell me!"

The old man said, "This box is filled with all the grains of self doubt I have carried with me for most of my life; self doubts that prevented me from doing the things I had most wanted to do."

The story teller again said to me, "I know your cart is not like that, but it got me thinking about that story." We laughed and I said "Oh no, my cart is very different -- it has wheels which allow me to go anywhere!" After he left, I thought . . . I wish I could have said my cart had wings instead of wheels.

*

Was it just chance that this man happened to notice me and my cart and had a story ready for the telling? And why that particular story?

This very morning I had looked at my project through cold eyes, eyes that could see the project dead, eyes that no longer saw the warmth and the vitality that had once burned brightly at its core. I needed that story, I needed it very much. Today.

Note: I found out the National Portrait Gallery is decreed by Congress to display only portraits of famous people. I tried to argue that all Americans have the right to be represented on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery regardless of fame, race, color or creed -- but got nowhere.