Being an artist was never a question when asked as a child what she wanted to be when she grew up; it was a simple, unwavering fact of life. Did she ever really know why that was so set in stone in her young mind? She assumed so, but only because of that deep whisper in the back of her tired mind that every so often would whisper to her softer than a breeze… something… but she could never make out what it is. Just that it was there, the whisper of a voice, his voice, from some deep, creaky, and dusty corner of the closet that was her mind. She was thirty seven now, with a seven year old son. He was all she had in the world, it was always just the two of them with a bond thicker than anything else she had ever known. And he was a special boy, little did she know the extent of this specialness of course, as most parents do, as most adults do, being that adults sort of… forget. Forget to look around, really look, and see the world through the eyes of youth, through the eyes of a young soul still so fresh yet haunted with the possibility of the unknown. So while her mind was on the subject anyway, since today was one of those curious days where she almost heard a whisper somewhere deep within her, some answer to some question that she didn't even know how to ask, she stated the simple sentence that started this whole thing in the first place: “Have you thought at all about what you want to do when you grow up? Like as a career I mean?” She asked this to start a conversation more than anything else; his voice was so sweet and she could listen to it forever if she could convince him to tell a never-ending story. But he didn't say anything. He just stared off into the distance, past her shoulder and out of the large diner window that showed a continuous motion picture of the cars and people passing. “I want to be an artist too,” he said finally, meeting her eyes with hesitation. She was not surprised; many children say they want to pursue the same careers as their parents. Yet when their eyes met, she felt a chill run down her spine. It wasn't how he said it or what he said exactly, but some sort of déjà vu? An echo of time and something.. what? Realizing she had not replied to his answer, she sat up and smiled, saying “Well that’s wonderful love, you have a real natural gift for the whole drawing thing, and speaking from experience that certainly helps! What type of artwork will you want to create do you think?” “Documentation.” The boy responded almost immediately with all the simple sincerity of someone answering an entirely trivial question. “What do you mean love? Like the news?” she asked, genuinely curious now. “No… well not the current news, at least not like that. But documenting the past and all that stuff,” he said, eyes peering out the window again. “Like what stuff of the past?” “Well… “ he said, eyes shifting back to her, “you know like the stuff that you used to do.” She stopped wondering what he meant. She had never stopped working in all the years since she was 13 and became “serious” about the fact that art was the path, first solo show at 19 and a never-ending cycle of contracts and shows and trips from coast to coast and sketch create back to it but… used to? Had her worked changed? And if so… did that somehow escape her? No… it couldn't have. It's still selling at a rate that's paying the bills and if it changed all that much wouldn’t that change too? Well… “What do you mean love? Do you think my artwork looks different now than it used to be?” “Not exactly, or well, I didn't realize that at least until I saw your old work… like your really old work that you have on your website from a lot of years ago” Website? How did he get on her website to begin with? iPad likely, the one he got for his birthday. So he could have searched for her, she guessed that was a normal thing for a kid to do, especially one who wanted to follow in their parents professional footsteps. “Can you show me what you mean?” she asked, pulling out her phone and pulling up her website. He took the phone and went to her portfolio section and started scrolling. Years of work, years of literal blood, sweat, and tears, years of canceling plans, years of no social life except the weekly movie night with her best friend who just so happens to double as her son. “This one” he said, handing back the phone. “I want to document this stuff like when you used to do that.” She looked at what he was referring to. Ah, a piece of an extinct sea mink looking over the fallen lighthouse that once stood in — “Oh, so you want to document extinct species and buildings that no longer exist? But I still do that love, I draw extinct animals and sure it’s been a minute since I drew a lighthouse, let alone one of the lost lights,” god how long had it really been, did she even remember? “but I still include them in my work. So what do you mean?” “It’s just… these were different. You know, different. And over time they changed. He said you got busy with me and life and kept going but… that you didn't want to see them anymore.” “What do you mean, who is he?” She said, not too alarmed at this sort of eerie sentence. The one thing he certainly inherited from her