We are in her
house in Dallas. Sesame Street plays on
the television I am supposed to be watching.
But instead, I watch her, specifically her hands. She grips her new, clean easel, finagling its
three legs in different positions until it stands independently. She extends her arms, pinching her thumbs and
middle fingers on the top corners of a recently gesso-ed and pencil-detailed
canvas, lifting and setting it down gently to rest on the easel. Her soft,
peachy hands reach into an off-white fabric and brown leather-lined painter's
bag resting on a table next to her and pull out 1 larger and 1 smaller plastic
paint tube. She sets the smaller one
down, carefully unscrews the larger one and gently squeezes about a tablespoon
of its bright white contents a bit off-center on , what at the time seems, an
oddly shaped, somewhat rounded wood plate.
She screws the top back on, puts it down, picks up the smaller tube,
unscrews it and applies even more controlled pressure to the tube, causing a smaller
teaspoon size deep cobalt-colored mound to ooze out. She screws the top back on and puts it back
down. Next, she reaches into the bag for her brushes, lots of them, different
shapes and sizes that she gathers up in one hand and places vertically on a
table, releasing as if they were pick-up sticks to fall and spread
haphazardly on the table's surface. The
bristles are clean, but the handles are splattered with layers and layers of
her past paintings - blues in pastel shades are most noticeable, but there is a
speck of white here, a smear of pink or red there. And when ready, she selects a brush, dips it
into the smaller splotch on her palate and pulls the now bristle-blue bulb
toward the center where it meets the dollop of bright white. She mixes the two colors together, blending
them until they are no longer deep sky and ice, but instead a perfect Caribbean
Sea.
We are in a quiet hospital room, and my grandmother is unconscious, peaceful, and dying.
She lives for two days like this after I arrive. Neither my mother nor I leave
the hospital these oddly endless, urgent, blurry forty-eight hours. We spend the time in a quiet rhythm: me
sleeping while my mother keeps watch and then the reverse. Most of my awake time is spent holding and
looking at my grandmother's hands.
 |
| One of My Grandmother's Paintings |
I have always
been moved by Psalm 90, its honesty, its intentionality, its yearning, its
hope. In acknowledging the limits of
life and the struggles we all experience, the Psalm asks the Divine to teach us
mindfulness, perspective and compassion.
The Psalm concludes that we find purpose in life when we can recognize
the Holy, the Divine around us. And ultimately, life extends beyond the finite
bounds of days and years when our lives
and legacies are remembered and lived out in those who live on after us. The
Psalmist expresses this idea so beautifully in the last verse: "Establish the work of our hands that it
may long endure."[i]
My son loved my
grandmother, his great-grandmother. He
inherited much of her creativity and talent, demonstrating a real artistic gift
very early on in his life. Now, at the
age of five and a half, if there is down-time, he spends it creating:
sculptures, drawings, and most often paintings.
We are in our home in Deerfield. The water
is pouring over the dishes I am supposed to be washing, but instead, I am
watching him. He is determined to create
something "really special, like Nani used to do" he says. He reaches into his plastic art supply box to
set up the palette, acrylic paints, "fancy" brushes, and canvas he
received for his birthday. Then, he
reaches along-side a book shelf, in the space between the shelf and the wall. It takes a little coaxing to set up since it
hasn't been opened in many years, squeaking and creaking as he pulls each leg
out so it can stand balanced. The top is
still very clean, but the ridge along which the canvas rests is covered in
paint. Layers and layers of paint - blues in pastel shades are most noticeable,
but there is a speck of white here, a smear of pink or red there. It is like a yet-to-be excavated site of the
countless layers of works of art my grandmother painted on canvases that rested
on this same easel. My son places his
blank canvas on my grandmother's easel, selects a brush, dips it into a deep
shade of blue, pulling up a substantial glob. And then what I see and my son
does not is that as he lifts his brush to the canvas and begins to paint, a
drop of azure from his brush falls to the bottom of the canvas and drips
onto the ridge, adding his own layer, his own imprint, onto the foundations of
history and story and love that sit beneath.
May Your Work be visible to Your servants, and Your Glory
to their children. And let the beauty of the Divine be upon us; establish the
work of our hands that it may long endure. Psalm 90:15-16
