Ma chère Marjay:
Words are not the aperitif; they are entrée. Words rendered poetic, chosen and distilled, are the fuel that lifts the corners of your mouth and swells your heart. It’s unquestionable that the portrait in question captured you in the midst of both interaction and wit, because the best teachers are listeners.
The beguiling simplicity of your portrait also demonstrates the complexity of rendering three dimensions as two, much in the way that labels such as “teacher” or “mother” confine you to roles of commerce and utility. Description is reduction, unintentionally stripping individuality.
Your depiction rendered easily, morphing complexity into simplicity while amplifying your presence. Theo would indeed be studying your portrait – and more than delighted to sit near the fountain and devour a morning talking with you. He would, of course, take immediate note of your grace, but his focus would drift away to words, ideas, and experiences. Everyone has a biography, but few are armed to express it in a way that evokes both magic and data. Beauty often fades, but curiosity, intellect, and compassion amplify with age. The jovial and observant among us find home in things invisible.
Your brilliant eyes focus on the world, seeing all its warts without losing sight of its beauty. You are one of the few who observe with an oblique periphery and still choose a smile over a grimace.
As of late, perhaps, just perhaps, you jettisoned a bit of cherubic in exchange for lean. The smile invariably remains, reshaped by the architecture of adjustment, yet immalleable.
Theo would no doubt remind you that you are both battery and source, even though your humility would propel you to delightfully laugh.
Where shall a portrait such as yours hang? It holds hall and quarter in the hearts and minds of your husband, children, and an immeasurable repertoire of students, each of whom now carries a piece of you in their memories. Were your portrait in a sunlit hallway, Theo would pause in the lengthening shadows, studying nuance and meaning. He would find it in the lines that demarcate your portrait.
Context: Marjay recently gifted me a book, one that unlocked something in me and gave me permission again to write like the way I like to. She gave me permission to pay her homage. I made a picture, one that took me over 20 layers. I needed a portrait at least minimally comparable to what the protagonist Theo might have gazed upon during his mission. The words are tinged with admiration. But they are also a reminder to her because good people need at least infrequent reminders that people do see them.
X
