The Green Man

There was an empty panel above the window in the kitchen, and it needed to be filled.  White molding framed a 1 foot by 4.5 foot space of white, and it was waiting for something to happen, for a different picture of existence, just like Ivan and I.

We were trying to be patient, waiting for our family to happen, and I thought I'd fill the time with a sort of mandela to seasons, and creation, and an homage to the places we'd been and the place we were.  Ivan bought the wood and I painted it, over the course of a year or two.  Geraniums and gargoyles were mandatory. Flowerpots for family and memories- seasons changing from winter to Summer, from grim to lush, from Russia to Paris.  A rosebush for Grace and the three sisters, then, a rose, with a bas-relief a batwinged Mimi the angel dog; a rosemary pot with a green eyed seraphim.  A cat-turned-dragon, blue curmudgeon gargoyle for Ivan on one side of the cauldron of geraniums, and a grinning gargoyle with books in either claw for me.  Balloons, and cathedrals in the clouds, and the river flowing  through it all.  Three coats of varnish.Then we hung it in its pre-existent frame above the kitchen sink and our view of the river. The pot was decorated with a Green Man, a sort of appeal to nature and creation and Life.  Painting the panel made me think of hungry shaman hoping for bison and successful hunts, making them happen by painting them in caves and secret, sacred places.  It was a way of communicating wishes and biding time and taking action when none would help.

The painting was finished; but our family wasn't. When we moved, we took it down and brought it with us to our new home, six houses down the same river.  The new house was and is perfect, but it had no empty frame, waiting.  By that time neither did we, The Boy had done a good job of filling absolutely every empty space in our lives, and when he didn't, within a day or two, he'd grow a little, invite some friends over, and leave no room for blank white spaces in our hearts.  Trips to the woods and the river and the garden were mandatory.  He needs the woods like water or oxygen, it's a place to breathe, and a place to feel alive and come back muddy and completely engaged and happy.  When things are not good, we hike. We fish, we get messy and the garden gets tidy. His hair smells like leaves in October, and his clothes smell like rocks in the river, and his favorite color is green, as is right and just for a Boy with an Irish name born on the day of an Irish saint.  He's larger than life, and when he's amused by us, and he loves us, the corner of his mouth twists a little;  it looks like he's put something over on us, or like maybe we've put something over on him.

We'd been in the house a year before I decided to put up the panel in the living room.  I found a place above the piano where the light and shadows fall correctly and the perspective works.  It was a perfect place, but it was marred by something.  I hadn't painted the Boy into the panel.  He was the most important part of our lives, and he was Missing, and I didn't even want to look at the panel because it made me sad to think of the way life had been with all those empty spaces.  Ivan hung the panel when I was out.

I walked in, walked up to it; I leaned over the piano, traced all the images and symbols I'd folded into the images,  narcissistically admired the things I'd forgotten, smiled at things that had gone well, forgave things tha things that had gone badly. Left to right. knowing that the Boy was missing, and there was no place left  to put him. Past the Ivan-Gargoyle, the pot of geraniums, the me-gargoyle, the column...snap back.

The Boy was there, grinning at me, right between us, smack dab in the middle of the biggest thing on the panel.With that twist in the corner of his smile, just like he'd put something past us. 

9:49:24 AM