Zap & Pow
“Zap became for me this wonderful metaphor for the beauty that rests in vulnerability.”
– Elizabeth mathis cheatham
zap
cathy lewis
I fell in love the moment I saw him… this sweet little boy who had had a hard day. Mask pushed up above his eyes, head down, hands in pockets—his face and stance proof that taking on the world is sometimes exhausting and often discouraging. I knew those emotions personally and had seen them in my boys when they let down their guards… I loved them more for having shared that part of themselves with me.
Yet, my response to Zap was not shared by all. Some said, “He just looks so sad…Don’t you find him a bit depressing?” And, when my husband surprised me on my birthday by saying Zap would arrive in a couple weeks, I was not shocked when over Christmas he announced that Pow, a more uplifting and victorious little boy, would be joining Zap in our collection. “I just don’t want him to discourage our boys,” he said. I smiled and said thank you, teasing him that Pow was more his gift than mine, thrilled to have both of Cathy Lewis’ works, and began to wonder if we would have even had this conversation had the sculpture of Zap been of a little girl.
POW
Cathy Lewis
Child in Straw Hat, 1886
Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926)
If I had lived in another time and fallen in love with Mary Cassatt’s Child in a Straw Hat, would anyone have tried to deter me from buying her? Or would they have said, “Oh, what a pretty little girl,” not even thinking twice of the melancholy painted on her face?
It has been my experience that while sadness is an emotion we have deemed acceptable amongst girls (anger—now that is another article), there has been very little space made for that emotion in boys. Instead, they are taught to stand tall, chest puffed, muscles flexed… mask in place no matter what. True “Pows” ready to take on the world.
After seeing him for the first time in Miami, Zap became for me this wonderful metaphor for the beauty that rests in vulnerability. The acceptance of all of ourselves and our emotions… a reminder to my boys (and their parents) that there is room in life for all our emotions and that bravery is sometimes admitting that we are struggling or just need a little break from superhero-ing.