I was watching an old Antiques Roadshow broadcast. The weather outside was frightful, cold, snowy, and the fierce wind we had enjoyed for the majority of the winter had returned. Inside I seemed to lose interest near the end of the program. The overly cluttered hand-sewn quilt on display held nothing to compare with the quality of my mom’s works.
This one was of a brackish grey-green background. Large misshapen blocks intermingled with tiny ones. The large held blurred scenes. The host presented one as a circus scene. I strained to recognize it: a stick person holding an animal, perhaps a horse? The smaller blocks were of American symbols: an eagle, signatures.
I found it disturbing, like an overabundance of photo fragments scattered across a shelf: a collage of icons. I couldn’t see the value in it.
The final presentation had me yawning. It looked at a glance like nothing more than a canvas that had been used to clean brushes: a streak of light aqua, a long rectangle of a shade of dark green. The canvas was from an era when the artist apparently destroyed much of his work. Being a survivor from the artist’s early years it was valued at US$90,000 Not bad for a reject.
My brother-in-law is a house painter. Surely Dave had rags in similar styles. Perhaps he could get a few hundred for his rag pile?
Normally I enjoy the Antiques Roadshow. I like the style of 18th and 19th century furniture, collections of pottery, the shape and the glazes. I like the art deco period of both furniture and glassware. I’m intrigued with the fakes, purposefully made to deceive, with pieces of genuine, age-appropriate material but not the article it purports to be. Partly accurate, mostly not.
Life can be like that. The day to day can be fulfilling or mundane. Streaks of colour that fail to produce a panorama of developed scene. Sometimes our efforts achieve the desired results; often we fall short.
I love to hunt for winks of colour, especially during the doldrums of winter. On a walk in early spring, I look hopefully at the stretches of dead grass on the curb, the dry brittle branches. There it is: a single green bud swelling on a twig, about to open. Another few blocks and I might see a daffodil poking through the debris of winter.
I remember taking country drives with my folks. Dad often stopped suddenly on the shoulder of the road to admire the early crocuses or a sighting of geese overhead or a gathering of deer across the fence.
Once on a return trip from Calgary I was a passenger in Carol’s van. We agreed to check dad’s gravesite at West Zion Mennonite Church, between Didsbury and Carstairs. Carol pulled to the shoulder of the dusty country road and picked a few buffalo beans, radiant yellow.
She set them on the headstone, “because dad always liked them.” We continued to brush off a few sprigs of weeds and walked along the row to Aunt Mildred’s site. Our grandparents, an uncle and great-aunt and -uncle have headstones there as well.
We know that they are not there. It is just a point of connection, an opportunity to say, “I miss you. Thank you for the memories.” It is also reason to leave behind a little colour.
– Hoey is a longtime Gazette columnist
