The Blank Canvas

Hello, NAEA!  I am honored to be your blogger of the month for February!

Here’s a personal reflection to start our month together.

My oldest son Walter is an FDNY EMT based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn.  He is also a gifted artist and writer.  He volunteered for a medical relief team the day after the earthquake turned Port au Prince into piles of rubble, mangled bodies and death.  

My son Walter volunteering in Haiti

He has just returned from Haiti after working for 12 days at the General Hospital.  He and I are sitting in a small café in lower Manhattan. As he talks I no longer see the passing Wall Street traders bundled in their warm coats and scarves through the steamy windows. I suddenly feel the warmth of the sun and the humid breeze of the Caribbean. I smell the death and destruction.

I see the General Hospital.  It is a huge complex the size of New York’s Union Square where hundreds patients are in urgent need of immediate care. Someone points out a flattened building and says that over fifty Haitian nursing students are buried in their former school.

No one is in charge.  My son and a small group of volunteers clear debris from a ground floor room in one of the few standing buildings in the complex.  Now there is a small functioning emergency room.

There are not enough supplies. An EMT rigs a gurney from a tabletop and a rolling cart found in the rubble. Nurses improvise beds out of strips of cardboard for the growing numbers of patients.

The doctors are operating. They sterilize hacksaws with vodka.  Firefighters are foraging for medical supplies in the crevices of debris of the hospital complex and from crushed stores in the streets beyond.

As the dark falls the word comes down that the foreign volunteers must abandon the hospital for their own safely.  My son and a few doctors, nurses and EMT’s from his group won’t leave.  They establish a skeletal night shift. The uninjured family members of patients hold flashlights as the small medical crew battles against death. Sometimes they lose the fight. A gentle elderly woman with a peaceful demeanor slips away.  No one has been able to turn her over to attend to her mortal injuries.  An EMT helps the family gently wrap the woman in a sheet shroud. It is the only dignity he can provide.

Just as the heaviness seems unbearable, a burst of light illuminates the camp in the cry of a newborn baby. One voice pierces the darkness. Soon other voices join the song. The music is the resilience of the Haitian people.

I return to lower Manhattan to stir the bright green leaves of the fresh mint sprigs in my warm glass of tea. 

I suddenly realize that my artist son is painting. He has placed me at the focal point of his newest work. I am surrounded by the swirls of wet paint as his brush moves the thick words across the canvas.  I see the brilliant green of the palms and the deep azure of the sky contrasted by the chalkiness of the dust and the abstract lines of the debris. I feel the pain.  I experience the moments of hope.  I witness the creativity of the volunteers and the strength of the victims. 

I am experiencing the power of the arts.

-BJ Adler