The Half We've Known: Gilt and Marble

The memory that rose before me, tall and bright and whimsical, was unbidden. What had called it forth from the long-forgotten annals of my past? What was it about the book I read that summoned this particular memory? I could not say, for the words I saw on the page had little association with that image in my mind. It was then I thought of The Half We've Known challenge and knew it was something I ought to do for myself at least. What was this memory? My visit--years past now--to the art museum. (The Chrysler Museum of Art)

I recall bright sunlight without, and marble steps. A few pillars. I recall slipping through from the tantalizing Cityness into something dimmer, older, cool and echoing. There was a dusty old man in one corner who eyed the young lady and her Grandmama as they stepped inside. Perhaps it was a stern glance, perhaps curiousity that one so young would come here of her own accord. We passed the gift-shop which I mentally made a note of to visit later, having always loved to poke around and buy for myself miniatures of the great things I saw in the museum.
The first room was full of mummies and ancient things I felt little kinship too. This was not beauty. This was not art--it was something crumbling and crude and deadly. I have been described as idealistic, and perhaps I am, for I hurried from that room and found myself somewhere else. Long hallways now, pompous and beautiful with their long red carpets and dark wainscoting that seemed to catch and hold the whispers of the people who had gone before me. I craned my neck to see to the top of some of the tallest paintings. Alternately I marveled and blushed at some of the paintings from the great European masters--all were grand, most naked, some singularly striking with their scenes of tragedies and sad deeds long ago done.

From there I entered the hall of gay, pretty, sunshine-and-gossamer paintings of the Impressionistic-era. 

I recall little of Grandmama's presence beside me, yet I know she was there--it was, in fact, Her that I felt throughout the museum. She was always there and I overlooked her only because the place was so like herself...refined, gilded, heavy with something old and venerable and dove-colored brushed over with a deep plum shade. Every cultured taste I had caught from her was distilled now into the very air of the museum. I walked as if on hallowed ground, knowing I was in a place that few people entered whom were unlike me. For what call would a realist have to come this far into this place? The people who took time from their halcyon lives to stare at a painting could not be all-bad. The eyes which had looked on the study of sunlight on the sea could not be cruel and unfeeling. Idealism--but it was mine and someone shared it with me.

At the end of one long hall I happened upon a stand with paper and crayon, available to all who might wish to attempt a copy of one of the great paintings. I was no artist...I was hardly one to attempt a serious sketch. But copy I would. I chose a portrait of a beautiful, dark-haired duchess in a black suit. She looked somber, dramatic, gorgeous in her grave way. I scrawled the attempt, concentrating...my brow pinched, my mouth working. A small group of children led by a thin woman entered the hall. "Now, children," she warbled, "when you grow up and become a Student you can come here to copy paintings too." She indicated me with her head and gave me an indulgent smile in passing. I laughed to myself--so she thought me a student of art! I glanced down at my poor crayon-drawing and laughed again; what a student I should be!

I lingered long in that hall, not wanting to leave the glory and elegance of it. But, with one last happy sigh I left the paintings and tried to be interested in the glass display, finally finding a bit of Tiffany to my liking.

The rest of the visit fades in my memory, mingling in a pleasant haze of Renoir, Cassatt, and the long-awaited trip to the gift-shop. The museum, the paintings, the realization that this was beauty captured and kept in an untainted way...I had forgotten it all. How glad I am to find it still alive in that secret corner of Memory's lair! Who would have thought that an afternoon spent thus would forever impress me with a love of good art and quality paintings?

I was no art critic and I am sure I admired the wrong things and thought the right ones ugly. I was uncertain of what I looked at at times and could only imagine--in my own thoughts--the history of the figures in the paintings. But oh, it was a happy time spent with Grandmama in that museum she had loved since her girlhood. In a way I believe it was one of the first moments that I realized she and I were so alike...the Museum--full of the great and good things of a higher, richer past--brought the two of us together as we shared a mutual wonderment that emotion so fleeting could be held round in a gilt frame with a few daubs of paint on canvas. 

