The Minnesota Farm Woman

Many years ago, my mother took a photography class. On the day the class was studying portraits, the instructor passed out pieces of paper and asked everyone to put their names in a hat and he would choose that day’s model. Since Mom hated to have her picture taken, she wrote her name and crumpled up the paper, hoping it would fall to the bottom. The instructor then tossed the names out of the hat, and since hers went the farthest, she was chosen. We heard the story when we cleaned out our parents’ house after my father died. There were many copies of that picture, all on slides, and none too flattering. We threw away most of them at Mom’s direction. As my sister and I were cleaning out the attic that week, we found an oil painting of that same photograph. My father, who was somewhat artistic in a Grandma Moses type of way but most definitely not a portrait artist, had used that photograph to paint a portrait of his wife. My sister and I looked at each other. You know how it is. Sometimes families disagree or perhaps even argue about who should get what. “You take it,” she said, handing it to me. “No. Really. You can have it,” I said, pushing it back. This went back and forth for a several minutes. Neither of us wanted it, but how could we throw away a portrait of my beautiful mother, painted with all the love and devotion my father had to offer? We put it in an old frame and wrapped it up for Mom’s birthday present. She didn’t want it, either. In fact, I think she said something like “Is that horrible thing still around? Get rid of it!” We hid it under the bed in her niece’s home, hoping she would find this wonderful family heirloom and hang it in a place of honor. Mom was her favorite aunt, after all. Instead, she wrapped it in fancy paper and regifted it back to me, so we hung it in my dining room as a joke, right in Mom’s line of vision, and we all had a good laugh. It stayed there until the next Christmas, when my nephew was very surprised to find it wrapped under the tree with his name on it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough room in his suitcase, so in my dining room she stayed, presiding over many family meals and board games. A few years later, my brother-in-law discovered another painting, this one hidden in a dark and dusty corner of our cabin. My father, being totally in love with his first-born (and at the time, only) child, did a portrait in oils of his bald-as-a-bowling-ball blue-eyed baby girl. I really was a cute baby, but my father painted me to look something like a cross between the spawn of Satan and a Conehead. Of course the portrait was framed and hung in the dining room, right in my line of vision. Ver-r-y funny, those relatives of mine. Just yesterday, as I was cleaning out and making room for things following my mother’s death, I thought about putting Mom and her baby Conehead in the attic for future generations to discover, but I changed my mind. Family dinners would just not be the same without them. Someday, perhaps they will hang in my daughter’s dining room and she can tell the stories, but more likely, she’ll wrap them in brightly colored paper and pass them on to some unsuspecting relative who will feel too guilty to throw them away. Families are like that. They love you even if you look like a Conehead and they miss you when you are gone.