was her imagination. She felt sorry about those wild dark nights that this imagination would bring, those wild dark nights that were both behind and ahead of her beloved son. A vivid imagination, too vivid at times for her own good and she saw all too well that he was plagued by that same little story bug. “I don’t know how to explain him to you mom, honestly I just…” he paused, frustrated. “I don't even know, just forget it. I just want to do documentation work like you did, that's all.” He leaned down to take a giant drippy bite of his nearly untouched burger, a textbook signal that he wanted this conversation to end. “Okay, okay, I’m curious but you don't have to explain. Just know that you can do it, and if you really want to do it, the best advice I could ever give you is to start now. Start before you’re an adult with more responsibilities or even a teenager with a social life and a stack of homework. Start now and maybe you won’t want to stop like I did.” She took a sip of her milkshake. “If you want to document the past and get real good, you have to draw from life. Learn to look around you at the world and learn how to capture what is still here so you can learn to capture the past in a way that is convincing. Draw what you see and do it all the time. Bring that sketchbook anywhere and everywhere. I got hired to do a job documenting herring gulls and I'm walking down to the water tomorrow, if you want you can come with me and bring your book and draw from life.” His eyes lit up with excitement as they always did when he was allowed to join in on any aspect of his dear mother’s work. As it always did when she saw that excitement, her heart swelled with an unending love for her son. The next day they got up early and walked down to the Nantucket bay. She began photographing and sketching the gulls for reference. He walked ahead of her and sat in the sand, far enough back from the water to not get wet but still have a great view. He took out his sketchbook and she was pleased to see him immediately start drawing with an intense focus. She worked on the beach for three hours, and when she was satisfied with her progress the two of them left for lunch. “Can I see it yet?” she asked, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as they left the beach. “Not yet. It's not done.” “Okay, well like I said earlier I have to come back a few more days this week to see if any more of the gulls show up in this part of town before starting the final piece. Come with me everyday if you want, I heard the weather will be gorgeous all week.” With smiling eyes he agreed to come back so he could finish the drawing. The next day was the same, he picked the same spot on the beach and drew for three more hours but again said his piece wasn't done yet. The following day was Wednesday, which was her obligatory mailing day, so after settling on going back to the beach tomorrow she got her son to tentatively agree to go to his friend’s house for the day. As she was nearing the halfway mark of her mail work , she remembered that Wednesday doubled as the day to feed their pet corn snake. She creaked open the door to her son’s room. She knew he wasn’t home but still she got an unwavering sense of intrusion being in there without him knowing. As she opened the lid of the snake’s enclosure she saw a drawing on his desk that she had never seen before. The grains of sand in the binding of the sketchbook cemented it as the drawing he refused to show her at the beach. She stared at it for what seemed like hours, awestruck at what she was seeing. It was a scene of an ocean with a ship drawn in far too much detail for his young hand. This would have been impressive for any amateur artist, but a kid of seven? He wasn't kidding, she thought, he might have a real shot at this whole art career thing if this was his work at seven. Then abruptly it came, chills everywhere. It hit her like a train hitting a scared creature stuck in the charm of headlights. How did he do this if there was no ship? She was there and she certainly would have noticed such a ship, with two strange lights coming out of the masts and all of the incredible detail he gave it. And even if these details were embellishments with his mind, of course that wasn’t out of the question, but even still he couldn't draw this without at least some sort of reference. He was staring at… nothing? Water and a clear blue sky with the occasional pelican? Yes… she was sure of that… right? Yes, don't be ridiculous you would have noticed it and if not you need your eyes checked. There was no ship, and he didn't have his iPad that day. So what was he looking at? Maybe he had drawn the ocean scene and added the ship at home after. That was it. That must have been it. And on the side of the ship was a word that could only be a name, NANTUCKET, printed in a fine and clear font. They did live in Nantucket, and she could see how a seven-year old mind would put the name of his town on an imaginary ship, but she still felt that it wasn’t adding up. When he got home that night she approached him about her discovery. Although she felt bad about this intrusion of privacy, there was no visible anger