When I was a child, my grandmother would take what she described as “the long, arduous trip” from England to visit our family in Canada each year. For those that know, this is roughly a six hour (often direct) flight. Because it was “so long”, she insisted on staying with us for several months at a time. She would bring along a suitcase full of all things wonderous…art supplies for her delicate water colour paintings, charcoal - paired with large, thick sketch paper, beautiful stationary with old-timey pens, and the most important item - Smarties. But not just any Smarties - proper UK Smarties (there’s a difference, I swear). Depending on where you grew up, these colourful, sugar-coated chocolates were all of the rage with great debates of whether you ate “the red ones last”.

As a child, my grandmother and I did not have the quintessential relationship that many grandmothers and grand children shared. In fact, we called her “grandmother” as opposed to Nana or Grandma or other names that conjure the image of softness. She kept mostly to herself, preferring to spend time alone, outside, and painting. The objects of her affection were usually the garden of flowers that my mother had lovingly planted, and on one occasion, much to my happiness - a small toad that happened upon a mirror left in the garden, utterly transfixed with it.

The one thing we did share was an unspoken language - the language of creative expression. Each night as I drifted off to meet magical creatures in different lands, my grandmother would mindfully enter my room and spend time crafting beautiful scenes on my dresser out of Smarties. Gardens, sunshine, moons and what I was convinced was pure magic; waking every morning more excited than the last. I later learned that she would wait with anticipation and discretely peek in to share in my joy (I also suspect that knowing my parents didn’t approve of the sugar kick first thing in the morning added a pinch of rebellion to the act). This provided her with some girlish glee (though, she’d never admit it) and so it was; our secret way of communicating.

As the years went by and I grew older, we found it increasingly difficult to communicate, no longer relying on our sugar filled notes. The teenage years being the most difficult, we rarely spoke. There was strong effort on my parents part to think of creative ways in which we could connect. We tried reading, painting, calligraphy, yet it would typically end in frustration on both sides, resulting in crumpled paper mounds of our failed attempts. One day, after becoming increasingly challenged by one another, I stomped up to my room in a particularly dramatic teenage huff. There I found a small piece of paper. I slowly unfolded it to find that my grandmother had taken one of our crumpled calligraphy practice sheets, and had transformed the thick swirls of black ink into a drawing of a toad. It reminded me of the toad in the mirror that I had so adored in my childhood. The next day I came home to find another small gift, this time the ink transformed into a bird, then a rose, a pine and so on. In these crumpled sheets of paper, it seemed we had found a small bit of magic and a new way to communicate. As was our way, we didn’t speak of it, and instead, silently softened our hearts towards one another.

Several years later, she was no longer able to travel to us as she had developed cancer. I never did learn where the cancer originated, but found it had metastasized to her bones. Though her relationships with those around her had been strained, we all loved her in our own way. It was particularly devastating when my father rushed to be by her side and to his country of origin, only to miss seeing her by mere moments. At the time, I found myself in my twenties, conflicted with the experiences, feelings, and grief that I held surrounding my grandmother. As well as not having properly communicated with her before she died.

Many years passed and I happened to stumble upon a box of old, carefully curated items. Then, I noticed it. I noticed them. Crumpled pieces of paper that held memories of childhood and an old, secret language. A bird, a pine, a rose, and of course, that small toad. I like to think that she was, again, trying to communicate. Now in my forties, having navigated many difficult paths of my own, I have come to see how her life experiences shaped the person she was, and I’ve been able to soften to the magic in the ways that she tried.

Sarah sprinkles intentional nods to loved ones, family traditions and personal ancestral wisdom onto her work. One is that of “crumpled paper” which represents her paternal grandmother. It also represents the real and complicated dynamics we can have within our families. We can hold many feelings at once; grief that we did not have the connection with a loved one we had hoped for, AND, depending on the dynamics, a softness for them as a family member. We can carry their legacy through many different means, including ones that aren’t necessarily traditional. This might look like showing love to our own growing families in a way that we would have preferred. It could also be incorporating the smaller traditions that we did enjoy and that helped to shape us. Sarah writes “For me, it looks like sending little notes to loved ones when I’m thinking of them, and once in awhile, seeing what I can create from a scribble or a small box of Smarties.”