It was mid-September 2018, and my husband and I had just spent a few hours on a Sunday afternoon at Devereaux Beach in Marblehead MA, him sleeping in the sun and me reading in the shade. We were in our car getting ready to leave, when I looked up to see two women on a bench under the canopy in front of me. I was immediately struck by the notion that the woman on the left looked like my mother, who had died in 2002. Of course I knew it wasn’t Mollie…but in that haze through the windshield, she did have her profile. I took two photographs with my phone from inside the car: one of the two women and one of her alone, reading a paper. I didn’t get out of the car. I didn’t walk over to her. I didn’t want to know if she actually didn’t look like Mollie, because for that moment and, honestly, the rest of the day, I was somehow feeling comforted by the thought that i had been visited by a vision of my mother.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago…having finished a very large painting of a roseate spoonbill and wanting to paint some humans again, I had a small canvas that I thought would be perfect for painting that apparition of my mother. Of course I still had the photographs! Even more of a personal painting than those I’ve done of my grandchildren, now she’s on the wall of my bedroom, in full view of my bed…someone to watch over me.