more than a trivial everybody’s “going through everything together”. For me solely it was like a long-awaited meeting of two pieces of a soul, which were torn apart myriad ages ago, and one winter day some starling high force made them make a spurt to confront with each other. I had been feeling this deeply inside my soul since I could understand my being. Children are a genuine family mirror, aren`t they?
I had always felt solidity and spiritual purity inside. These feelings were spreading out through my entire body likewise warm soft water flows down the skin during showering. My classmates thought there was something wrong with my psyche, but I was just a pacified teenager with no drama tag on me, while all of them were dealing with bothersome puberty and all of the attached. My sensitive nature, inherited from my parents, made me always notice even differences in the house atmosphere. When we visited our friends on Sunday evenings, for instance, or had a potluck, I felt another`s homes were breathing with kind of everydayness: meal smells, routine work, dust from the book-shelves, stagnant life, children`s fuss and past quarrels. My home in turn always breathed with morning fresh, rife hugs, unanimity, vitality and incessant inspiration flow. Perhaps, I went crazy, but I found the origins for all of the above chiefly in my parent`s love at the first sight and their close-spirit relationships.
Their acquaintance took place twenty years ago in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Art and paintings created their imminent falling in love that day. Same would turn to be in common for both later. My mum, Helen, was on her winter vacation. She arrived from Baltimore to visit the exhibition praised to the skies by her sister, who was passionate about painting as much as Helen was. They had to be passionate about art, actually, because they both worked as aestheticians and art critics in the same popular magazine. My dad, Charley, visited the exhibition simultaneously. Painting was his crucial hobby, not to say profession. It was his passion, his vocation, his method to communicate with this world. He was immersed in painting since his childhood. Charley and Helen met the love of their lives in one of the pre-Christmas days in front of Mone`s “Woman with a parasol”. Charley was embarrassed with Helen`s compelling beauty and charming smile, and from the first sight he was desperately in love with her. He, fortunately, met the returned love. They got married in six month. In a year I was born.
Despite lots of things in common and only a few in different, my parents during their twenty-one-years-long marriage had never seemed to be bored of each other. Sometimes they could even spend a couple of months without friends or relatives beside, just two of them. Every new day in their relationships was like the first day of their family life. They liked spending evenings in the parks walking together. There was no matter what was the season outside. My parents` love didn`t need any conditions to enhance its “being together moments`” magic. I would say they loved each other unconditionally.
Their choices concerning a movie to watch always coincided. Dad invited mum to the art museums and exhibitions. He carefully prepared meals for her and packed them into the lunch boxes, when it was her working days. Helen had never quarreled with Charley for some routine deeds like dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, or constant chaos in dad`s art workroom. It did not matter for them. It was just a mere background. These landed issues, so vehemently discussed in other`s families, seemed to distract my parents from some more important ones in their relationships.
Charley could be frequently found in his art workshop, located in our basement. He wasn`t a famous painter, if what I say next can be considered as a criterion of painter`s infamy. The thing is, during Charley`s 27-years painting practice his works were shown off only at two exhibitions – the first one at dad`s age of 19 in the art school he attended, and the second one 5 years ago, when Charley was 38. I had once heard Charley and his close friend conversation about Charley`s accomplishments and success in painting after his engagement with Helen. His friend remarked better drawing technique and colors combination Charley achieved on his canvases. There was indeed a spurt up in his painting practice.
My dad had never seemed to be upset about his infamy as a painter. He didn`t earn for a living with painting in a sense, however he worked as an art teacher in school and was satisfied with that completely. When I came to his workshop to watch him painting, I could always notice a sincere, blessed smile on his face. Such a smile was with Charley only in two occasions: if he was creating in his art workshop, or if Helen was beside him. Actually, he barely could paint anything worthwhile, if mum was far away, or felt sick. When she was ill, or went to the other city for a business trip, or visited her sister in the next state for a couple of months, there was a predicament for Charley`s creation. It was at its nadir. There was no inspiration in the air for him. Dad didn`t like the colors and shapes, brushes were sneaking out of his hands and falling down on the floor. Imagination left him. The canvases were vapid even with paint on them, and crude even if they were totally finished. Dad decided not to paint at all, while mum wasn`t beside. But if only she was, in good mood and health, dad`s muse woke up.
His concentrated eyes were voraciously peering on paints and brushstrokes, trying to find and fix any possible mistakes to achieve the perfection. His hands were skillfully drawing each line and mixing colors. Nothing could distract dad from painting in such moments, he looked like a man who is finally breathing after a long time without air in his lungs. Watching this, I began to understand the fact that my dad enjoyed exactly the process of painting, of holding a brush in his hands and making the combination of colors and shapes inside his head transpose on the canvas. He needed nothing more to actualize his passion and feel himself happy. No world fame and respect, frequent exhibitions and lots of money would do that better, than a mere painting in basement with his lover beside.
Mum was his only muse. Charley had created all his best paintings because of her. This made me believe their love was indeed more than a soul connection. There was something magical and cosmic about their union. I was convinced of this one day, when dad returned from a business trip he had.
That was the trip organized by the school teacher council as a present for dad`s 45 birthday. Dad was bestowed with a ticket to Paris for a week-long art event for painters with all inclusive. Unfortunately, there was only one ticket, so dad went in Paris without mum. She wasn`t upset about that for she had a lot of work, and even if there was another ticket, her refuse would be imminent.
Dad returned back home with two new canvases. Those pictures were brilliant. Colors combination and technique were distinctive, even better than Charley had had before. He painted such masterpieces only a couple of times in his life, and each time he was at home in his workshop, and Helen - his love and lover, his soul, his inspiration - was beside. No other time he was able to create something more beautiful than canvases inspirited by Helen and her love. Without her kisses and touches Charley could barely create such paintings - there weren`t needed feelings.
And now he returned from Paris, after a week without Helen, without her voice and speech, her smile, her compelling green eyes, her soft warm hands, touches, and her sweet lips, and he was holding those two masterpieces in his hands.
My parents broke up three days later after dad`s returning. When mum suspected him in having an affair (she did it at once, actually), and asked her loved husband about her worries, he couldn`t lie. Charley confessed his sin openly. There was blame in his eyes, and tears in hers.
On one of the canvases Charley painted in Paris was pictured a beautiful woman sitting in the middle of the flower field and holding wild flowers in her hand. She was wearing a plain cotton dress. Her long brown hairs were falling in waves down on her left naughty shoulder from under her wicker hat.
“Your mistress is nice” – whispered Helen.
She took me and her stuff, and we moved. I didn`t know anything about my dad for years since the day my parents broke up. Was it unfair? Of course, it was. However, it doesn’t matter anymore. We have been living in my aunt`s house for already 2 years. Yesterday the man came to our home and said Charley was dead. He sold his Paris paintings for big money, gave all of them for charity and killed himself in a hotel room.
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