More Than Just

It’s just a picture, and not really a very good one. However, it was one I painted as a Christmas gift for my Mom three decades ago.

Mom was one of the many long time neighborhood residents who were forced to relocate when Lincoln Center was being constructed. The cultural advantages of the 16.3 acre complex of buildings cannot be calculated. Yet, the construction also caused the disintegration of a neighborhood and the end to what many viewed as a vibrant community.

My Mother and her family had lived their entire lives on 58th Street, and I thought the picture might comfort her. I was totally wrong. When she opened the gift and saw the canvas, she recognized it immediately as an interpretation of the city block she knew so well.

To my dismay, she gave it back to me, and said, “I don’t want this. I don’t want to remember.” Fortunately, there were other gifts for her to open, and the framed canvas was dispatched to a closet until later that week.

Since then, life has taught me many lessons. I finally understand my Mother’s reaction that Christmas so long ago. She had spent close to 80 years in her home, and now she needed to forget the pain of leaving. I had not meant to be insensitive, and yet, I now realize I was.

However, the picture is one I did take when the moving van left North Massapequa. I put it carefully into the trunk of my son’s car as we turned the corner for the last time. It now hangs over my bed in a small town in Michigan that I doubt Mom ever heard about

I don’t feel the pain she did when I view it because I had left 58th Street as a bride. I only anticipated the happiness of a new life, so I had no regrets. However, I also know it would break my heart to have a picture of the home on the corner of Northwest Drive hanging on the wall. Everytime I looked at it, I would ache for the love, laughter, and joys of those 57 years.

Instead when I look at the small canvas framed in gold each morning, I thank God for the journey He has sent me on. I have traveled to places and met pilgrims and shared moments of my life that were beyond the dreams of the young girl who lived on that block for 19 years of her life. And my magic carpet is woven of gentle nostalgia.