This morning, I joined a Write Around the World class with the Amherst Writers & Artists community. I wrote the essay that follows with the first prompt we received: A Gift.

When I do writing practice on my own or in groups, I never know what’s going to emerge, but it’s always magic. This time, what emerged is a segue to plug the grand opening of my friend’s studio and to lift a pen to this AWA community (check them out).

This short piece (tightened a bit from the free write) is about a gift my friend gave me. And a little more.

The Gift Basket

It was my 24^th birthday. I was already in grad school and had accumulated and discarded many gifts over the course of two decades. Forgotten most. But even now, four decades later, I remember this gift. A gift basket.

My former college roommate drove from New Orleans to celebrate my birthday with me. She gave me a basket filled with a variety of things, wine, crackers, and cheese. I bet there were also bath salts and candles. The contents of the basket are a little foggy now, but I remember the basket. I think I still have the basket.

After graduating, this friend and I went separate ways for about four decades. I lost myself in grad school, marriage, children, and teaching. Everything but writing. Career and relations led my friend from New Orleans to Miami and then to Atlanta.

She nearly died in Atlanta. Brain and blood and clots. When she returned home from the hospital, I visited her to give her husband a break. What I discovered on that first visit to Atlanta was her art. I had no idea. She had started painting during our years apart and she was talented.

“I was an art major for a minute,” I told her.

She remembered.

While I had been choking my inner artist on decades of literary theory, second-language acquisition pedagogy, family, and freelance gigs, she had been nurturing her inner artist with classes, paints, and canvases, stealing away in the evenings to sketch and paint.

After she recovered from her brain incident, it became apparent that her husband was a disaster. Instead of visiting her, I should have helped her give him the boot.

After she packed her paints and canvasses and moved out, our conversations over the phone shifted from relationships to art and writing. I had started to let my inner writer out for sunshine and play. We talked for hours about what fuels our crafts, our inner creators, our words and art. We found ourselves at this beautiful intersection in our different creative paths, discovered that the same things that lit up my writer also inspired her artist and vice versa.

I still wonder how I lived with her for more than two years in college and never knew her creative talents.

When she returned to Louisiana two years ago, she moved some of her things into my home on the farm where I spend one to two weeks of the month. We both live there part time to find solace, to create, to spend time outdoors, to let our inner artists breathe.

Back to that basket. Now I know that she did all of it herself. Not just the unique collection of items that filled it, but also the blue and white floral lining and matching gingham ribbon. If she didn’t sew those herself, she could have. I’m learning first-hand the depth and breadth of her talents, from gift baskets, appointing rooms, and sewing to making stunning works of art.

She probably doesn’t know it, but she gave me my first gift basket. And probably the best.

Grand Opening

Silly me, right? Thinking I would write my way around the world but stalling, sitting on my pen and paper for four decades waiting for a chance. All the while my friend was carving out chances of time to create her own universe through color and shape. When we compare ourselves to others, it can be hard to square that we come into our full creative selves from different directions and angles, at different ages and stages.

The beautiful thing for me about this friendship is we’re both thriving now. We arrived separately but shared part of the journey.

If you’re one of my local readers, come to her grand opening. There will be art, live music, food and refreshments (including my sangría), but most importantly, a celebration of the fruits of a creative life.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserve. 2025