Friday, November 26, 2010
Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2002. Mattie was seven months old. In this picture, Peter was holding Mattie and the camera at the same time. Peter snapped a picture of Mattie looking through a mirror. It is hard to know what fascinated Mattie more.... the mirror or the flash from the camera. However, my bet was on the flash of light. Mattie was always intrigued by light, and in fact "light" was one of the very first words he learned to say. To me, Mattie's facial expression was priceless here, because it captured his curiosity and intrigue.
Quotes of the day (based on our trip to the National Gallery of Art today): Everything you can imagine is real. ~ Pablo Picasso AND Creativity takes courage. ~ Henri Matisse
The day after Thanksgiving was typically a special day in our home. It was the day that Peter and Mattie would work together to devise an incredible Christmas light show right outside in our common space. They selected that space so that others from our complex could enjoy the lights of the season. Over the years, the display got more complicated, and it evolved from just a couple of strings of lights, to a full blown holiday scene complete with mechanically moving reindeer, dogs, and snowmen. People would look forward to our displays each year and our neighbors would always come outside to take pictures of the scene, and also find a way to tell us how much they appreciated our efforts. Naturally last year, we were in NO mood to string together lights. There was no joy in our hearts, much less joy about the season. This year was not going to be any different..... well that was our thinking until this morning at 4am!
I woke up at 4am to a beeping sound and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Peter heard the sound as well, but was doing a pretty good job trying to tune it out and continued to sleep through it. Well that was until I woke him up fully. At 4:15am, Peter was walking around our second floor trying to place the sound, and deduced it was coming from Mattie's room. We have a carbon monoxide monitor that we always kept in Mattie's room, and the battery for this detector was running low and it began to beep. Peter located the monitor and started pulling batteries out of it, to make the noise stop. However, when he came back into our bedroom, he announced that this monitor beeping was a sign. Almost like a symbolic sign from Mattie, in which Mattie was reminding Peter that today was the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas lights need to go up. I am sure to the average reader, this sounds very contrived and far fetched. After all, how can a carbon monoxide monitor be giving us signals and messages from Mattie? Logically we know it was just happenstance that the batteries were running low, but when you lose a major part of your life, such as the death of a child, you begin to focus your attention on outside forces and signals. So really who is to say that Mattie wasn't communicating with us today? This is where science fails us, and where faith and belief take over. There is no real understanding of the after life and our connections to it, and therefore, I feel if it gives those of us who are grieving peace to think that a sign from nature or even a noise from a carbon monoxide monitor is connecting us to Mattie, I say, GREAT!
When I finally woke up this morning, I couldn't find Peter. That was because he was already up and outside stringing lights. He has decorated our balcony and our deck, but has not decorated the common space, like he typically would do with Mattie. Needless to say, I think the lights were put up this year for a different reason. They are NOT symbolic of the holidays per se, and they are NOT symbolic of our joy and happiness. Instead, they are symbolic of a love between and father and a son, and the tradition they established together over the years. They may not be able to do this together, but the tradition and the memories are very much alive.
Since Thanksgiving was a very challenging day for me, and Peter predicted that it was going to be, he had brainstormed with me earlier in the week how we could spend the day after Thanksgiving. He suggested we do something I wanted to do. So today we went to the National Gallery of Art and saw the "Impressionism to Modernism" exhibit. It was a cold, windy, and rainy day in Washington, DC, however, I felt like walking to the museum. I did not want to be trapped in a Metro or taxi. Understand though that this meant we needed to walk two miles to the museum and two miles back. Along our walk, we passed the National Christmas tree twice. A place we took Mattie to several times!
The "Impressionism to Modernism" exhibit was part of the Chester Dale Collection. Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962 included a generous endowment as well as one of America's most important collections of French painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This special exhibition, the first in 45 years to explore the extraordinary legacy left to the nation by this passionate collector, features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. As some of you may recall in January of 2011, I will be going into Donna Ryan's kindergarten classroom, at Mattie's school, to do a three part series on Matisse and Picasso. So when I saw some of their works today, we snapped pictures. Below are just four of the wonderful paintings we saw today.
