The side of a picture frame that is important is the one that shows the subject the artist or photographer is struggling to make just perfect. The waterfall, the grizzly bear, the beautiful woman, the carnival with all its colour and activity. Hanging on the wall, it brings another side of a family’s life into view, perhaps a sunset as day comes to an end. A fitting purpose for a painting or a photo.
Not this picture.
It was just a discard in a thrift store. One that somebody no longer wanted, so they gave it to the thrift store. Took nothing for it. And there it stood beside all the other discards with a price tag on it: $25.00.
So I bought it.
I had been kind of looking for a wall hanging of some kind with a piano in it. I would really rather have had a picture of an organ, but felt lucky enough to find one with a piano. Organs are kind of out of vogue right now.
I have an old organ which I have mostly for a conversation piece; it’s one where you have to pump the pedals to make anything work. One your grandmother might have had, which she played only to amuse herself. You seldom see them these days, and for many people, even seeing one brings no comment. No memories are recalled, no harmonies echoing from distant years.
And I wondered if a picture with a keyboard in it would spur some thoughts, perhaps of music, possibly of a favourite piano teacher or of a Christmas concert with the whole school singing.
And there it was.
For twenty-five dollars.
The picture was of a piano and a young girl, maybe five, six or seven, sitting on the stool with one hand on the keyboard and two cute, pudgy little legs folded up neatly beside her.
So I paid the twenty-five, took it to the car and never gave it another thought.
But when we got home, and I was carrying it into the house, I saw it. The writing on the back- what was it about? And the tag on the front.
The tag wasn’t much, just the name of the store in Orangeville, Ontario, where the picture was likely purchased when it was new. And the painting had been titled ‘Virtuoso.’ But both of those are pretty standard stuff.
The handwritten note on the back, on the other hand, was another chapter entirely.
“Dear Maleree,
When I first saw this picture I thought of you — my little girl just learning to play the piano. We would sit at the piano counting the rhythm, figuring out the notes, laughing and sometimes crying out of frustration.
Now when I look at this picture ‘Virtuoso,’ you are no longer that little girl I helped at the piano, but a beautiful young accomplished pianist. We are so proud of you.
Love
Mom and Dad, June 1999”
So there it was. A beautiful little note, from an adoring mother who was so heart-warmed to remember some of the precious and rewarding moments she had spent with Malaree as she had helped shape her daughter’s life. And she had found a picture that captured that memory and probably rushed to pass on what that young girl’s life had meant to her since she was her mother.
So it turned out that I hadn’t bought a picture. I had bought an heirloom. A special family heirloom, at least in one mother’s eyes and especially, her heart.
So what was it doing sitting on a thrift store shelf with a bunch of other discarded items that people had left for nothing, just one step away from the city landfill? Other things that had never had a place in anyone’s heart.
Perhaps the fondest memory that that mother would ever have of her very special daughter.
On sale for twenty-five dollars.
It would be impossible to ever learn the circumstances that would allow a daughter to ever let a mother’s memory such as that be separated from herself, and we don’t need to know.
What we do know is that, in all normal parent-child relationships, a mother’s love and a father’s love can never be taken away from them, regardless of the circumstances. And so Mother’s Day, which is just past, and Father’s Day, which is a week or so away, are reminders of those special relationships which bind families together for lifetimes. I have long believed that God gave us the family so that we would understand what love is. I believe He succeeded.