The Half We've Known...

"If it's half as good as the half we've known, here's Hail! to the rest of the road."

-Sheldon Vanauken

Reading A Severe Mercy has been one of the highlights of this autumn. There are books you read and think, "ah yes--I am glad I read it so that I can say I've read it. Besides--it was a good enough book in it's own right." And then there are books that draw you in and play upon your heart and are so enjoyable that you eye the receding number of pages nervously, knowing that the end draws near. I am not finished reading A Severe Mercy yet, but I've come to the part where Van is going through an Illumination of the Past and "reliving" his life with Davy after her death.

Every memory of their life together--journals, letters, music, smells, books, everything--comes alive and he is overwhelmed with the blessing of their time together.

"As I travelled through the past, month by month, year by year, so it leaped into life. I remembered not only that which was written down but a hundred things besides...without exaggeration, it was one of the two or three most amazing experiences of my life. Even though I had planned it, I had not had the faintest idea that the past could be recreated with such extraordinary brilliance and reality."

-A Severe Mercy

It set me to thinking, as good things will, about my own life. Memory, as Longfellow said, "is the bliss of solitude"...so why do we keep it for the days when all memory-making is past? When the people, the pleasures, the events of our lives are nothing but faint watercolors on parchment? When we have no abilities besides watching the merry play of our lives in retrospect. Everyone takes pleasure in reading a memoir, yet when were the memoirs written? Likely at an after-period in the person's life when they had nothing left but memories.

I started to think about the things I love so well in this life. The small pleasures that I will probably forget by and by, and yet the ones that have shaped me, perhaps, more than the greater things. I am a firm believer in the idea that everything that happens to a person--good and bad--somehow shapes their lives, unconsciously or not. And I don't want to lose track of the Beautiful in this helter-skelter world we live in. These blessings we think of as expendable...they are blessings all the same and are from the Lord for: "every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father..." We are greedy in our very nature. Because we've been blessed with so many beautifuls in our life, we tend to think, "Ah--why remember that? It's not important." But it is...so very important. And the small things are the most important of all.

So I've created a blog event for us to remedy the situation. I'll call it "The Half We've Known," (taking its name from the Vanauken's yearly toast to their marriage) and you can even take the picture off my side-bar and add it to your own.

There won't be a set time for this blog event--do it as you feel like it. But I hope to do it at least twice a month. The rules are simple:
Write about a memory you have. Something elusive and gentle. I'd even say keep it to the smaller things you're in danger of forgetting someday. Write about something you take pleasure in, or something that has happened to you. It could be small like the time I watched the moon rise above the ocean and realized how bright a moon could be...it could be larger, like the first time you realized you loved a person. But whatever it is, I want you to devote a whole post to it. Describe the moment to yourself and your readers in a way that gives us the ability to almost touch the memory. Don't be skimpy on details. The idea is to remember. Remember with everything inside you.
And when you're done, if the memory has become vivid through its writing, you might even print it off and save it somewhere and by and by you'll collect a deal of The Half We've Known and be able to sing truthfully, "here's Hail! to the rest of the road."

Who's with me on this?

Going Retro...back to childhood.

It is a common phenomenon amongst our circles of friends that the oldest kids in the family didn't grow up with reams of special foods. There were no pantries full of the granola-crowd eatables. You know--gluten-free this and sugar-free that. Agave nectar, oat-flour, honey, dates, coconut oil, almonds,--you get the picture. Of course these things are way better for you than what we were fed as kids, but it obviously hasn't killed us.

Okay. So there might be a tad of rebellion left in me over that issue....

....or maybe I just panic at seeing my child-hood comfort foods labeled under a skull and crossbones...

...That could be why Daniel and I went to the store innocent and came out dyed the deepest black.

