Mine is also a dad story, but my dad doesn’t have a great collection of objects. He’s one of those dads that’s not artistic. […] My mom and me will go to a museum, we love exploring, we love going into different exhibits, but when my dad comes along, inevitably, he spends about 10 minutes in the museum and then ends up sitting on a bench in the corner reading the rest of the time. He’s not really that into art, not really that into museums, but every year since I was a little kid my dad has given me a Valentine that he’s hand made. […] I think the first roommate I had [in college] found one I had just opened recently that was sitting on the side table, and she looked at it and said, “Oh, that’s so great! Whose kid drew you a card?” So that gives you an idea of my dad’s artistic talent. […] So I hadn’t really kept them, I had thought it’s just something that dad does. My dad has a heart problem, and about 10 years ago he went in for heart surgery. The way his heart works, his valve is not completely connected, so they had to put a porcine valve–a pig’s valve–onto his heart. Everything worked out, he came out okay. But lo and behold, a couple of months later approached Valentine’s Day, and I didn’t get a card in the mail. For the first time in my life I didn’t get a card from my dad, and I did get a frantic phone call instead. I pick up the phone and dad says: “Sarah: I think I lost the ability, I can’t do it anymore!” I said, “What are you talking about dad?” “I think the pork valve changed me!” […] He seems to have no artistic interest, but apparently this was something that really mattered to him. This was something he saw as his artistic talent. […] Not only does he draw the Valentine’s Day cards, but he writes limericks inside them. So for his birthday, [my sister and I] wrote a limerick in the invitation to his birthday to kind of spark his imagination and show him that we’re in solidarity, but nothing. But later that year, I got a Valentine’s Day card in December, and he called me and said, “I was wrong, maybe I was being a bit of an alarmist, I still have the talent.” Ever since then, I’ve saved the Valentine’s Day cards.

This belongs in the Museum of Hidden Talents

Exhibited by Sarah Crawford

Transcript edited by Serena Washington