this is why I just love you soooo much.You have so much soul-talent-and love in your very being.I to will read this over and over again--after I finish crying.I remember also ,her days even in elementary school,and therafter,when I would walk into her classroom and immediatly I could identify her work,on the blackboard or classroom windows,I would say immediatly.Oh--Marion did that--or this is Marion,s work--It wsa always so special in flavor-

It pleases me to know that you've recognized the inscrutable artistic talents of your Mom. Her indefatigable determination to pursue a project, despite difficulties that would discourage weaker souls, has served as a valuable lesson for me, her Dad, throughout her life. In those times when I have foolishly taken on ventures beyond my ken and found myself mired in what seemed to be inescapable trouble, I would pause, think of her and somehow find a way to proceed. Failure to her is not only not an option, it is not even a consideration. Yes, "...a little child shall lead them."

You've defined it precisely: " (She) wove art, concentration and diligence into and throughout our lives." I too am comforted and instructed "...to live in the practice of these elements of our affection". You'll never write a more meaningful poetic phrase.

I can completely relate.
I remember that flicker too...Pop had a light in the basement that did the same thing. Something about that flicker is immobilizing for a child. It's like the excitment you feel, watching your Mom tear open the bag just before she hands you a cookie!

Great Job Greg.....I'm so very proud of you.

next to the plastic silver necklace from your elmentary school flea market, this is the most cherished mothers day gift i have ever recieved. as soon as i finish crying, i'm gonna read it again...and again.
ps...i still have that necklace.
i love you.

Before she started designing yellow page ads, my mother freelanced, painting seasonal murals in dime store windows. Because I wasn’t old enough yet to enter school, rather than put me in daycare, she assigned me to be her assistant. I carried her toolbox, in which she kept an assortment of paints, markers and, oddly, tools. I always think of this early stage of her career in architectural terms. Her ambition seemed to carry her up some ladder or scaffolding, a literal climbing to some pinnacle from which she would file, hammer, rule, score and sculpt the surfaces she was allocated. The symbolism of this was not lost on me even as a child. She also took commissions to hand letter signs that read, “Everything Must Go,” or “One Day Only.” These were produced on paper I imagined were manufactured in a linen factory. I watched her sketch out each letter, big as my head, each serif, each Cyrillic numeral with an accuracy computers would soon allow us to take for granted.

Later, despite the corporate job for which she received health care, a steady paycheck, and business cards, she often worked at home instead of in the office, cranking out ads the size of a wallet photo. The schizophrenic sweep of scale from advertisements that could be seen from several blocks away to work that often required use of a magnifying glass suggested not only that “no job [was] too large or too small,” as the plumbers and construction company ads announced. It demonstrated to me the beautiful balance of form and content. The harmony of the given and the made.

Her studio at home was a converted tool shed attached to the rear of our small suburban townhouse. My father knocked out the wall between the house and shed, insulated it, and squirreled a desk and her drawing table into this space the size of a walk-in closet. I would do my homework on the desk beside her drawing table while she worked. I admired her ability to sustain hours of concentrated labor, making the closet a sweatshop in every sense of the term, though today I prefer the analogy of a sweat lodge. It wasn’t long before I began to sneak into her studio to try my hand at the various tools arrayed before me. I’d hold down the button on the fluorescent elbow lamp stretched across the desk. The light would flicker on and I’d be struck by the scent of the markers and rubber cement infusing the little room. I feel I’ve never come out of there, that closet.

My office now is in the small sewing room on the parlor floor of our brownstone in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The parlor floor has a high ceiling and I’ve tried to use every inch of vertiginous space to house the books I more likely have use for in my writing process. I have two desks, a writing desk for the early drafts of work I do by hand (which is usually covered with books from elsewhere in the house) and a foldout secretary for my laptop. I don’t have an elbow lamp though I’ve been looking for a used one that fits the description. I often drift in thought at my desk imagining one of my daughters running her fingers across the spines of books there. My mother wove art, concentration and diligence into and throughout our lives. It comforts me to live in the practice of these elements of our affection.