Set Fire To The Rain

Canvas

Cassie

I never want to forget the important things again, so I save every photo. Shoe boxes of old photographs with just about everything that ever caught my eye on the streets, from a lamppost to abandoned buildings to the intoxicating way shadow and light loved Noe's face when he slept.

Over a thousand prints stacked, and stacked, and stacked in boxes and boxes belonging to all my office work heels.

And still, they all feel empty.

Without that one photograph, she will always be missing.

I can't snap a picture of my mama now, and that eats away at me every year that she's gone.

All I had were a few paint brushes, a second grader's memory of her face, and some precious time to kill before I was chained to Paula's desk again at HBW.

For years, I wanted to pull this thing off, but never thought I could paint mama's portrait well enough to give her justice. She meant all the meaning in the world to me, but the problem was trying to fit everything and "all the meaning in the world" on one 8 by 10 canvas.

"Noe?" I called from the kitchen, staring lost at the mason jar of paint brushes, a pack of blank canvases, and a paint palate on the counter. "You passing by a Radio Shack on the way?"

"Why?" Noe's answer came gurgling through a mouthful of toothbrush, as he leaned out the bathroom door.

"This 8 by 10 isn't gonna work."

"8 by 10 is what you told me to get."

"I know, but the size I really meant was a big ass projector screen."

"Sorry, I don't read minds, sweetheart," he said, ducking back in the bathroom to rinse with some minty mouthwash.

"Good. It'd make you crazy to be in my head."

"As crazy as you make me already?" he remarked. "You sure you even know what you're doing in there?"

"No," I admitted. "But I don't need some Picasso snob at the art school telling me how to paint my mother. I got this. It's more of a therapy exercise anyway. Mother-daughter time."

"Well, that's my cue to exit," he said, smelling like a bottle of aftershave as he wiped his clean face with a paper towel marching into the kitchen. "Even after I get you this projector screen you're asking for, it's still not gonna be enough, is it? I'm starting to think it's not the canvas anymore that's the issue here."

"When I remember her, all these cringey emotions come up and I don't know what to do with them. There's just never enough space for it all," I confessed. "I want it to make sense, you know? I want people to know her just by looking at this one painting. I want them to get it the way I get it. But you didn't even get it when I showed you my first sketch. What does 'it looks ok' even mean? This is a portrait of my mom. It supposed to be better than just ok."

"Maybe you're doing too much and that's what's got you stuck. Maybe cutting yourself some slack and starting off a little slower is exactly what it takes," Noe threw out a suggestion, more interested in investigating the fridge and scooping out the last bit of my honey Greek Yogurt from the carton for his breakfast, before he hurried off to work. "Maybe take the whole thing down a notch?"

"How is portraying her as an angel 'doing too much'? What's so extra about that?" I asked him. "You were raised Catholic. You saying you don't believe in an afterlife?"

"It's just a little...I don't know...schmaltzy?"

"Which means in English, what exactly?"

"I don't know. Garish? Over-the-top? Cheesy?"