Michael

I painted this picture in 2000, less than a year after my sister and I had been out to Tacoma, Washington to visit aunts and uncles and cousins. Becky and I repeated that journey a few weeks ago, returning nine years later to attend my cousin Ron's Wedding. I'll be posting pictures and commentary about that great trip in a subsequent post. But today, I wanted to write about Ron's youngest brother, Michael. I've been thinking about this post for a long time and wanted to know what to say, how to express my thoughts about my cousin. This painting is really a marker of how long it has been since Michael was with us.

This last trip to Washington, when Becky and I arrived at Aunt Hildy and Jim's and were seeing cousins and children of cousins we hadn't seen in years, I was happy and overwhelmed and a little shy (as I often am when I am seeing people I haven't seen in years. Becky is always much more comfortable talking to people and jumping right back into easy conversation than I. I take a bit of time to feel comfortable again). I went into the kitchen to give aunt Hildy a hug. Practically the first thing I noticed, among a patchwork of photos magneted to the refrigerator door was a photo of Michael staring back at me. It took me by surprise - his frank stare and slight smile, his jaw line, unbearded, was strong and angular, or so I remember it. I hadn't looked at a photo of my cousin for so long that the emotion of his not being there momentarily overwhelmed me.

Later, I saw Michael in my cousin Laurie's son, Christopher - the eyes, mannerisms, and even his open, accepting nature - all reminded me of Michael. Even later still, as I was putting my suitcase into the room where I'd be staying, sleeping in Michael's old bed with a quilt his sister had made for him, I had further reminders of that summer nine years ago. I looked down the hall and into my aunt's bedroom where the painting I'd done for her hung against the far wall. I remember thinking about how to approach painting Michael, about how I could make something for my aunt to remember him by. I must have gone to the Institute or the Walker not long before and seen some of Chuck Close's paintings. When I blew up the photograph Jim had taken of us on trip to Mt. Rainier on my birthday and printed a close up of Michael's face, I knew that emulating Close's approach of using individual squares and filtering the image through those cells was the right approach. I had no symbolic reason for taking this approach, but just knew that somehow it fit better than something more realistic or abstract.

I remember when I saw Michael nine years ago, for the first time in several years, I felt unsure of myself. We sat opposite each other in the living room of the place he and my other cousin Rob were living in. I initially felt the distances of time and space had separated us from the bond I'd once felt. Becky and I, after all, loved Michael and as children when we'd visit would devotedly follow him around. We loved all of our cousins, but Michael was only a few years older than us, closer to Eric's age, so he was stuck with our shadowing him. He never seemed to mind us playing with him and taking an interest in the things he was interested in. Both he and Rob - all of the siblings, in fact, were enormously talented and I was always inspired to be more creative around them.

One summer Aunt Hildy had brought Michael and Rob out to Minnesota for a visit. I remember Michael taking a great interest in a book he'd bought (I think at the Minnesota Zoo) about edible plants. On a visit to Washington a year or so later, I found that this interest wasn't just a passing fancy. In fact he brewed me a tea from roasted dandelion root. I remember the heady, roasted coffee-like taste. Later, when I'd tried it on my own, I failed to make anything that came close to that tea. Becky reminded me of the tree frogs he'd caught and showed us one summer when we were out visiting. Both he and Rob seemed to cultivate artistic abilities and interests that interested me as well. As far as I could see, Michael possessed a fairly deep inner life and a reserve of imagination that I appreciated. He and Rob valued things I (probably Becky and Eric too) valued - maps and old documents, books and fantastic stories, nature, and trying to capture or recreate small remnants of worlds and eras that no longer existed.

That day, nine years ago sitting across from Michael and both of us feeling initially uncomfortable, one of us happened to mention something from when we were children and suddenly the barrier was removed. We both felt connected again. I looked across and saw Michael's eyes smiling as he was remembering things from our childhood as cousins. He even had some of the maps of imaginary places he'd invented, and I remembered again how envious I was of his imagination and talents. The time Becky and I had with Ron, Rob, and Michael that last summer was special and I'm glad we got to have it - he was gone a little over a week later.

I write this and I am initially struck by how insufficient words are in really describing memories and feelings. The second thought that strikes me is that I somehow misrepresented Michael, got something wrong or missed some aspect of him that I should have mentioned. I didn't, for example, mention his flaws and I know he had some. He wasn't perfect and I'm sure his siblings could tell stories (we all have stories of our siblings' shortcomings), but I do know he was greatly loved by a lot of people and his departure saddened us all.

I'm still left with a tinge of worry about how I'm portraying him - I felt much the same way when I painted his portrait. But then, these are my memories associated with Michael, no one else's. Others have their thoughts and reminiscences. Together they all make up who my cousin was. In that respect, maybe my approach to the painting does work after all.