This Gift

I can see her.  Every hair in place in a grey French twist.  She was the epitome of elegance.  She was slender, always wearing heals even with the miles we walked through museums.  She had a way of enunciating every single syllable that drifted from her lips.  Her hands seemed to announce every word as if she was directing the syllables to dance to her tune.

The art she described captivated me solely due to her passion.  We travelled through hundreds of years of the French masters together.  I could see things about artists that were not painted.  I could sense their purpose.  We arrived at Impressionism and I felt I had come home.  Although thousands of miles away from my family, I could remember the times standing in front of these masters at our local museum.  It was my mom and I then.  We were ridiculously inept but we knew what we loved.  Now I stood learning why I loved them, why they spoke to my sould.

These men and women, the masters of the movement created something that had never been done before.  They did not paint people or things but how light and shade affected their subjects.  The theme was never the focus, it was the effect, the impression, the elegant interaction of the sun with its partner, its friend or flower.

She would take the French word for “impression” and pronounce every single sound until we could repeat it perfectly.  It seemed essential to her.  It became essential to me.  The impression, the thing that lasts, the thing that rests in the mind and the heart after we see or feel or taste.

I found myself all these years later handling masterpieces but photos.  This room where I now keep my memories.  Frames that tell a story in picture instead of paint.  My youngest daughter now filling our storage box before the painter would arrive in the morning to freshen our walls.    Ava grabbed the tiniest of frames and studied it.

She didn’t ask who it was but her eyes told me she was curious.  I told her that was my mom holding her brother.  I remember this photo.  Mom was not well enough to be at the hospital when my second son was born.  She was not well enough to visit him or welcome him to our home.  She could not help me as I adjusted to two little boys.  I remember how my heart ached for her presence.  Several days into his new life we packed up and went to see her.  She was weak.  Her arms and legs were now failing her.  

Her hair that had been professionally styled for years lay straight on her shoulders.  Her smile though unaffected and brilliant.  Her newest grandson, her delight.

I tried to hand him to her.  Even seven small pounds were too much.  I propped pillows on her lap and prayed this tiny little bundle would stay still enough for her to drink him in.

She looked at him and called him perfect.  His tiny nose and little ears.  She marveled at him.  It was just minutes, long enough for this single photo, the only one I have of the two of them.  She would not see his first birthday.

I began to tell Ava how much she loved us and how much she would have loved her.  “She was wonderful,” I said and before I could think, I whispered, “I wish you would have known her.”

Ava looked at me silently with a sadness that rarely graces her face.  I wanted to somehow make it up to her.  I told her knowing me was a bit like knowing Grandma.  As if she knew she had to break the tension, a tiny smile perked one side of her lips.  She asked in the most hushed of tones, “Mama, was Grandma as goofy as you?”   She roared with laughter.  I did too.  It caught me off guard but served as the perfect balm to my soul. 

“Goofy.”  I let that word roll around in my mind.  The sadness rushed away and the realization wandered in that this is the impression I have made on my daughter.

It seemed ill fit and perfect all at the same time.  I spend so much of my life on serious, hard thoughts.  People hurting so deeply.  Prayers spoken so often.  But somewhere in between the reflections of hard, at least for my littlest girl joy has been built.

This is not something I have done or earned or decided.  It is a gift the Holy Spirit sent that one of my children can see something passed what is present to what is providence.

The working mom that struggles with guilt, the clock that seems to never compromise, the chores that seem to choke, perhaps somewhere in this work worship has been born.

This gift.  This is Jesus at work.  Allowing joy out of sadness, beauty out of ashes, oaks of righteousness out of saplings of doubt and insecurity. 

This is the impression Jesus leaves on the weary soul.   It is light reflecting off the heart that hopes.  It is glory.