Read All the Waters of the Earth (Giving You ... #3) for Free Online

professor had booked me as a model for the whole eight weeks. I’d arranged for babysitting for Rob during the times that the class met when I had him on the weekends, but today I was free to do whatever I wanted because he was with his dad.
    The huge, airy room had an empty space located in the center of the room for the model to pose, circled by easels staggered all around. Every art student would have a different view and be drawing from a different angle. I’d been to this classroom before, so after I chatted with the professor, I headed to a small room off to the side to undress and wait until it was time for me to model. I always brought a white, waffle pattern robe to wear.
    Even though I’d done this before, I felt a familiar sense of nervousness and anticipation about the public nudity that this job required. In some ways, having dozens of pairs of eyes on me was nerve-racking. But in other ways, I felt incredibly liberated when I modeled.  Free. There I’d be, standing before them, naked as a baby, allowing them to look at me, to record me.
    Art students trained their hands to record what their eyes saw. They focused on lines and curves, on spatial arrangements and on proportion. They didn’t really see me as a person, but as an object to draw with pencil or charcoal. A beautiful object, perhaps, and one with the flaws of humanity. But still, it did not feel personal. I felt separate from them.
    Normally, the class would do a series of quick sketches while I held various positions for as long as I could. Projects might be to draw the inside of me, the weight, not focusing on the outer lines. Other times, the professor would have them draw my movement, in scribbled lines.
    And sometimes I’d recline or sit on a chair and stay still, often with my eyes closed, while they drew me for lengthy periods of time.  The professor had requested this work today.
    Again, I felt a freedom and a beauty being part of this process. I rarely saw the finished products, although occasionally the students would show me. I’d experienced every emotion in seeing myself as a nude, from gasping at how accurately they captured me, to cringing at the focus on a flaw, to trying not to laugh at particularly amateur art. But still, it was lovely to see people engage in creativity.
    It was important to me to create something or assist in the creation of something that did not exist before it came out of me, whether it was a phrase on a page, or here, as the subject of a drawing or a later painting. If I really thought about it, all of nature is creating all of the time—children are growing inside women’s wombs, plants are dividing cells and creating new growth, and mountains are being built up, as in the lava in Hawaii, or eroded down. All around us are creations.  Allowing the artistic process, without judgment, without critique, to me, was essential to the experience of being human.
    While I waited in the anteroom, wearing my white robe, I heard the class file in and get settled. After a few minutes of instruction by the professor, she came over and opened the door.
    Walking to the center of the room, my eyes down, I stood in front of the students, and took off my robe, draping it on the chair that was now in the center. Then I sat down sideways in the chair, twisting elegantly in the seat so that my front pressed up against the back of the chair, my knees were together, my legs bent, my toes pointed and together. I rested my arms on the back of the chair and set my head in my hands. And then I held this position, letting them draw the curves of my spine, the hourglass of my waist, the flesh of my ass.
    After a long time, the professor asked me to get into a different position, and I adjusted my body, spinning the other way in the seat, staggering my legs as they curled off to the opposite side, resting my face in the crook of my elbow. I tried to concentrate on breathing, on elongating my spine, on staying still.
    The thoughts