Ode to a Backyard Beauty
My mom and I are posing half-naked on a striped towel in a backyard -- there are garbage cans behind us and what must be a clothesline pole. A box of pretzels lies just beyond my mom's reach. She is sitting upright, knees tilted seductively away from the camera, in a modest one-piece with the straps down, -- backyard cheesecake. Although the photo is in black and white, I can tell that she has put on dark red lipstick for the occasion. A chubby 9-month-old self in a diaper, I am on my hands on knees, my back feet touching a wading pool with a seahorse. We both stare expectantly back at my dad, (who I assume is the photographer) -- his darling girls together in a Pittsburgh backyard.
What I remember most about my mom’s bedroom is the painting of a Madonna that hung above her vanity with glass-covered tops and a burnt orange upholstered bench. When my mom was cooking dinner, I stole away to her bedroom and pillaged the contents of the vanity’s hinged compartments, which hid Maybelline compacts and tiny red boxes of eyebrow makeup that smeared mud brown on my fingers. But it was the Madonna that defined her bedroom, the sweet Madonna cradling a baby Jesus who looked to be at least four years old in his teen mother’s arms. Mary is posed against a rose trellis, with dozens of cherubs serenading the mother and child with harps and other instruments I couldn't identify. I never asked my mom why she chose this particular painting in a gold frame that lost its brilliance long ago. Wish I had asked.
My mom was not particularly religious. But maybe she came here to pray to the Madonna when my dad lost his job and she, a nurse, began to work nights helping deliver babies at Silver Cross Hospital. Or maybe she came to whisper a prayer of thanks when a job was found.
I did some research and discovered that “Madonna of the Roses” was painted in the fifteenth century by a German artist named Stefan Lochner whose paintings of saints was characterized by a “sweetness of expression.” It was this sweet Madonna who presided on the side altar of the vanity, looking on approvingly as my mom rolled my hair in pink sponge curlers soaked in dippity doo hair gel. Recently my sister gave me this painting which now, to my delight, defines my dining room. Love you, Mom!