Results tagged “Mother's Day”

The following piece is on display at Visionary Growth Gallery from 05-09-10 to 06-27-10. The text with the pictures accompanied the painting at the gallery. Click on the pictures for a much larger view. There are links at the bottom of the post to another entry about my mother from last year, a Flickr set of pictures from the opening, an article (added 05-13-10) in the Athens Banner Herald about the show, and a bit (added 05-20-10) from the Art Notes column in the Flagpole.

BARBARA

Barbara Jean Sutton used to sit in the morning before the place was awake. A moment to herself with a crossword and the first cup of coffee. I watched her when I was a kid.

On the phone she used to draw flowers. Pointed oval petals in a circle radiating out. Dark dark Bic-blue lines traced over and over into the paper as she talked.

Those flowers would end up on grocery lists. I still remember her handwriting. We all do.

Some people remember smells or sounds or the whens and the wheres of what happened. Some people remember sentences and events.

I remember the crossword puzzles, the doodles, and the grocery lists.

Paper.

I remember the things that happened on paper.

Well, that and the way she used to pet a frail boy's head when he'd lay it in her lap.

Hmm.

Happy Mother's Day Barbara...

THANK YOU

Additional Information:

• For more information about my mother, read my post from last year on Mother's Day.
• For pictures from the opening at Visionary Growth Gallery go to this Flickr set.
• For more information about the show, read the article in the March 13th issue of the Athens Banner Herald.
• For a review of the show by Brian Hitselberger read the May 19th edition of Art Notes in the Flagpole.

Thirty-five years ago a woman died to bring me into the world.

The way I'm told it, the doctor, very deadpan, very bedside mannered, said to my father,
"It's a boy. You're wife is dead."

And the story goes that my father crumbled. Fell. Passed out on the floor in the waiting room of a hospital in Virginia at the end of March. His body had shut down, and rightfully so, in the face of such news.

It's a boy.
Your wife is dead.
Too much.

It was half-past three in the morning.

I often wonder what the exact scene was.
I imagine cigars spilling out of his pocket and onto a colorless but shining linoleum floor. I imagine people rushing to catch him, too late, and the drawn out thud of dead weight collapsing. A sound that doesn't echo and somehow doesn't go away.

I've never been able to imagine the scene in the hospital room. I've always centered my imagination of the collapse of my father. (My mother tells a side of what happened to her while this was all going on. Maybe someday I'll tell it, if I happen to talk about seeing the first Star Wars movie.)

The only time my attention turns to the hospital room is when the story takes it's next turn.

I'm told there was a young doctor. He was new to the business of medicine, unfriendly to the idea of death. Full of hope, and unwilling to give up, he kept pushing, kept doing what doctors do.

However long it took,
no matter what,

and brought her back.

The story goes that by the time my father came to, my mother was back in the world.

Today is Mother's Day.
I'm telling this story to say thanks.
Thanks Mom.

And not just for that one thing, for all the things along the way. All the grocery trips and the stretched dollars. All the calm in all those storms. All the wisdom and all the fun. Thanks for bringing me in.

And thanks for coming back.

I love you.