Good

Good Afternoon, 12 x 16", watercolor/pastel on paper mounted on board

    At last year's Easter Vigil I was reading from the Book of Genesis, how God created each new day and after laboring proclaimed the resulting fruit of that labor to be good.  For some reason, this word struck me powerfully. Good, Good! Such a good word! Later, in the summer, when Chris Brannock initiated an art group structured around words the group selected, I knew my word offering would be good. 

     As summer eased into autumn, my uncle loosed his grip on life and died, to the day, one month shy of his 89th birthday. Family and friends, colleagues and former patients gathered in West Virginia to celebrate his life. At his service we heard reflection remembrances from his wife and each of his five children. Each told of a particular gift that their husband/father brought into their life and into the world. In the afternoon after the service we went to the family farm where my uncle had planted an apple orchard. The day was warm and golden as we were just on the cusp of autumn. Already primed by the words of my aunt and cousins, I knew that I was experiencing good in its sense from the very beginning.
     Uncle Walt, early on knew what he wanted and he stayed true to that early knowledge. From his tiny town in West Virginia he set off to Cambridge, MA (apparently with his guitar on his back). Though his undergraduate and medical degree were from Harvard and he served the Army Medical Corp in Italy, Uncle Walt chose to return to West Virginia (also with his guitar on his back), to be a surgeon to coal miners and their families. I looked around at my cousins and their children as they plucked apples and walked among the trees their father/grandfather planted. How very good and pleasant! From this firmly rooted foundation generations have established their own good lives.

Schubert's String Quintet in C Major, Adagio, 12 x 24", acrylic on board

     While thoughts of good have been percolating in my mind, I've also been creating paintings inspired by specific pieces of music. As it turned out, on what would have been Uncle Walt's 89th birthday, David and I attended a concert by the Ariel Quartet at the Unitarian-Universalist Church, so I was able to 'visit' my mother (sister to Uncle Walt) in the memorial garden at the church. The Ariel Quartet enlisted local cellist, Benjamin Karp to complete the quintet for Schubert's String Quintet in C Major. Sitting in the church, I looked through low windows 360 degrees around the sanctuary to see the surrounding land rich with trees that were tiny seedlings when I was a child. The quintet began the Adagio movement and I immediately had a sense of starting out on a journey. The journey starts with mere steps. After we have accomplished some distance, the beginning theme is repeated, but with an altered chord. The simple chord contains in it the beauty and the sadness which exactly describes my feeling about our choices and what is lost and what is gained. I would call it a good chord. The cello begins to churn, depicting for me the inevitable strife that even a good life must endure--is it doubt? conflict? being out of step? Or perhaps it is the realization that we have to let others make their own choices on the direction of their journeys. We have to let go (usually worth a churn or two...)
     Thinking about all these things brought to mind a landscape--a landscape with many paths. I envisioned the moors of the Pennines, surrounding Manchester, England. Paths there are created by deer and highland cattle that graze the land. So that is the setting I chose for my painting. How lovely then, that my daughter was walking in that landscape on her birthday.
    Which brings me back to the good afternoon and being witness to the life of Uncle Walt and its brilliant continuation which will create many, many good afternoons. We can only choose our own path, but we can enjoy the journeys that others choose and with a little imagination, tag along.