Impressionism

My favorite genre of art is the Impressionists. The journal pages above are from my a visit to the Met with my kids when we all sketched paintings in pastels. I turned around at one point to find Julia, and saw a small knot of people looking down at the floor at Julia while she obliviously sketched Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". Whatever city I am in, I try to visit an art museum and find their Impressionist gallery. In Chicago, I had the pleasure of seeing the wall-sized Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte". It is a transcendent piece of art, a depiction of life both real and unreal, and the temptation is to walk into the painting and never look back.

When I visit the Metropolitan, my pilgrimage is always first to Renoir's Madame Georges, always resplendent in her lace-ruffled black silk dressing gown, her happy and beautiful children next to her, her well-groomed dog at her dainty feet. The picture centers me and entices me both as an artist and as a mother.

Mothering is all the art of Impressionism. Mothers have to learn to see through the lens of their children, and interpret their often clouded view of reality. I spend so much time dealing with black and white - rules, regulations, codes, statutes, - that I often arrive home with little patience for the subtle gradients of form. When I walk in the door at night, I intend to bestow love and affection - instead I am still in hyper-drive, racing through the house, mentally noting who left the newspapers all over the floor, the bowls of cereal on the coffee table, the coats strewn about instead of in the closet. I am all fury, signifying nothing more than my own futile attempt to impose order and control over family life, which at best, is messy and spilling out the doors and windows like so many helium balloons let loose at a party.

The children cower in their rooms, and adopt that insouciant voice in response to my loud calling of their names: "Wha-a-a-t?" They know that I am home and they are about to be given the list of petty grievances as I stumble over their dirty socks on the stairs and pick up the sodden towels from the bathroom floor. In the back of my head I hear my mother's voice, harried, exhausted, and exploding into tears as she came home once again to find the house a mess and five girls blithely ignoring it, playing loud music behind closed doors.

Now I understand why my father had a martini every night before we were allowed to ask him anything. Problem is, if I have a martini, no one will be able to ask me anything because I'll be passed out...Besides, with both parents working, or single, who is the parent being allowed time to decompress, and who is the parent scurrying around to neaten the house before the spouse comes home? Nowadays it is one and the same - neither.

I want to be a Mary Cassatt mother, full of tender laps and warm arms, my hands ready to drop the needlepoint at a moment's notice and brush silky hair before the dance, tie a bowtie before a recital, and sit in my dressing gown and pen the menu for dinner. Right.

But these images haunt me and tease me and fill me with longing for a time when I could tarry over breakfast, drive the kids to school, putter in the garden, run the vacuum, and take a quick trip to sketch by the beach before they come home. They deserve a more well-rested and calm mother. They deserve Renoir's Madame Georges, with her beautiful dressing gown, dog at her feet, tea at her elbow, and shiny-haired happy children snuggled next to her on the divan.

But for now they have me, and a slapped-together weeknight dinner, a blurry-eyed review of homework, early morning post-shower reminders to talk to guidance counselors, notes stuck on mirrors about assignments, and a bedtime snuggle under the covers as we both lie in silence and look at the day-glo stars shining on her ceiling.

I wouldn't trade a minute of it, but I'd like the time to savor it.