When I saw the image of the man start to appear, it made me laugh. I had seen him before. Not this exact version, but certainly a handsome man, clad in something spectacular from the Sundance catalog, or Banana Republic.
It started when I was in college. We didn’t have email or texting. We had letters. My mother sent something to me weekly. Oh what a glorious day when I saw it in the mailbox. Maybe it began because there wasn’t a lot of news to be shared. Or maybe it was simply her glorious sense of humor. She cut out images of good looking men her age from catalogs and wrote, “Wouldn’t you like him for a stepfather?” The answer was always yes! And the jokes continued about ordering, sending away for, arriving in the mail… we could go on forever, until it switched to the outfits in the same catalog that she would wear to get said man, which turned into a fashion show of what we already had, an exchange of compliments, bent over belly laughs and hearts that were full.
Through the years, at gallery shows throughout the country, people would ask my mother if she too was an artist. She shyly said no, but we both knew the truth in the hesitation. She could, had, and continued, to create something out of nothing. Isn’t that exactly what an artist is? I think so.
I see him in my sketchbook and write stepfather. My mother’s art lives on.
