My biggest heartbreak in our move was the loss of our most precious piece of art – a portrait of our older child done by our younger child. Our son drew from a snapshot taken for our daughter’s SAT admission ticket. The casual photo captures her intelligence and brightness plus a fabulous hair moment. The portrait captures his (8th grade) talent and conscientiousness with the worn paper from where he erased and redrew the nose over and over again. Despite the background being yellow, it is my favorite non-living thing in the world.
When the movers left a rug here that wasn’t ours from another load in the trailer, we tracked the owners down through a cleaning ticket pinned to the corner. They had just moved from Illinois to Georgia (we swapped regional tips) and were most appreciative when we shipped it back to them. I couldn’t understand why someone wasn’t trying to track us down too. Who else would want that piece of art? I cried. I called the moving company. I had our framer (who had put a sticker on the back) on standby in case anyone reached out. And I told the story of how that work was lost and my sweet son had offered to recreate it, but it wouldn’t be the same without the worn part at the nose.
Yesterday, my son mentioned something else he hasn’t been able to find since the move, so I started poking around in the basement. It was one of those late-night-second-winds where you suddenly need to clean the fridge instead of go to bed kind of things. At first, all I found of note was an oversized pencil from Dylan’s Candy Bar and my college diploma. Eventually, I stumbled on the portrait in a container I thought was already unpacked. It was in a clear plastic under-bed storage box that I had filled with our daughter’s infant clothes and the like. I had wrapped the portrait in her baby quilt… which is something I probably need to unpack on multiple levels. I could also explore how sometimes you already have what you want most if you can just see it there. And maybe I will… after I have coffee with my baby girls.
* May contain spoilers