Dear Granddaughter, or is it Grandson?
This is who I am. Each night after dinner, when dishes are dried and put away, I climb the stairs to the attic where I put on my painting apron. There I paint you a letter, or a poem, written with brushes. You may think it is a painting of a waterfall, or a nude of a love I once had. But it is a poem about myself and who I was. That small painting of a cow was Angie, your Great Uncle Melvin's only Swiss brown cow. Your grandmother hated having a cow named after her. That figurine of a girl dancing among the geranium leaves was your Great Grandmother’s favorite. I confess, I was the grandchild who broke it. I painted it for you. I may sell them, but my heart is filled with love for you as I paint them.
That nude you use to sneak up to the attic to peek at? That is Kim. She used to bring sandwiches to the homeless when she posed for me. The painting of the little girl in the red dress was the neighbor kid who I watched from the attic window, playing in her yard teasing her brother and locking their babysitter out of the house .
I love colors, and trees with robins singing in them hiding among the green apples. Their red breasts always gave them away. When the apples ripened, I gave them to the dancing figurine in the green dress, so others could share in things that I wrote about with brush and colors. Uncle Melvin's farm pond became a Texas man's Maine pond that he fished as a kid. The dreams we put on canvas or paper become other's stories of lost childhood or first loves. And they are always poems to you.
Your Loving Artist.
