| Any comments, suggestions or questions can be directed to the author. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope you found something that you could enjoy. Disclaimer: I do not own anything in relation to C.S.I., Alliance Atlantic, CBS, William Petersen, Jorja Fox or any other characters contained herein... I just like playing with them now and then while stretching my writing muscles. And if you think there's any money to be gained by suing me, you're in for a horrible disappointment. |
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| LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY |
| The Man, The Myth, The Uncle |
| I did this painting of Uncle Gil from an old photo that my mother kept tucked away. She has a few pictures that she holds very dear, and this was one of them. It was taken on one of their many excursions into the parks of Northern California when my mother was a girl. When I found the picture as a small boy, I asked her why it was so special to her. Her answer has stayed with me for my whole life. And it was what prompted me to work on this painting in secret as a kid. When I was 13, I wanted to give my mother something very special for Mother's Day that year. Both of my parents sacrificed for us kids, but when I was 13, I had learned about the children my mother had lost between Danny and Bethie. It affected me very deeply. One, because I knew how much my parents dearly loved us, and how heart-breaking it must have been for them, but also because they never let that loss touch their other children. I only found out by mistake after our grandmother passed away. So, I was determined to do something extraordinary for Mother's Day that year, because I knew she would be feeling the loss of Grams, and I wanted to ease that burden, in any way I could. For me, that meant getting out the paints. I had already given Mom a picture of my Grams I had taken of her in the garden she built with my mother. It had been in full bloom at the time, and her Whisperkiss Sweet Peas were in perfect season. With a little help from my computer, I managed to turn it into a stunning photograph, and Pop helped me get a large print made, and the whole thing framed. It still hangs in our family room to this day. With Grams watching over our ever growing family, her favorite flowers all around her. But that left me scrambling to find the perfect subject for Mother's Day. I could have done something of us kids, but then I ran the risk of the family tattler, my brother Danny, spilling the beans. That was when I saw Momma going through her special pictures one afternoon, and I remembered the story she told me about the picture of Uncle Gil. Momma said she loved that picture of him because it was how she always thought of him. The sun shining on his face, a faint grin hiding underneath, as he pondered the questions of the world. She told me that she could still see the hope in his eyes when she looked at that picture, and it reminded her that with knowledge, family, and faith anything was possible. Uncle Gil was all of those things to her. While Uncle Gil was not what anyone would call a religious man, he had a very strong belief system, and he was nothing if not a fierce supporter of the quest for knowledge. I understood so much about my mother's connection to this kind and quirky man that seemed to be at the center of our lives, when she told me about the photograph. And it became a connection for me to my mother, because she was the one who had taken it. When she was young and struggling through the death of her brother, she used photography as a means to express the things she dared not talk about. We had that in common, she and I, and whenever I see this painting, I am reminded about all the intertwining connections that run through this family...because of this one man with hope in his eyes. |
