After the Singing

Yes, you will recognize the John Martin seascape from a week or so ago, but when I came across this Eakins diva, the similarity in color scheme jumped out at me. I swear, after a year or so of this, I think I'm going to have the equivalent of a Master's in Comparative Art History, which I'm not even sure exists as a discipline.  But with my capacity to think on my feet and use big words, I could deliver a mean lecture on similarities in artists across centuries and disciplines. and sound like I actually know what I'm talking about.

My mother had been going through a tough time, feeling, to use her words: "disintegrated."  I know how my mother uses English, and she meant it in the sense of fragmented within, which is slightly different from how the word is traditionally used. I think quick access to information via the memory most of us enjoy and take for granted serves as an armor against the world, or at least a navigational tool.  If it starts to go, I think the feeling is akin to switching from power steering to none.  It takes so much more effort to take a left or a right, and you veer into things or constantly brake. Finally, you stop driving. You isolate, disengage, become fearful of too much stimuli.  Old age is a bitch.

My Mom also suffers from depression anyway, and a spiritual malaise that gives her little sense of relationship with a higher power, even though she wants for nothing and has very little fodder for the argument that the universe hasn't been taking care of her. The twin senses of disorientation and sadness overhwhelmed her two days ago in the lobby of her retirement living complex (as deluxe as they come, believe me).  She told me she just started crying, and as a friend came to comfort her, a young man who was repairing upholstery in the community room noticed.  He stopped what he was doing, and walked up to her. "Looks like you need a good hug" he said.  For a moment he encircled her, and yes, she felt much better.

"Don't you see Mom? That's GOD!" I told her, upon hearing the story.  We get so lost in this idea that a spiritual experience is supposed to look like Morgan Freeman in a white suit, or be somehow otherworldly, but it's no more complicated than a hug from a stranger, in my book.

I'm glad I'm going back in June, and I'm feeling a terrific pull back East going above and beyond Garris. Kind strangers are great, but kind sons are better.

MCO 2008

P.S.  I spoke to my Mom this morning and discovered she's stopped taking her Lexapro for no reason she can remember a week ago, hence the sharp drop in a sense of well-being. She's back on it, having learned the hard way why you don't self-unmedicate.