Love Every Sandwich--tribute to (one of) my hero(es)

So, I want to start this blog by explaining the title. Let me introduce you to Benjie.

  So when I was fifteen I was interested in taking some private art classes. Through another lady in our group of Chinese exchange student host families, we were told of an "excellent art teacher", and my parents hopped on the info.
   When I got to meet her, her house was easy to spot out: it was the only one on the block (and in the city to my knowledge) that was lilac, green, sun yellow and rosy pink, with an equally bright mural on the fence, ceramic/pottery collaged little wall, and completed with a giant metal-wire lizard "climbing" up the wall of the house. And when I met the actual teacher, she seemed to match her house--she was a woman in her late fifties/sixties and had neon pink, spiked hair. My curiosity was peaked from the get-go, as you can imagine, and I knew I was in for a good art education. And thus began a relationship that has already branded its affect in my life forever, and an education that was much more than about art.
  Her studio itself was small--six students of any range of age or sex (we even had a hermaphrodite for a time) in a cozy room, adorned by pieces of art by the maestra, many of which were self portraits of herself...only completely bald, and other paintings which I deemed a little scarring for my innocent eyes and eventually learned to ignore. But the "Bald Benjie" paintings ever fascinated me.
   Now, before you judge Benjie for her dazzling 'do, (after all, what is a woman that age doing with a mane like that?) well, let me explain a bit and I think you might appreciate the next time you see some flaming locks interrupting your vista when you wander out in public. Benjie had been fighting breast cancer for some time, and naturally from the chemo, her hair fell out. Well, when it grew back, it emerged as a distasteful mousy color and one of Benjie's students was in beauty school and needed a willing volunteer to practice on. So, to make lemonade out of lemons, Benjie decided to mix things up. Hence the hair. During the terrible ordeal of cancer, she also needed something to do to distract her, hence her imaginative house.
    And so, for one night a week, I created art under Benjie's guiding hand, while also listening to the enlightening discussions that ranged from a smorgasbord of topics that generated between us all. One night, Benjie mentioned a little female student (who she'd probably met on one of her many school trips as a guest speaker) who made this lovely statement: "Enjoy every sandwich." What a wonderful tip. Think about it. Enjoying the details of life. And if anyone ever lived that three word sentence, it was Benjie. By the time I had met her, her doctors had told her she would be dead several months ago. But Benjie was a fighter. I can see her as the kind of person that upon hearing the diagnosis, gave that cancer the bird and said, "We'll see about that!" I never saw a more vibrant woman...both visually and personality-wise, and I think most of her students will say the same. My younger sister eventually began taking classes, and began to also blossom under her watchful eye. Even when I left for college, I would take a class or two from her when I came back because I loved her classes so much. But I don't think it was so much the class it was the woman herself.
     But her cancer came back a few years later. She still continued to teach as best as she could, until she got too sick to do that. A few weeks after entering the MTC, I received an e-mail from my sister, informing me that Benjie had passed away.
   And so, this blog really is a tribute to Benjie, a woman that is still impacting my life--because of her I am pursuing an art education degree. I have learned to not judge people with neon pink hair. And I am learning to enjoy and love each sandwich.