I’m off for a weekend adventure in Washington D.C.~I’m thinking picture taking, visiting friends, good food and fun. Hopefully with some surprises along the way in between all of that! (Wonder if Dan E. Nice was nice?)

A grey morning turns into a beautiful day of admiring some art at the museum, we traveled all the way to Norfolk to enjoy it, though I didn’t mind the drive at all. On the way Max noticed every dump, cement and garbage truck on the road and we also had to stop for the world’s longest train to pass by, so at that point he was so impressed that we could have turned around and gone home and he would have been pleased.

I was pleasantly surprised that an art society was swarming in the entrance of the museum when we first came in, a spacious courtyard set up with tables of gourmet food and drinks were complimentary being served and every face that we passed by (most of them well-dressed seniors) had to stop and smile at Max, the only person under a few decades old around. They all invited me to their Rothko lecture, but must have forgotten how it is with a two year old. I painstakingly had to pass, but found out that it was an event that comes every end of the month~ will have to get sitter for the next one.

We first started with an expansive glass collection (nice to see some Chihuly!) and moved through a small collections before heading up to the elevator where the real fun started. The rest of the visit unfolded, getting better the deeper we went…a few by Franz Kline, some Mucha mixed in with some elaborate Nouveau furniture, a pointalism pastel painting by Cross, some Cassatt women and children, a Diebenkorn, a Robert Henri! And Rauschenburg’s “Wooden Gallop,” ~just to name a few. I hope at every musuem visit, there is a new discovery and today definetly yielded a new (to me) artist to research~Frederick Childe Hassam’s “At the Florist” was glowing with muted color, texture and a place that I wish I could be. Paper wrapped blossoms surrounded by beautiful sunlit faces…

But the icing on the cake of my morning was in the very last room we came into, the best was saved for last. There it was, lit from above and glowing, like a halo over his head, a Bernini sculpture of the Savior. I felt my heart flutter, I hadn’t even considered that there could be something left, the whole suspense of going around each corner had had its peak as we roamed the end of some decorative art and I was realizing that it was time to wrap things up. A two year old can only take so much and we had been there for almost two hours already. I walked up to it right away, nothing else in the room mattered. It had a presence alright, on a seven foot high pedestal and of course, carved out of marble, I explained to Max how the great master had made this with his own hands out of a “giant rock” to look like Jesus. He genuinly gazed up at it in awe for a few minutes and said, “Bernini? yeah.” I have had a momumental crush on Bernini since art history class, but my infatuation was made into total love when I saw his David in Rome. He is truly the greatest. I will never forget how long I stood with the David, walking around him, trying to understand how it was possible to create something so without flaw. An italian guy standing next to me in a black tee shirt said to his buddy with the best accent, “Bernini, perfecto, ah?” Yes. Perfect. Oh, by the way, he carved the one we saw today when he was eighty! I know I am rubbing it in, but you should have seen those curls, his cheekbones, the hollow back of the sculpture…everything was just…sighhhh.

Okay, okay, okay. I am far too excited about starting a garden this year, so in waiting, I filled up my once bare plant stand in the sunroom with some gorgeous african violets to keep me calm in the waiting. They make me happy every time I pass them. Petite and pretty, pastel and easy to care for…even for a beginning green thumb like mine.

My reading has taken a more leisurely pace as of late. I have just had a few reads, compared to the mounds of several choices that I usually cannot resist at the library (especially in the new section). So I finally finished The Chosen and was quite pleased with Potok’s beautiful and realistic way of telling a story. It is a story of two boys and their futures, the expectations and different kind of loves from their highly respected fathers, the ending is so wonderful that you will just have to read it to see how it turns out. Potok, who grew up in a very familiar way as his characters, could really give a feel for their people. He made me realize that even though I have studied the second world war, and felt so much sadness for what european jewish families went through at the time, I never thought about how effected the jewish people in America were, and how they must have felt when they found out what occurred under the terrible power of Hitler.

Most of all, I absolutely adored the relationship between Rueven and his father. It was amazing, almost unimaginable that a teenage boy could be so well behaved and mannered, and with a desire to study so hard. But I believed he was possible when I got to know Reuven’s father. Like when he is having one of many, many good conversations with his son and explains “Human beings do not live forever, rueven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure ou lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value there is to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing mroe than a blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of a life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that span with meaning, so its quality is immeasureable though its quantity may be insignificant. A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.”

I was first turned onto Potok by my college art professor, who wrote down the title to My Name Is Asher Lev and told me one day that he always thought of that book when he saw me. He emphasized the books importance so much that a few times after that, he would see if i had read it yet. Its been a few years since then and I am still wondering what it is about that book in particular that made him recommend it to me. I still wait till the I will turn it up at the library, it’s always checked out. One of these days I’ll get my hands on it.

max has taught me so much, he has shown me my strength and my intuition, my tenderness and my protective nature. in a few months he will be three and i am clinging to this outgrown crib as long as i can to feel that i still have a baby. he is so smart, he is well surpassed his babyhood with the way that he talks and perceives things, it’s amazing that i spawned such a brilliant child. sometimes i wonder where his life will take him and just remind myself that is for him to decide and for me to love no matter what.

this weekend was so busy and full of places and people. i saw several old faces, received some phone calls from family and old close friends, and even caught my twin brother online and was able to talk with him for a while. connections are so important to me, it was fun to catch up with where everyone was and look back. sometimes i do find it a little odd that out of all the girl pals growing up, i was the one to get married first and years later have a little boy who i fell so in love with that i didn’t care that i was delaying my dreams to mother him at home sweet home. i always sensed that i would be a mother, but i never sought it out, just assumed it would happen after i was “done” with all of the things i had planned. my little boy was an unexpected part of my dreams. like the unexpected meeting of my husband. i knew m was “him” when we first met, it just caught me by surprise that i was meeting him at that time in my life. i was just beginning to know myself, how was it that we were able to know him too? “it was a blessing that i totally didn’t deserve,” my old friend from told me over the phone tonight about when she met her husband. i know how she feels. sometimes i wonder how i have such a wonderful family and i think someone up there must really think something of me to trust me with these people in my life.

Wayne Thiebaud told PBS’ Newshour with Jim Lehrer that he doesn’t really call himself an artist, saying, “Isn’t it something for other people to make a decision about? I think it’s just like, as I say, it’s like a priest referring to himself as a saint. … It’s decided apart from you and that’s the way it should be.”

Could that have been said better? It seems that I am always coming across my own opinions worded by someone else. I’ve been leafing through all of the beautiful pages of Thiebaud’s paintings in my new book and taking in all of the colors on his cakes and landscapes. (Gotta love amazon gift cards for Christmas, thanks Dad!) When else have I ever been able to justify getting a brand new glossy-covered-hefty-coffee-table-worthy book? (:

*Yes, I didn’t write in all lowercases…

*my backyard studio~covered in beautiful, wonderful snow!*

“Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one’s self of the real joy of living.” ~David O. McKay

today i picked up the beginnings of my summer garden~impatiens, cosmos and chinese forget-me-nots seed packets are sitting on my desk teasing me with their brightly colored pictures. for christmas this year, max received a little knapsack set with a trovel, spade and mini fork for digging. i can’t wait till it warms up enough to go planting and see what comes.

(there he is digging already)

it was spring cleaning the heads over at the vorwaller house this morning, m and max both got buzzed! both of my boys look adorable. then i was inspired to hit the salon afterwards. won’t have to do any haircutting around here for a while. (: