It was my father’s birthday, October 16th - bright blue sky above, the river below.
We found a place along the Merrimack River that was peaceful, and no one was around. My daughter, my two older sisters and I were marking the end of my father’s days on Earth. As we tearfully and silently watched, his ashes swirled about with the leaves, red and gold, that lazily drifted by. Shocked by the fact that we were actually here, doing this, somehow, we had always known that this would be where he ended up.
My dad was the youngest son of English immigrants, in a city boasting a rich influx of Irish, English, Scottish, and Armenian people, full of hope in a booming industrial time.
In those days, Dad’s dad watched over the giant gear in the Wood Mill in Lawrence; he was charged with ensuring that all of its teeth were kept in working order. My father brought his father’s lunch to him every day.
But after school, after work, and probably for every free waking hour, my father and his array of friends spent their time on the Merrimack – the same river that provided the power for the livelihoods of their parents. My sisters and I listened to his tales of adventure, edited I’m sure for young female sensibilities. Undoubtedly there were drownings and near-drownings, ice breakthroughs, and collisions with unsavory items and humans sharing the water. But to young Fred and his friends, the river represented a connection to all that was possible – connecting Lawrence with the industrial present and future, the greater New England area and even the land of his own ancestry.
My mother was a beach lover. As a mother, she would pack tuna sandwiches and lemonade and her three girls and Aunt Ma, our surrogate grandmother, into whatever car she was driving at the time, and off we would go, to Hampton, Salisbury or Rye. These road trips reinforced our link to the Merrimack. We’d always cross the river in our big green station wagon, on the way to the beach.
This Spring I discovered a surprising connection between my recent paintings and the waters beside which our family spent many a summer day. Though I’d considered myself a committed ocean-lover, the purposeful, one-directional aspect of a river carries a comforting sense of perpetuity. A river allows solo navigation in the tiniest boat, rickety raft, or even floating on one’s back, dreamily gazing skyward. While it’s hard to beat the sound of never-ending waves rushing the shore, the flow of a river and the accompanying daydreams are indeed hypnotic as well.
The painting shown here was created a short time after we said our last goodbye to my father. I was moping about the house on a freezing, sunless January day. My daughter, an amateur photographer, was visiting me and I was boring her silly. “C’mon, Mom”, she pleaded. “Let’s go out & take some pictures!”
We chose a new spot, the nearby Assabet River. On this somber and quiet trip to a deserted local park by the water, I was inspired to paint three pictures of the cold, icy river, snaking its way oceanward. Once the three paintings were finished, my artistic tribute to my father and his life were also complete, and my forward journey had resumed.
Catherine Meeks - artist, teacher, mother, scooter rider, beach lover, chocolate fanatic, red sox fan.
See an exhibit of her pastels at the Concord (MA) Free Public Library, upstairs in the gallery. Now through May 31, 2010.
