Bamboo Mural in Progress

The high ceilings of our Guanajuato house are intimidating! What to do with all the looming walls? Last winter my friend Jenny, who paints, tiles, and does other aesthetic improvements (the words for which I don't even know) helped me paint two arches on one of the walls of the back bedroom. They filled the wall and transformed the room. This season, I was ready to work on the wall above the steps leading from the first to second floor. What to paint, though?

"Bamboos are easy," my mentor advised.

Unlike Jenny, I never assume a mural will be easy, but she was right. She painted the terra cotta pot and a few reeds, and soon we were floating in leaves of all shades of green, with yellow for variety. More density to come, but it already feels like a patch of garden right in our urban home.

"Stop!" I yell when a few drops of acrylic dribble down the wall. "Stop, you!" I grab a paper towel to stanch it. Jenny laughs. "It's only paint," she reminds me. She's fearless. As for me, the fact that an object is, in theory, inanimate, has never stopped me from yelling at it if it's not behaving. (Many a rant I have had with bicycles, walls, paint).

Sometimes we paint for an hour or two; other times, on my own, I take a break from another activity and perch on the staircase, adding a leaf here, a leaf there. We still haven't figured out how we'll reach the highest parts.

I would never have thought of painting a mural in our home in the States. There's a well-known muralist in Eureka who teams with at-risk kids to create community murals. A worthy challenge, but the murals look so complex and intricate, far beyond my lowly abilities. Yet here in Mexico, anything is possible. How I could have known I'd become a mural painter?