My father is a doctor, and when I got a scrape or bruise as a child, he would examine the wound very seriously and always reach a single conclusion: I think we need to amputate. I would then jerk back the afflicted limb and trot off, and I am pretty certain that my father would laugh. From that little acorn of threatened amputation sprang a mighty oak of never going to see the doctor, at least casually, and on a scale of 1 to 10 for seeking out preventative care, I would give myself a solid minus 8. Chris, whose father is an accountant, suffers from no such hesitations, and he has a primary care physician who has administered an array of stress tests and blood work, annual check-ups and screenings, all to the end that we are equally healthy. He just has the doctor’s notes to prove it.

But my knees tell me that I am not getting any younger, and Chris has not gotten any less insistent about my getting a  doctor of my own. To humor (and perhaps silence) him, I finally selected a physician. There was nothing but the most rigorous screening method employed, which is to say that I went on Google. After mere moments of looking, I selected a red-headed female family practitioner who is at least 15 years younger than I am, which means that she will be retiring about the time that I start wowing the assisted living circuit. Except for the roughly 57 vials of blood that the phlebotomist drew, the appointment was a painless endeavor, and the red-headed doctor was terrific. We talked about food and love and Vitamin D and working out and aging, and I mentioned that I had fallen a few months ago, which prompted me to work on my balance. The doctor asked me if I could name the the  number one predictor of a fall, and I responded, “Walking.”  Without even a courtesy laugh, she told me that the number one predictor of a fall was the fear of falling.

I remembered her words as I prepared for an oil painting class the next night. I read an article recently about “Superagers,” people who seem young compared to their peers, and one of the tips was to do things that were hard, whether physically or mentally. Crossfit is out (see: the knees). And Sudoku and crossword puzzles apparently are not enough: You really have to work and be engaged. Leaving a trail of misspent youth — if in no other sense than a youth riddled by anxiety, self-doubt, and impatience — and setting my sights on Superaging, I signed up for the class.

The class was $140 for four sessions, a price that seemed to allow me the luxury of simply showing up and mooching off the studio’s paints, brushes, canvases, and solvents. But no. As the time drew nigh, I kept getting supply lists. Among other things: The things I intended to mooch. And brush cleaner. A palette. A palette knife. Walnut oil. Paper towels. Squeeze bottles. Plastic containers. An art bin. Gesso (pronounced “jess-oh”), an acrylic primer for canvases. An apron. It all seemed too much, and with each new list and every new purchase, I became more and more discouraged, to the point I thought about canceling my class. I mentioned this to my daughter, herself a talented artist, and she diagnosed the problem: Spending more money and accumulating more things put a lot of pressure on me to be good at what I was about to do. Or, as eloquently phrased by a 17 year-old: You don’t want to spend a lot to suck at something. (Amen to that, sister.)

My daughter momentarily commandeered my preparations, foisting upon me some of her unused, and slightly inferior, art supplies. I found myself the proud owner of a janky tool box, one hinge working and the other almost, that apparently necessitated a lot of stickers. Stickers, said my daughter, were key to my credibility as an artist, and from under her bed, she retrieved her secret cache. After removing her favorites, she allowed me to choose from the remainder. (Take it from me: Nothing announces I AM A SERIOUS ARTIST like the image of the Pink Panther stuck next to I HEART FOXY, an ad for a local coffee shop.) She then placed into the art box three unused brushes, oil paints I had gotten for Chris that had sat unused, and a palette knife. Moments later, I found myself in possession of a jumble of rough canvases and a palette, again unused by Chris, and a suggestion that I purchase used brushes from a used art supply store frequented by creative types.

My excuses were dwindling, and $41 and two stops later, I could hold my head — well, not exactly high, but at least high-ish — in art class. And then we got to the introductions.

The oil painting class consists of four students, and we each had to introduce ourselves and tell about our painting experience. One student owns the art studio; she specializes in acrylic painting and wanted to learn something new. Another has had years of lessons, mostly in drawing. The third told a similar story. My turn prompted two thoughts. One: Should I mention that I won a second grade art contest, using that time-honored method of tempura paint on construction paper, to create what I now know is abstract expressionism reminiscent of Jackson Pollock, and that after a 41.5 year hiatus, I am back? Or two: Should I mention that I took 5/6 of an oil painting class three years ago, an endeavor so intense that I drug home exhausted and fell asleep over the five Saturday afternoons I attended?

So of course, I went with three: I told the class that I am an attorney.

Silence.

Well, this should be something completely different, said the art teacher.

And with that, we began.

The lesson focused on underpainting: You dollop either burnt sienna or cobalt blue straight from the tube onto the edge of a brush that has been dipped in walnut oil, and then you apply the mixture directly to the canvas. With this hazy orange or blue background in place, you apply to the wet canvas either a brush to quickly define shape and light, or a paper towel to create negative spaces to the same effect. The teacher told us not to think too much and to be bold: She had to do it in art school as a timed drill, first finding the shape within two minutes, then one, then faster and faster — all the way down to ten seconds. The trick was to step out of your brain, not question your judgment, and to simply process and record exactly what you were seeing.

Exactly what was I seeing? When I think of still life oil paintings, I think of vases of flowers and groupings of pears, nudes and craggy profiles of Dutch merchants. I do not think of, say, the curbside trash pick-up after moving day, yet that was what we were asked to paint:

Yes, really.

We really had to paint a cardboard box, a paper grocery sack, a wooden box, a globe, a few pillows, and a chair, all rather haphazardly arranged and sort of slung into place. I thought about excusing myself to the bathroom, which is really to say, I thought about walking out and never coming back, for who wants to try a weird method to generate something that resembles this? But I inquired instead about the ugliness of the arrangement — politely, in my best Moultrie voice, without actually using the word “ugly” — and the response was interesting. The teacher did not want us to be concerned with beauty, as we would be if presented with flowers, but with shape and form, dark and light. Now go, she said, start painting.

I did not remind myself that I did not know how to paint. I did not compare myself to the studio owner, the other two students with years of lessons. I tapped into the seven year-old with cotton string and tempura paint who created an award-winning abstract expressionist piece. I looked at the stickered tool box, the foolproof sign of a Serious Artist. I chanted as a mantra, “The number one predictor of a fall is the fear of falling.” I stepped outside of my brain, and I attacked.

Here is what I created, the orange wash still wet as I worked:

And when the teacher told me that part of painting was knowing when to step away and let the layer dry, I did just that. She said to move to the other side of the still life for another perspective and ripped in half her painting paper, with the blue wash that she had applied now dry. Try this, she said. It will be entirely different. And it was, as I erased and applied:

Neither of these paintings is perfect, and neither of them would win any art shows, second grade or otherwise. But creating them was such a joy. I was so engaged and thoughtful about my work — I really tried to capture what I saw. And at the same time, I was so careless about what I was doing — I had no idea what anyone else’s work looked like, and I kept my mind open and free from doubt about my abilities.

It was so nice to do something completely different, both the painting and the lack of judgment. And after I cleaned my (used) brushes and tried to get the janky hinge on the tool box to hold, my teacher said that she liked how my paintings had a certain energy. This may have been a euphemism for “your paintings really stink,” but I did not care. Even if I fell a little while ago, an event that scared me, and even if the visit to the red-headed doctor results in an array of stress tests and blood work, annual check-ups and screenings — things I had studiously avoided for these many years — I am so grateful that we had that whole talk about falling. It made a difference.

ALC