Day 20--The Unseen
The older I get, the less I value the outside of a person. But, when most people look at our daughter Rose, that's the first and sometimes only thing they see. Her eyes. Her hair. Yes, she is a physically beautiful child, and although some piece of me is thankful for that--in the same sense that one would be thankful for the beauty of a literal rose--a bigger piece of me feels her appearance is a gargantuan distraction from her even more lovely unseen qualities. I stumbled across this old cereal bowl this morning while looking for something else. It's part of a set of dishes I made for my mother during her later years when she was battling multiple sclerosis. She was also a physically beautiful person when younger; in fact, I think Rose's eyes hearken from her family. It was hard to watch my mother's life be taken from her, piece-by-piece, and I suppose I painted this bowl as a sort of touchstone. What is seen is indeed temporary... All appearances