At a spur-of-the-moment hungriness my brother suggested we buy peanut-butter and saltine crackers and have a snack. I heartily agreed. I mean, this is our childhood. You have totally missed innocence if you have not spread peanut butter on saltines and squished them together like a sandwich just to see the "worms" come out the holes.

But I digress. We debated over whether the buy Jif or Peter Pan. We opted for Peter Pan because we were never rich enough as kids to pay the extra dollar for Jif. :) I mean, we've got to be period-correct, you know? ;)

So we bought the peanut butter. We bought the all-natural kind that doesn't use high-fructose corn-syrup to appease our consciences. ;) We bought the Saltines. We made our way out to our car and sat inside with the windows rolled down discussing.

Discussing what? What to spread this clandestine gob with. Ever ready, I whipped out my key-chain library card. "Why don't we use this?"
And so we did. We spread the peanut butter thick, clapped the lids on the cracker-sandwiches and ate our childhood memories there in the Walmart parking lot. Sure people must have thought we were loco. But I didn't care. I didn't care that there were white crumbs all up and down my black shirt. I didn't care that I was defacing a library card I never use.

Yes. Peanut-butter and Saltines are key ingredients to fluffy happiness. :)

The Little Pieces

I love the little pieces of Big Family Life. :)

...Singing "On the Street Where you Live" in man-voices with Sarah...

...5 year-old Grace running to me crying and saying, "Benjamin is singing the ominous song!"...

...The fact that the kids can organize a full-out baseball game at any time just using a few of the 17 kids living on this piece of land...

...Comparing how far we are through our current reading project with a sister...

...Kids stealing licks from the cookie-dough bowl...and me threatening to cut off their fingers. ;)

...Singing "Amazing Grace" [William Wilberforce style] with Sarah while the kids are trying to do school, and watching them stare at us like we've lost it for good this time...

...baby giggles...

...baby dimples...

...baby yawns...

...babies in general...

...The Magnificent Wardrobe swap with sisters and Mama...

...finding that my siblings have slipped into my fictional characters without asking permission...

...making a meal and having it monstrously appreciated...

...sharing that, "I know what you're thinking" look with a sister...

...Quoting period-dramas and movies in general...

...the stinkin' amazing sense of humor most of us were endowed with...

...commandeering a vase full of brilliantly colored daffodils [picked by a sister] and falling asleep with them on my nightstand in a sheen of moonlight...

...watching the romantic scenes in North & South and realizing that not all of us girls could lay claim to Mr. Thornton, even if he was real. :D

Yep. Life's good.

"His Name is John." ;)

I realized that I did not tell you the final outcome of the entire dog-naming fiasco! ;) Well, here are three rather broad hints: [Four, actually] 

 

 

 

If that has thoroughly confused you--as it was meant to do--let me explain. The first chap is Winston Churchill. Got it? Thought so. The second chap is, of course, the ultra-amazing, entirely brilliant Sherlock Holmes. The third fellow is not George Washington (though I think they bear a resemblance) but Meriweather Lewis. You know, Lewis and Clark? And the fourth is our very much beloved C.S. Lewis.
So what does this have to do with our dog? Surely we didn't name him after all those men? What rot for a puppy.

Ahem.

Well.....

I've got a confession....

You see, there were twelve people to consult in the matter and only one puppy. We got it narrowed down to three names, and none of us could bear to just draw it out of a hat. But it had to be either Lewis, Sherlock, or Churchill.....or did it?
My rather brilliant sister Sarah had a wonderful "Snoggestion." Why not name him Churchill Sherlock Lewis, and then his official name would be "C.S. Lewis?" Ka-chow!
So that is the story of how our little puppy got such a huge name. We call him Churchill, and in my secret heart I call him Sherlock. It's a mess, but it works, and it does make rather a fond memory! :D

P.S. I have just now realized the irony of all these great men appearing on a pink blog background. Haha!