There was this little patch of gravel in front of the new North Carolina Museum of Art. It’s a lovely field of tiny grey stones that sets the museum off like a pavilion in a Japanese garden.
It’s very hard to push a wheelchair through gravel.
I wiggled his chair back and forth until we made it to the entry. The guard pushed a button to open the doors for us. And, for the next hour or so, George and I cruised around the new addition and looked at art.
Honestly, I wasn’t very impressed with the collection. I spent most of the time looking at the building. And, I wasn’t very impressed. It’s nicely done, but it seems forced to me. Like a pragmatic version of the Kimball, and for God’s sake why would you want to do that?
Meg drifted off somewhere to look at the Jewish art. So, George and I went to look at the 20th century Americans. I was just thinking it might be possible that I’m not going to like anything in here. Then we rolled over to “Winter-1946” by Andrew Wyeth.
Andrew Wyeth’s father had just died when he painted this. The plaque under the painting told us that the hill represents his father and Winter underscores his mourning. The boy is Andrew, his hand is reaching absently for the hill. He’s off balance.
It takes a while to find out your son has a disability. The doctor’s were concerned when he was born, but it took months and months of tests to find out what our life would look like. At some point during those early months I had a dream.
In the dream, I saw George running in our backyard. He must have been 4 or 5. He was very happy.
Looking at that painting, I saw George running.
Jody
photo of NCMA from Suzie T’s photostream on Flickr – used under the Creative Commons license