in him as she confronted him, just pure confusion. “What do you mean?" he said, looking up at her. “I was drawing the ship that was there on those two trips to the beach, it was right in front of me - in front of us - did you just not know it said Nantucket on the side?” She met his confusion with questioning eyes. “No stories please honey, I just want to know where you saw this ship because it’s so beautiful, it’s such a wonderful drawing but there is a difference between drawing something from life and drawing from your iPad and I just wanted to hear about how you made it.” She paused, then added “I love it, i'm just intrigued.” He stepped back and looked at her. The confusion was gone entirely, evaporating into the air and replaced with a new look. Now it was fright she saw in her darling son’s eyes, yes she believed it was fright indeed. “Mom please stop, you are scaring me,” he said, stepping further back again. “I'm sorry honey I don't want to upset you, I was just confused. But maybe I just didn't see it.” She knew this couldn’t be true, but clearly he was in no mood to push the subject any further so she decided she would approach it on their next beach trip. After a long hug they sat down on their couch where they began their third and final Wednesday tradition, movie night. As they walked up to the beach the next day, the boy interrupted his mother’s explanation of why gulls live so long. “Look!! The ship mom, it’s the ship!! I am gonna finish it today, I know I am!” He took off running again to the same spot where he sat the past two days. After a prolonged sprint that left her panting, she stood next to her son and gazed out toward the hauntingly empty ocean. “Okay honey, no more jokes. Where is the ship?” He stared at her in utter disbelief. “Mom, stop! Stop it now, you are making me feel like I’m losing my mind!” Strong words from her seven year old, yes, so she bent down as he continued to yell at her. Nothing seemed to be able to calm him, until he just stopped. He stared out into the sea and then fell to the sand, opening his sketchbook in the swift way an artist practicing for many years would do. An artist that understood the immense importance of the moment, the fleeting moment, the moment that was now and only now and perhaps would never be again. “He told me how to make you understand. I know what to do now.” She watched her son draw in his sketchbook for about five minutes, at which point he dropped his pencil and handed her the drawing. “It looks so beautiful love, it really does, but did you just add more detail? He looked at her, satisfied. “He told me to tell you to study it tonight after you put me to sleep. I don’t know, that’s just what he said.” And so she walked with him to the car, still stunned by the truly beautiful drawing as she drove him home. After a quiet dinner she read from his favorite book of short stories as her son drifted off to sleep in front of her. After she was certain he wouldn’t wake up, she left his room and walked up to her studio. She brought his drawing out and stared at it for a long time, not noticing anything that would serve as a clue in this whole weird mystery. But suddenly she did. LV-117, was that there before? No, she guessed not, but it was small and hard to read and next to the emboldened NANTUCKET that had already been there. What does that even mean? She opened her laptop then and typed Nantucket LV-117 ship with big lights into the search bar. As the results loaded before her, chills ran up her back harder than she could ever remember. There was his ship. The Nantucket lightship, LV-117, destroyed far before she was even born. It was eerily precise to his drawing. Even with his iPad, she couldn’t understand how he would even know to look such a ship up in the first place. Her rational brain told her that he must have looked it up in his room and added the ship to the drawing then. But she saw him, she saw him drawing it in the sand and something in his eyes, something was there that made her believe that wasn't the case. So what was this? A case of photographic memory combined with a vivid imagination that she can’t even scratch the surface of understanding? With no other explanation she concluded that must be the case. And so with both a sense of pride and curiosity she decided that she had to share her son’s work with someone. She thought that perhaps the United States Lighthouse Society would love this story of a seven year old boy drawing this old lightship in such detail. The next morning, she made him his favorite breakfast, pancakes and eggs. They sat at the table and began eating. “I am truly blown away with the ship,” she shared. “I see now that you were just trying to show me a part of your incredible imagination, and I am so proud of you. The lighthouse society should see this, I was thinking I would email them a picture for their art contest. Would that be alright with you?” He stared at her, frustration and sadness rimming those eyes that she loved so much. Without saying a word he grabbed the drawing and brought it to the table and frantically made marks. “It’s so perfect honey, I really think you should call it done,” she said, walking