Shaped by Memories

Age 58

…try to hold the smallest memories as close as you can. They will never leave you.

For some reason, I think of my childhood:

Long blonde hair, birds chirping and hopping from branch to branch
Easter Sunday, dress and hat, white cotton gloves, Easter eggs
Green summer grass, bumblebees and dragonflies which we used to call ‘sewing needles'.
Laying in the sunshine with my faithful dog Velvet.
A plaid jumper with white socks
Little red leather shoes with a strap and buckle
Cream colored corduroys
My mother's Kitchen apron
Apple pies, making strawberry jam, picnics and lemonade
Summer on our farm, chicken coop, egg route, bicycles.
My father's pick-up truck, bales of hay, bushels of apples
Holidays, grandparents, great grandparents and all the cousins
Piles of leaves to jump in in fall,
Fires to build on autumn nights
Ice skating on Kovacs' pond
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Sunday Mass.
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I've decided that childhood shapes us all, maybe more than we know. I recollect shards of memories that I think have shaped my vision of life, and definitely that of my work. I often think of my grandmother who was the one who introduced me to the world of art. She had a love of life that was infectious and I was lucky enough to spend so much of my young life with her. She was an artist and I remember her house where she would always be in a blue smock with paint splattered on it, and in her studio were always cans and jars of potions and brushes, and at least a couple of easels with different works on each one. I loved the delicious smell of the turpentine and the oil paints which I love to this day, and it was fascinating looking at the little piles of glossy colors arranged on a piece of glass that you could mix up with a gleaming palette knife.

She loved the beach as much as I did and because my mother didn't like the sand, I often went with my grandmother and spent days at a time having more fun with her than anyone. There were no kids in my neighborhood and my sister and brother were not yet born, so I got all the attention from everyone. And of course soaked it in.

In summer we would go to the beach and she would put her chair at the edge of the water so the salt water waves would lap over her feet and legs while she sat in a wide-rimmed straw hat and I examined horseshoe crabs in the tidal pools. She had gorgeous sunkissed olive skin with very fine and delicate wrinkles which I thought were beautiful. She always gave me some coins so I could buy candy up at the little shack on Southport Beach, Sugar Babies or a candy necklace, next to the white wooden lifeguard chair with a red cross painted on it. Afterwords we sometimes went to Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone which was almost bigger than I was.

She would take me bowling, roller skating or antiquing, and sometimes she'd have a couple of the girls over and they would play penny poker at the kitchen table on a summer evening. Sometimes if the day was too gray for sunbathing we would go and buy minnows and she would teach me how to hook them in a woven pattern to bait the hook on the end of the bamboo poles she had and we'd fish off the jetties.

At Christmastime she would come up and we would walk past the no trespassing signs into the woods of the reservoir so that we could pick something called Princess Pine which she made sound very mysterious and said it was illegal to pick so we should whisper but that it was beautiful for decorating. Sometimes she would come to church with us on Sunday mornings, and she would look at me when the pulpit was silent and I would look at her and we would start giggling uncontrollably when we were supposed to be quiet and my mother would shoot electric darts out of her eyes looking at us and pinch me as hard as she could. My grandmother loved laughing and had twinkling eyes and she always called me "Doll" and I loved her more than anyone almost.

At the age of 14 she enrolled me in the Covino Academy of Art which was then based in Fairfield, Connecticut. Frank Covino was a handsome 30-year-old graduate of the Pratt Institute and painted like the old Italian Masters. I remember we took a trip on the bus one day with Frank to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I had never seen such a place. I remember standing in front of the painting of Juan de Pareja by Velasquez as Frank lectured on it. I believe I just stood there with my mouth open in total awe as I grappled with what I was seeing, the dazzling brushwork and luminous layers of chiaroscuro that someone, somewhere, in some far away remote time in the past, had created: someone who had lived and was once alive, and it produced a feeling of incomparable holiness that washed over me which I never forgot.

Each time I go back to the Met I still walk up the giant staircase to that room on the second floor where that portrait still hangs.

I think of this, and then I think now that I am approaching the age when my grandmother meant so much in my life. She died when I was 18 years old at the age of 69, far too early for such a vivacious spirit. But the memories I have of her have influenced me in countless ways and touch me still very deeply. I learned from my time with her that one of the most important things in life is to cherish the little times that maybe don't seem significant, but when you love and are loved by a person, try to hold the smallest memories as close as you can. They will never leave you.

As The Beatles said ....

"And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love
You make. "