Spring Cleaning

It was one of the first warm, sunny weekends and my husband Michael got the project bug. So he went into the garden to see what he could do.There was no shortage of possibilities and he settled on taking down some old trellises, planting pansies and petunias, getting rid of old planter pots, cleaning up the green house, and he seemed very happy doing these spring time chores outside. I looked at my closet in our bedroom. It looked like an overstuffed bag, bursting out of the invisible seams of the available space it was violating. It looked ridiculous, time to get this mess cleaned up, no matter how much I enjoy the lived in look. I found things I had forgotten about for many years, as I decided to strip my closet space to the bones, everything out, onto the floor. I found a ton of pictures, going back 20 years, old letters, books, a ton of my son Nicholas' elementary school art projects, and in the midst of all of these sentimental treasures, I found a book of poetry, in French, written by  my maternal grand mother, Agnes Tinel, back in Belgium, in 1909. I found copies of photos of the private East Asian art collection of a German philanthropist, Dr. Kurt Herberts, a very wealthy industrialist and senator, who had an extensive private collection of art, among them also paintings by Frans De Cauter, my mother's oldest brother. I wish I had the book with the pictures and stories behind Dr. Herbert's East Asian art, because I looked at it so many times, and when I saw the photos in the leaflets from the exhibition my father attended, I recognized the glossy brightly colored photocopies like old friends. I found some never used, still in their wrapper oak frames, and carefully measured my favorite pieces from 19th century Japan, and put them in  the frames, dreaming back to the time when looking at those pictures transported a solitary teenager to exotic and romantic places. Where did 40 years go? I was amazed at the intensity of the nostalgia the sight and touch of these art pictures evoked and I smiled gratefully at the memory of my father's passion for art, and how he instilled that curiosity and passion in me. Even though my mother felt superior to my father because of her mother being a Tinel, a name associated with art and creative talent of significance in Belgium, and because her father was a De Cauter, a name at one time associated with wealth, my father was the one who had the knowledge and passion for art and intellectual pursuits of all nature, from history, to literature and photography. Why my mother despised my father and his family so remains a mystery. Her father was raised by his grand parents, because his father had gambled and drank away the family's rather extensive fortune. Any way, my father did a lot to promote my mother's brother's art, and introduced him to Dr. Kurt Herberts and also to Dr. Maurice Boyd, a history professor at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, who arranged for uncle Frans' paintings to be bought for the permanent exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort worth, and who wrote a wonderful book on Frans De Cauter's life and art. My parents had hundreds of Frans' paintings, I ended up with three... and the memories of spending time in his art studio when I was 16, where uncle Frans taught me the basics of drawing with pencil and oils. I still remember the wonderful smell of all the paint, and his gracious wife, Ina, who was a marvelous cook. Today it is raining like crazy, and my spanking clean closet feels very satisfying, as do the memories of my father's intellectual astuteness and my uncle Frans' art. I put several frames together of pictures of my son at different ages, with me and my husband, such a sweet walk backwards into time. Spring cleaning is good for the soul.