to him. As she reached him she saw that a black smudge stood where the LV-117 marking previously did. “No!” she exclaimed, “that was so incredible and I have no idea how you would have known those numbers. That was so important, why did you do that?” “Because you can't do that mom! You can't send it to those lighthouse people or anyone else, it’s for us to know not them and you can’t ruin the secret, don't you get it?” Tears streamed from his eyes as he continued. “The old you would understand, he told me, he said you used to understand but now you just don’t!” In an outpouring of emotion he stood up from his unfinished pancakes and ran. “Stop!” she screamed as he reached the front door. “The fog is so bad you can’t see ten feet in front of you, stop I’m serious!” And although he was normally such a sweet boy, he continued forward, not even pausing to see the look on his distraught mother’s face. So she followed him into the soupy New England fog, running all the way to the spot on the beach where he sat mesmerized and sketched for all those hours this week. The wind was whipping. She was close enough to the water now to see churning water through the dense fog. “Come back now! This weather can be dangerous,” she told him, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the water. “I know you are upset, let's talk about it at the house but please come with me.” He looked up at her. “No mom, no! Look now,” he yelled, “do it now hold up my drawing and look, really look! Look how you used to look mom, stop ignoring them!” He shoved the drawing in her hand. In an effort to appease her now-outraged son, she held up the drawing. “Okay what now?” she asked. But as she said the words and looked up at the boy’s drawing, held out arms length over the churning sea and soupy fog, she saw it. She saw him, oh yes it was him, the him that her boy spoke of, it was a prehistoric thing, a thing that couldn't be but there it was, a thing like so many other things she glimpsed when she was a child all the way into her young adulthood, it was one of those things of the past, the ghosts that she sometimes caught a glimpse of, and it was rising above the ship, oh god, yes, the ship, and its light, and she thought wow, he really had nailed those lights, and then with that thought came the realization that she wasn't looking at the drawing anymore she was looking at the thing, the real thing from all those years ago. Her arms were down and the drawing lay limply in her hand and as she turned and looked at the boy briefly and then back up it was gone, just like that it was all soupy fog, and it was just like it was as she ran up the beach but it wasn't. She had seen it, she had seen the ghosts that haunted her in the most beautiful ways until she let them live again on paper, until she drew them in all their beautiful and important glory as she had all those years ago, and yes when did she stop listening and looking and… She looked down at the boy, whose eyes smiled with knowing love. And she smiled back at him, looking as she had at seven years old when she first started to hear the whispers from her friends, oh god yes her friends, because they were good they were the ghosts of all that was good in the world and yet they were gone but they could live on oh yes they could live on and her son saw them too and that was good, that was very good, because hadn’t she been going through the motions lately without any real spark? Hadn’t she felt just a little sadness when her son said he wanted to follow in her footsteps because yes oh yes the glory days of being young and drawing from imagination - which was not imagination at all a voice whispered from within her. But as she got older didn't it get sort of stale and poisoned by material need? She loved art yes and it suited her more than another day job would sure but did it feel the same? “No,” she answered aloud, not releasing that she was announcing her thoughts. “What?” he asked with a questioning look. “Nothing, I am just thinking about how I was lost and I am found now thanks to you. I see it and I saw it and you captured it more beautifully than I ever could have, especially at your age trust me. I am so proud of you. And to him for telling you to bring me back.” “He said there is something you can do for him now,” her son said, looking up into her eyes. “Draw him and his ship like you used to. Draw him and remember, and he said to shake off the rust, whatever that means. And this time, don't forget to listen to them after this one is done.” As he finished speaking she noticed an almost divine look of serenity in his face, a type of serenity that comes when a daunting task is successfully completed. And so she did. She would go on to create that piece, that beautiful plein-air that attempted to recreate an uncapturable moment. And didn't this answer the question that rattled in her mind as of late about why she wanted to be an artist, why she knew so certainly, just as her son knows, so certainly about what she wanted to do in life? Didn't her friends make her feel like she could do it, and not only that she could do it but that it was important and she simply needed to do it?