I couldn’t tell you why it caught my eye or what drew me to it, but somehow, I knew that this one portrait was something I should claim. Like the one puppy you lock eyes with, cementing the desire to be together, the shape and the colors of the picture resonated within me.
“Have you heard back from the artist on this one yet?”
My voice was pitched to sound detached, but I knew I couldn’t entirely hide the hope for a negative answer.
One look from me to the portrait was all it took. “Nope, and it’s been long enough I think you’re okay to take it.”
Her shrug clinched it for me. After all, she was the advisor of our group, so that was all the permission I needed.
Though that was more than three years ago, the picture still hangs on my wall. I never bothered framing it, because for some reason it didn’t seem like something you’d encase in wood and show off. It was more of a personal picture than that. You wouldn’t hang this up in your living room and tell people, “Oh yes, we were at such-and-such place and we saw it and just had to have it.”
I’m not one of those people. I’ve never had a room of mine decorated because when you move more often than you’d ever thought possible, why put down roots and claim a space as your own when you know that it’ll be soon enough that those same walls will be bare again, and your stuff will be packed up in boxes?
As I lay there the other night, waiting for my boyfriend to finish his before-bedtime ritual, I stared at the picture, thinking. It was one of those moments where you seem to turn your focus inward and upon all those thoughts tugging at the back of your eye sockets, and the outside world goes somewhere else until you’re jerked back to reality.
I was thinking the many thoughts I always seem to think when I’m trying to relax, when I realized that the picture had three girls in it, not two, as I had first and until that point observed.
Imagine my surprise when I noticed the orientation of the girls. Each face was pointed in a different direction. The main focus of the portrait is one girl in particular, who is staring out of the truck window towards the viewer, with a thoughtful expression on her face. On her left is another girl who is looking out her window, in the exact opposite direction of her fellow bench seat mate. Lo and behold, in between them both is a little girl who is looking forward. She is the one I missed all these years.
And now, thinking about it, it’s rather ironic. You see, my focus has always been upon the past and the future, because I dwell too much on both in equal fashion. I’ve told you about my inability to
Now I realize that there is a small girl looking forward—in the present—and perhaps a bit of destiny, too. A divine intervention saying, “Hey!”
I think I’m beginning to learn.
Looking back at the portrait now, I wish I would have read the artist’s statement. Were they trying to evoke the essence of time, as I interpreted it? At the same time, I think that’s the point of art—to inspire another just as the artist himself or herself was inspired.
For now, I’m still keeping the picture and it still hangs on my wall. I foresee we might be moving in the next year or so, but that’s still uncertain at this point. What I do know is that the picture will most likely come with us. In the event I don’t need it anymore, we’ll find a new home for it.
Strange, isn’t it? How one image can make a difference in our lives, no matter what the subject. What images inspire you? Which ones do you hold dear or hold messages that drive you forward?
Rebecca Henderson holds a Master’s in German and a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing. Best expressing herself through the written word, she enjoys the smell of burning rubber and can recite the ABC’s of the automotive world upon command. Rebecca hopes to shift your world perspective through her words, because looking out the same window every day hardly makes for an interesting life.
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