Sunset of the Year
Summer’s come and gone. A month in NY, upstate and Manhattan, family, friends, swimming, juicy farm stand fruits and veg, cruising on country roads, a city weekend, sunshine, heat, humidity, downpours, electrical storms.
Also the first August without my mother. Sorting through the last remnants of her belongings, I found the painting pictured above, one I’d never seen before. At first glance, I didn’t get it. It’s much darker than anything else she painted. As we puzzled over it, my sister said that on one of her visits to my parents when they lived in Las Vegas, she attended one of Mom’s art classes and saw her working on this. Mom had spent a lot of time on it and consulted with her art teacher at length. Knowing mom’s artistic process, she was probably working from a photograph, I have no idea where it was taken. For sentimental reasons, I took this canvas along with some other apparently unfinished ones. It was only when I stood it up against a mirror in my big upstate AirBnB bedroom, where I could see it at a distance in the light of different hours of the day, that I saw the depth of orange and turquoise perspective beyond the nuances of black, gray, green, purple and brown, sunbursts breaking through the foliage. So many layers, so much energy. It’s become one of my favorites, especially now as the year turns towards winter and a (temporary but sobering) dying of the light.
I always look forward to my Franco-American Autumn here in Paris: catching up with my witty friends over coffee, crisp temps, chameleon leaves, wool sweaters, decorating and celebrating for the big holidays, candles and fireplaces, infinite choice of squashes and pumpkins, rich recipes with creamy sauces. But first I have to overcome the drag of jet lag + La Rentrée, readjusting to work and school schedules, admin chores, more sedentary time indoors, and the hardest thing, distance from my US loved ones. Nothing can replace summer get togethers, talking and laughing at very meal, hiking around mountain lakes, sailing on the Hudson. Of course, my US dear ones have their own real lives to get back to, too…. All this here-there-nowhere confused discomfort has manifested as a nasty cold. The remedy: admire the sunset of the year and fall in love with Paris Fall again…
Originally published at http://thankyouparis.wordpress.com on October 5, 2021.
