Colors

I'm like a rock when I hear bad news. I wish I could just mourn something totally when it happens and then be done. Unfortunately, the truth is that my feelings are somehow numbed as if under Novocaine and after time, as the agent wears off, I am susceptible to the truth of life's circumstances. Sometimes out of nowhere.

My mom was an artist. Not a famous artist but she could hold her own at the Steel Days Art competition. She managed a few honorable mentions and second places and hob nobbed with some of the greats in oil painting. Like most of us, my Mom was a complicated woman. She was a worrier, frazzled, needy, and had a horrible temper. At the same time she was sweet, sensitive, funny, and wonderful. She was happiest on a swivel chair with an array of oil paint colors smudged out on a palate. The brush would dance, grab colors from the palate and then transfer Mom's vision onto the canvas. I hated the smell of turpentine used to thin the oil paints. I would hide in another room with a sore scratchy throat when the chemicals came out. But I did so love the peace and serenity in my mom that only the oils and brushes seemed bring to the surface.

Here is a picture she painted and gave me. It's a picture of the roses that grew out by the driveway at my home in Highland. Mom always said that a good oil painting would look like a mess up close and gorgeous from far away. I have an untrained eye for paintings so I'm not sure if this picture represents her best but it is my favorite of her paintings.

Yesterday Nicky was playing with paints and asked me which colors when mixed would make new colors. So we started mixing and I explained and then suddenly it felt like my tears might fall and mix right in with the colors. We'd made a little palate on paper! I didn't let myself cry but memories of turpentine, easels, my bleach blond mother, and the haunting reality that she's not herself crowded my thoughts. The colors suddenly seemed sad because they keep existing when the one that loved them so is missing.

I suppose these mother/daughter coloring sessions between Nicky and I when Andy is napping remind me of the times I painted with my mom. I don't remember doing side by sides in a coloring book like I do with Nicky. That would have been too amateur for her.

One of our works was this doll. I entered it in the 4th grade Reflections Contest. I won. I'm hoping the girl in the picture is supposed to be doll given she has a scary trance like gaze. Anyway, I think I may have painted the sky. It is the only part of the picture that represents what I could actually do left to my own devices, even now. The rest of the picture was given a generous dose of helping from Mom. I always felt guilty for accepting the award. Even now I wish there was someone I could call and have my ribbon stripped from me. However, I don't sit and think about how my mom was a little insecure and wanted to live vicariously through a "talented" daughter. I try not to imagine that my mom was disappointed when she eventually found I wasn't as talented as she. All I can think about and want to know is simply what we talked about while we painted. As wondrous as a brain is, mine can't recall what we said and what we giggled about any better than her brain, riddled with disease could. For some reason I mourn the memory I can't locate.

Mom still draws when given crayons, pens, or pencils. Though the things she comes up with like this little bear with earmuffs and the cat with a snail lollipop are a little strangish. Still it shows that the last thing that will ever go for her will be her desire to move images from her mind to paper.

My kids love to color and paint. I don't know if they will ever be great painters or make their grandma proud by "winning" a Reflections contest. For some reason it was not meant to be that my kids would ever know my mother. But I like to think that somehow we can always remember her when the colors come out. The colors remind me that there is room for forgiving, missing, and loving someone who is far away even when they left with imperfections. Just as colors are so varied and unique when mixed up on a palate, so were the many facets of of my mother's personality and life.