My fingers gripped the pen. Lines moved hither and yon. The eagle emerged from black wiggles and scribbles. Clutching a banner, stained with ochre and ultramarine and umber, this eagle needed a saying, a truism to be his message.
I wasn't in a patriotic mood that morning as I sketched. The eagle lacked a regalness. The motions of the pen were more largess than finesse. The drawing was more cartoon, less illustration.
And so, the banner came to read "No whining." It is a message that I often remind myself of.
I am a whiner from Day One. This is wrong, that is wrong. This could be better, that could be better. She/he should do this, he/she could do that.
The lists get long and involved and repetitive. It's just plain whining and it can get good and tiring.
But "No whining," says my hastily scratched federal eagle. Like the eagles that paddle the air slowly past the lake house, sometimes just beneath the crest of the bluff, soaring so low and so slow that the sight of them takes away one's breath, this eagle, a reminder to buck up and not whine, is for me.
No whining. Not today.
Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler
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