(thanks to cousin Darcie for the photo!)
By 1996, I was no longer angry with my mother. While I was away at college, in 1965, she had decided to "read up" my room. Anyone from Pittsburgh knows what I mean by that. In the cleaning process, she decided to "get rid of" my shopping bag full of hundreds of baseball cards, which I had collected since 1950. Bill Mazaroski, Roberto Clemente and Ralph Kiner were gone...vanished. She also had found a roll of pure silver, 1964 Kennedy half dollars I had somehow accumulated...and spent them! She spent them for fifty cents a piece!
I'm sure you can see why I originally got angry. On the
other hand, she HAD sent me bus fare in the summer of 1964 when I was broke,
and stranded in New York City. And by 1996, I had come to appreciate things
such as her giving up a chance to see Liberace perform in 1954, because his
performance was on the same night that John Stanley Swiedrack and I performed
"Anchors Aweigh" on our "flutophones" at the Gregg Street Elementary
School annual concert! She had been in the audience of parents and teachers,
cheering me on.
So I figured we were "even" at some point...
My mother, father and me at either Kennywood or Euclid Beach Park c. 1950
Eventually, I decided
it might be nice to do something "special" for my mother. She had
always encouraged me to be an artist, (something that not all mothers would do)
and took pride in whatever show announcements or news clipping I sent her. My mother had never actually seen one of my
shows however, since they were always in Philadelphia. She was in her seventies
at the time, and didn't like to get too far away from home. But, by then I had a couple of major paintings that had been purchased for public
spaces, right in Pittsburgh. So on one
of my visits, I offered to take her out to lunch, and to show her the paintings.
She was very excited about this, and got all dressed up,
including a dress and a hat. We went to her favorite place for lunch:
Stouffer's restaurant. She had once worked there as a salad chef, and made sure
the waitress knew that! Then we went to
the luxurious offices of Deloitte and Touche,
and saw my painting, "Brandywine May." She beamed at the painting and
when the receptionist, whose desk was in front of the piece told her how often
people would remark, "what a beautiful painting"- my mother
practically told the woman my whole life story. She started her exposition with
the "Tam O' Shanter" classes
I'd taken at the Carnegie Museum in fifth grade. The woman listened, seemingly
enthralled! People can be very nice at times.
Our next stop was
Allegheny General Hospital. My mother knew the place well. She had given birth
there three times (out of 6) to my younger siblings. My painting "Milltown
Valley, " a kind of homage to my steel town roots was in there somewhere,
but I wasn't sure where. It took some
time, but eventually we found it. It was installed with a nice gold plaque next
to an elevator. I was happy to see it there, beautifully lighted, and in a
place where people naturally had at least a few moments to contemplate it,
while waiting for the elevator.
My mother REALLY liked this piece! I was so happy to finally
have her see some of my best paintings! Then, as we stood there talking, almost
ready to conclude our trip, the bell for the elevator suddenly rang. The doors
slid open abruptly and bright florescent light poured out. There was a lot of
clattering of wheels, flashing chrome and people saying "watch your back,"
and such things, as a long, sheet draped gurney was wheeled out of the big,
deep, elevator. There were three or four hospital employees, plus nurses and
doctors involved in moving it, because
there was a tall stainless steel stand of some kind being wheeled along side
the gurney, as well as some other equipment with flashing lights and beeping
sounds. There were IV tubes from bulging plastic bags running down, connected to a man stretched
out beneath the sheet on the gurney, surrounded by all this clamor. He seemed
to be barely conscious, and we were all making way...except for my mother.
She instead, leaned
close to the man, and with a quiet gravity... said pointing to the wall..."my son, did
this painting..."
I couldn't help but laugh as they wheeled the patient away, and I gave my mother a big hug as we made our way out of the hospital.
I couldn't help but laugh as they wheeled the patient away, and I gave my mother a big hug as we made our way out of the hospital.
Afterthought : My mother was my first "patron."
During my
"clowns and airplanes" period
of the early 1950s, (influenced by "Howdy Doody" and "Sky
King") she would often give me milk and cookies when I presented her with
a "coloring." My art work also seemed to make her happy.
She once told me that she had wanted to go to art
school as a teenager, but it was during the Great Depression of the 1930s and there was no money for such things. Then, when she
was only 16, she married my father and they started a family. In the 1950s she occasionally
painted "figurines." Listening to the music of Doris Day, The Mills Brothers and
Perry Como on the AM only radio, she would sit at the kitchen table with a palette of tiny
bottles of enamel paints, and a very small brush. Nail polish remover was used
to thin the paint, and that smell always rekindles this scene for me. She would carefully apply faces and
expressions over white plaster casts she had purchased from hobby shops, not
saying a word. While she painted, I drew contentedly, with my crayons.
