As the first half of Foundation gave way to Christmas, the second half of first year stared me in the face and I felt panic. I wanted to continue with art school, but I couldn’t afford tuition for the second term. All I knew is that I had to go back and finish the year – I just had to.
In those first few months in art school, I’d had chances to test my abilities with colour paint and light, drawing from life and for visual communication, and to take some initial forays into construction using cardboard.
Through the program’s tuesday morning seminars and art history lectures, my appreciation grew for the diverse impacts that artists and designers had made and were continuing to make on their cultures. Huge whole new worlds had seemed to open up for me conceptually, and I’d begun to learn something about visual language and graphical ways to apprehend the world and to communicate ideas. Now that I’d had a peek and a taste, I just had to continue on with it, and see where I might be able to go.
My only recourse was to beg for money from my Dad. I wasn’t happy about asking him for money. Begging was degrading – it felt like asking for my allowance all over again. But I was already doing a couple of part-time jobs and still only scraping by to pay rent and feed myself. Tuition for the second half of Foundation was at least $450. It sounds ridiculously small today, but seemed like a lot of money to poor broke me back then. I just didn’t have it.
For most of the last year, my Dad had been living in Charlton Lodge, a care home located on Canada Way, about a 15 minute bike ride from my home. Since I’d been living in Park Place for my first year, I’d been visiting Dad every Sunday night after dinner. I’m sure I was his only visitor most of the time.
I’d lock my bike up outide the care home, and walk through the lobby to the elevator that went to Dad’s floor. Most of the time when I’d come to his room (#222, like the pankiller), I’d find him sitting in his wheelchair with his head propped on his palm and his eyes looking dreamily off at some distant memory. It was nice to see him like that, in an unguarded moment of personal reverie.
Before he got beaten down by his own health problems and rehabilitated from half a dozen strokes, Dad had never seemed to dream at all. He’d always looked like he was carrying the weight of our whole family plus other unseen weights on his shoulders. In those days, the only visible evidence he showed of his burdens was through unguarded moments of temper, bitterness, and impatience.
My “Hi Dad” always woke him up from his daydream. He’d greet me with a smile every time. In his disabled dotage, he’d become a much gentler and happier person, and I really preferred this soft old man to the previous angry version who’d run our household before.
Usually, our Sunday evening visits would just be us sitting in his tiny one-room bedroom. I’d get there in time for evening snack and have a cup of tea with him, and he’d have already asked for an extra sandwich for his son. He wanted to feed me, however he could. We’d sit there watching a TV show or part of a movie, talking about his week in the care home or my week in school. It was our comfortable, easy bonding time, when I was reminded that my Dad loved me and cared about me.
So, I did get around to asking him for tuition money on one visit. It was akward as hell for me. He asked me what I was going to get out of this art education (as any investor might ask). I stammered that I was learning about art and computers and that I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with my education, but it was really important to me. I felt like a little eleven year old me, begging for him to take me to see Star Wars at the Vogue Theatre. I was begging, but I was also really fired up about art school. I let a bit of my passion show, dammit.
Dad smirked at my squirming, and I realized that he’d seen and understood me.
He said “okay”, and I reassured him that I’d pay him back. (He waved off my promise, and I never did pay him back.)
