Janice Peebly

Impression:

Midafternoon

In the summer of 1972, I went to Europe with my parents. We went to visit my sister and her husband who were stationed in Frankfort, Germany. Like many Americans, having a relative somewhere in Europe was an excuse to visit the old country, discover the place where most of us had come from. After touring Germany for a week, we went to France. It was a whirlwind tour. My mother and I would point at all these beautiful, old buildings we wanted to explore, but my father would drive on by at 50 miles an hour. “You saw it, what more do you want?”

In Paris, we went to the Musee Marmottan. My mother and I liked the impressionists best, especially Monet. My father toured the entire museum in under twenty minutes, and then went to get the car, saying he’d pick us up out front in a half an hour. My mother and I had a whole thirty minutes to wander the third floor; the floor the Monet collection was displayed. Impression: Sunrise was our favorite. I remember my mother in her pink and green tweed pant suit standing beside me, her hands clasped behind her back as she stared at that small orange sun with a sky full of gray clouds all around. The water reflected the orange-gold of the sun while a few silent, dark fishing boats commanded the foreground. But, it was that sun, that orange, dawn sun that dominated the picture with its promise of life, a bright new day, despite the grayness of the sky.

Over the ensuing dozen or so years, for some reason, I have always remembered that day. My mother and I, like one person, standing still and quiet, staring at that orange sun. Since then, I’ve studied a bit about Monet and the movement that got its name from his famous painting. Impressionist painters don’t imagine or remember. They paint what they see, the impression of the moment. Monet loved the play of light on his world. He had an exceptional eye and wanted to portray the slightest light changes, exactly. I read Monet calculated that the light in his garden at Giverny changed every seven minutes. He would work on several canvasses at the same time, giving a few brushstrokes to one; the light would change and he would rifle through the stack of canvasses beside him to find one that corresponded to the precise way the light illuminated the lilies in his pond. It was a slow process; a challenge to paint one moment in time; capture light and transmit it to a  bare white canvass.

 For me, it has been hard to close my eyes and not see one moment when the clear, harsh light of mid afternoon reflected on our kitchen window, throwing an image onto my retina that I have spent twenty five years trying to erase.

It was June, 1984. I had a two week vacation from my job as a nurse in South Florida. I made the twenty hour drive practically nonstop, taking only short catnaps in rest areas when I was too sleepy to go on. I didn’t want to waste a minute of my time off; I wanted to spend it all with my mother. I hadn’t seen her since December when her bone marrow cancer had been diagnosed.

When I pulled into the alley behind our house the first thing I noticed was her white anniversary roses in front of the back kitchen window. From the distance of the alley, they were a pure, pristine white, no hint of the pale pink in the center that would only be visible when the tight buds began to unfurl in the hot sun. Then I saw her at the kitchen window. Bright sunlight outlined a white figure curled in on itself. She was the reverse of her roses; she was closing tighter and tighter in the warm sun, instead of opening. My mouth dropped open and I gasped. How could she have turned into this waxen, shriveled gnome in six short months?  When I got inside I hugged her gently and I looked for any hint of pink at her core but there was none. She was pure white from her lips to her fingertips, one of Monet’s pure white, blank canvasses before he’d started to paint.
 
My mother smiled self-consciously when I asked, “How are you?”

“So-so,” she answered. She held her hand flat and parallel with the ground and tilted it left and right, like airplane wings tilting in the sky as it levels itself. She had to look up to see my face. “Look at what’s become of me,” she said. A tiny, sheepish smile flashed across her pale face.

Twenty five years later, I am married to a man my mother never got a chance to meet. I stand in our guest bedroom, staring at a Monet reproduction hanging over the bed. A dreamy sail boat on an illusory, greenish blue sea dotted with dense, lightless white caps.  Impressionists use short thick strokes of paint to capture the essence of the subject rather than its details. The surface of an impressionist painting is typically opaque; the mixing of the colors occurs in the eye of the viewer. When I stand up close to the picture, I can see all of the individual brushstrokes of thick paint but, as I move further and further away, they blend together and the dreamy sailboat comes into focus.

Just as I moved back in space to see the sailboat more clearly, I see again the white impression of my mother standing at the back kitchen window.  She had been reduced to her essence. Like Monet’s painting, she was opaque, yet transparent at the same time. There was no color left for me to mix. I see again that small orange sun with its promise of a glorious sunny day.  I want to take my white impression, slip it into Monet’s pile of canvasses that he kept propped beside his chair in his garden. I want him to pick mine when the lighting is just right and add color and life back.

Janice Peebly: I am of the baby boomer generation. I was always the good girl, now I am trying to learn to be bad. I live in the future and am trying to make sense of the past. Growing up, I was surrounded by people, but always felt alone. I consoled myself by telling stories only to myself; for some reason it never occurred to me to write them down. Now I’d like to start telling stories to someone other than myself.

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