What compelled me to take my painting off the easel, lay it flat, and roll the two little rose quartz beads across the canvas? I simply gave into the powers of gravity, a force we know but can’t see that even Aleen’s tacky glue could not withstand. By sticking this symbolic globe onto the canvas I might be able to convey what I was not expressing with only oil paint. Leftovers of a time they were a bracelet given to me by I don’t even know who, the one I placed on my mother’s wrist until it broke and then kept the parts by her bed so the power of them (so I’ve been told) could convey the love I had for her when I wasn’t there, and even when I was. Alzheimer’s not only takes away memory but wreaks havoc on communication. I took them home after she died and find them now and again in a pocket, or a drawer. A little pink orb. A mysterious little leftover that makes me pause for a moment and hold them in my hand, not like a memory but a conversation with the past and the present without the earthly boundaries of disease, age, and time. Letting myself roll with it, I felt the embrace. I hope you do too.
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