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Y'all, I don't even know how to sit still right now. Back in 1963 my grandmother made a crazy quilt, all those scraps, every shape you can think of, hand-stitched with that tiny perfect stitch she had. She used pieces from my mama's old school dresses, my uncle's Sunday shirt, a flour sack from a brand that don't even exist anymore. I grew up under that quilt. Slept under it when I was sick. Knew every patch like I knew every face at the dinner table. She passed in '89 and I kept it in a cedar chest for years 'cause I couldn't bear to have it wear out. Well, my granddaughter talked me into entering it in a show up in Atlanta. I sent it off with a prayer and tried not to think about it. Called me yesterday. It won. First place in the heritage category. I sat on the floor in the kitchen and cried. That's not like me. But I tell you what, my grandmother never got to see anybody call her work art. She just made beauty from what she had because that's what women did. And here's a room full of people sixty years later saying "yes ma'am, this matters." I know it's just a show. But it ain't just a show to me. Somebody finally saw her. That's all I wanted.

Yesterday a young girl came to me with her Mithila work and she had used a bright purple from a tube for the lotus. She was so proud, and the drawing was good, her lines were clean. But I had to tell her no, this is not our colour. She looked at me like I had scolded her for nothing. I tried to explain. In our tradition, we do not have purple. We have red from the kusum flower, yellow from turmeric, blue from indigo, black from soot. The lotus is red or pink or sometimes white, but not this purple. She said but it looks nice, and she was right, it did look nice. But it is not Mithila. This is the thing that troubles me these days. I am not against new things. When I was young I also wanted to try new colours. But the old way, it has a reason. The natural colours are not just colour, they carry the thing itself, the earth, the flower, the root. When you use a purple from a tube, you lose that connection. The painting becomes decoration only, not ritual. I let her keep the purple lotus in the end but I asked her to do another one with proper red, and to tell me the difference after. She is young, maybe twelve. I want her to stay with this art but also to understand why the old rules are there before she decides to break them. Sometimes I feel like a strict grandfather when I say these things. But this is our heritage, not just any painting.