Part One.
All my siblings came. Mom got feted, Dad’s stuff got divided between us, and as my older brother said afterwards, “I am amazed and grateful for how well everything went.” Everybody was mindful of everybody else and trying not to be too eager about any one thing: we didn’t own it before and if we didn’t own it after, what’s the difference, right? So. Your turn.
There was a painting I loved. The others noticed the two gouges in the paint before I did, two white canvas spots showing, about the size of the inside circle when you hold thumb to forefinger.
Bryan, who along with Anne has entered juried arts shows and done well, instantly offered, “I can fix that for you.”
Two days later my sister was holding it out for me to see.
Now, I’d been expecting to have to pay to ship it to Atlanta and then to our house and to wait for however long everything took.
But, but–where were the spots? You can’t even tell! Where were they? as I bent close to see.
Bryan happened to come in the room in the middle of that, so I said again, “You can’t even tell!”
He laughed. “That’s the point!”
I just couldn’t get over how very very perfect and untouched it looked.
He was staying at a cousin’s; we were at a hotel a half hour from there.
So it was with great delight this morning that I looked up at the TSA station where you retrieve your stuff and exclaimed across the conveyor belt, “BRYAN!”
He looked over, laughed, and we got one last big hug across that metal space before he raced off to his flight while they finished patting me down. (Holding my arms above my head while circular glass walls move rapidly the way they do, close to my face, makes me fall down. So, yeah.)
So, so glad we got to go.