I woke up at 4am to a beeping sound and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Peter heard the sound as well, but was doing a pretty good job trying to tune it out and continued to sleep through it. Well that was until I woke him up fully. At 4:15am, Peter was walking around our second floor trying to place the sound, and deduced it was coming from Mattie's room. We have a carbon monoxide monitor that we always kept in Mattie's room, and the battery for this detector was running low and it began to beep. Peter located the monitor and started pulling batteries out of it, to make the noise stop. However, when he came back into our bedroom, he announced that this monitor beeping was a sign. Almost like a symbolic sign from Mattie, in which Mattie was reminding Peter that today was the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas lights need to go up. I am sure to the average reader, this sounds very contrived and far fetched. After all, how can a carbon monoxide monitor be giving us signals and messages from Mattie? Logically we know it was just happenstance that the batteries were running low, but when you lose a major part of your life, such as the death of a child, you begin to focus your attention on outside forces and signals. So really who is to say that Mattie wasn't communicating with us today? This is where science fails us, and where faith and belief take over. There is no real understanding of the after life and our connections to it, and therefore, I feel if it gives those of us who are grieving peace to think that a sign from nature or even a noise from a carbon monoxide monitor is connecting us to Mattie, I say, GREAT!
When I finally woke up this morning, I couldn't find Peter. That was because he was already up and outside stringing lights. He has decorated our balcony and our deck, but has not decorated the common space, like he typically would do with Mattie. Needless to say, I think the lights were put up this year for a different reason. They are NOT symbolic of the holidays per se, and they are NOT symbolic of our joy and happiness. Instead, they are symbolic of a love between and father and a son, and the tradition they established together over the years. They may not be able to do this together, but the tradition and the memories are very much alive.
Since Thanksgiving was a very challenging day for me, and Peter predicted that it was going to be, he had brainstormed with me earlier in the week how we could spend the day after Thanksgiving. He suggested we do something I wanted to do. So today we went to the National Gallery of Art and saw the "Impressionism to Modernism" exhibit. It was a cold, windy, and rainy day in Washington, DC, however, I felt like walking to the museum. I did not want to be trapped in a Metro or taxi. Understand though that this meant we needed to walk two miles to the museum and two miles back. Along our walk, we passed the National Christmas tree twice. A place we took Mattie to several times!
The "Impressionism to Modernism" exhibit was part of the Chester Dale Collection. Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962 included a generous endowment as well as one of America's most important collections of French painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This special exhibition, the first in 45 years to explore the extraordinary legacy left to the nation by this passionate collector, features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. As some of you may recall in January of 2011, I will be going into Donna Ryan's kindergarten classroom, at Mattie's school, to do a three part series on Matisse and Picasso. So when I saw some of their works today, we snapped pictures. Below are just four of the wonderful paintings we saw today.
Still Life with Apples on a Pink Tablecloth by Henri MatisseThe picture doesn't do this painting justice. The colors are vibrant and the patterned wallpaper in the backdrop seems to be an extension of the table. The contrasts in colors were remarkable and the pitcher on the table seemed to be glimmering and reflecting light.
Still Life by Pablo Picasso Picasso was considered the father of cubism. Cubism is a technique that
is characterized by a separation of the subject into cubes and other geometric forms in abstract arrangements rather than by a realistic representation. In addition, cubism depicts human figures from several viewpoints. So in many of Picasso's paintings, you may see the subject's face from various angles, in that you will see the person's eyes, ears, and even back of his head!
The Houses of Parliament, Sunset by Claude Monet
Monet was by far my favorite Impressionist painter. Chester Dale also shared my love for this incredible artist. Monet had a way of capturing objects and people as a snapshot in time. Monet could paint the same scene over and over, and each time his final product would look different. The key element was light. His gift for understanding light and color were remarkable and continue to capture the hearts and imaginations of his viewers.
Karen, my lifetime friend, once joked with me that she visited a museum and saw me there. What she was referring to was Renoir's painting of this little girl with a hoop. I may not look like this little girl now, but when I was much younger the resemblance was uncanny. So I can't look at this painting without thinking about Karen's comment.
When we got back home today after walking back from the museum, I was cold, and needed to change into warm clothes. While upstairs, I could hear Peter outside on our deck and he wanted me to come downstairs to see something. I had NO idea what was in store for me when he opened the door. There was this fuzzy black thing just sitting there. Frankly it looked like the end of a cat's tail or one of Patches' cat toys. But it WASN'T! Peter told me it was some type of caterpillar!
Folklore of the eastern United States and Canada holds that the relative amounts of brown and black on the skin of a woolly bear caterpillar (commonly abundant in the fall) are an indication of the severity of the coming winter. It is believed that if a woolly bear caterpillar's brown stripe is thick, the winter weather will be mild and if the brown stripes are narrow (LIKE THIS FELLOW), the winter will be severe. In reality, hatchlings from the same clutch of eggs can display considerable variation in their color distribution, and the brown band tends to grow with age; if there is any truth to the aphorism, it is highly speculative.We have lived in our current location for over 15 years and in all the time we have been here we have NEVER seen a woolly bear caterpillar. Peter joked with me that Mattie sent us this BIG creepy crawler to capture our attention outside and to tell us that he approved of the Christmas lights. So perhaps Mattie was with us in spirit after all today?!
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