Almost ten years ago now, our neighbor put a large gold gilt frame out on the sidewalk for the taking, or for the trash man. Something about the gilt-ness of it, whiffs of history, the Louvre, John Singer Sargent, Versailles, Jay Gadsby, The Luncheon of the Boating Party etc. etc., compelled me to scurry across the street to grab the golden treasure.
Over the years, I’ve had to rescue and gorilla-glue various fallen Edwardian scrolls and swirls back in place - or close to the original place. A large frame, it never made it into the house. I hung it on the wall of our covered side porch, which features a rotating array of my paintings - a sidewalk art show (with my father’s iron bunny rabbit standing guard on the stoop). I often dangle one of my smaller paintings within the confines of the much larger magic frame.
This winter was hard on the poor thing. I hauled it in after a particularly snowy, windy bout. It now hangs on a wall in the upstairs hallway.
Why don’t I just toss it? Who knows? It is a picture of loss and repair, of mystery, of change, of the past, the wondering about the present, the unknowing of the future, the search for meaning, the earth spirit, the big bang theory, and everything else, which makes us realize we know nothing about everything.
Mirror, mirror on the wall. Today, my gilt frame is a way-back machine.
I’m thinking of my friend Nancy, who I met 50 years ago while strolling my new baby past her house. One conversation led to walks, to sitting in the huge sandbox at the waterfront park in town, while our babies played. We added more babies along the way, sharing no nonsense, straight talk; Nancy, from her upbringing in New Hampshire, (or New Hampster as she called it), me from a Massachusetts household with lots of kids, where being funny was a joy, but also a survival mechanism. Along the way, changing circumstance and geography began to sever the threads. We drifted apart, until a few years ago, when geography and circumstance and cellphone towers put us back in a closer orbit.
Both changed, both the same, we seem to have picked up roughly where we left off, with the same dialect we spoke in the ‘70’s. Maybe not so much picked up with our old selves, but massaged a mixture of old and new, now old ladies facing a whole other chapter - not quite as spry, more tired, a bit sadder, more fearful, but as we’ve agreed, mixed with the undeniable joy of letting go of crap - to use some good New Hampster earthiness.
I walk by the frame in the upstairs hallway each day, and each day, I wonder where it will take me. Oh, I still wonder why I’m keeping it, but for the time being, I’ll continue to repair the golden decorations, yes, but also to glue the pieces of my life together in a rich trail of memory.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard
Here’s a bonus tour of my art at a recent show at NuKitchen in Newburyport, MA.
Wonderful post, Kate. Are your paintings still up at NUKitchen? Hate that I missed them maybe. Love the story of the frame that remains!
Such an amazing friendship! ❤️ (And no wonder I like to grab things off the street and figure out what to do with them later! 😁)