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Is it art or a trivet?

I was so excited I could hardly stand it, waiting for my wife to unwrap the most expensive and extraordinary birthday present I had ever given her.

“Chocolates, thank you, dear,” she said, lifting two little packs of milk chocolate somethings with almonds out of the gift bag.

I hovered nervously over her as she shuffled further down among the tissues. “It’s kind of heavy. Be careful. It’s porcelain. I wrapped it in a towel.”

She lifted out the eight-by-ten porcelain tile and gazed at it with a puzzled look.

Grandson Lamppost Head, standing beside me, was puzzled, too. “Who is that?” he asked.

“Me,” his grandmother answered. “It was me.”

After a moment she asked, “Is it a trivet?”

“No, it’s not a trivet!” I exclaimed. “It’s a work of art. I commissioned your portrait.”

I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed by her reaction, but neither can I say I was completely surprised. You don’t stay married to a woman for more than 50 years and not know her.

I was, however, hoping for a little emotion.

Or at least an appreciative comment like, “That was really thoughtful of you, dear,” or, “I would never have expected something like this,” or, “You must have gone to a lot of trouble to have this made.”

Instead I got: “Is it a trivet?”

In 1971, as I was learning photography, I told my pretty girlfriend I wanted to try a camera trick. I wanted her to look at me as she tossed her head, swirling her long hair this way and that. I used a shutter speed slow enough to give a flowing quality to the hair, but not so slow as to blur her face. I shot frame after frame as she repeated the head twirl, hoping some would show the desired effect. The trick worked and I always liked those pictures, but they were in black-and-white. I wished to see the best one in color.

The moment I saw the finished painting, I felt my artist friend Sandra Eckstein had brought her image truly to life. I did not expect to be emotionally affected, but I was. My throat swelled. Tears came to my eyes.

It was her.

It was Honey’s skin, her eyes, the exact color of her gorgeous long, red hair, even the laughing sidelong look she gave the camera as she whirled.

I had been prepared to be somewhat disappointed with the hair color, given my slight understanding of the difficulties of painting on porcelain, gained when I interviewed Sandra two years ago when she was named feature artist for the Midland (Pa.) Arts Council Summer Gallery. She had won best of show honors the year before. I had seen beauty and detail in her paintings, but also something harder to define – the simple joy of life, perhaps.

Thirty-some years ago in California, Sandra traded quilt-making lessons to an artist for training in how to paint on porcelain. She learned to use an odd type of oil – motorcycle fork oil – to mix with powdered overglaze paints. Once painted, the tile is fired in a small electric kiln, fusing the image permanently to the porcelain surface. As indestructible as the tile mosaics at Pompei, my wife’s portrait actually could be used as a trivet, without harm. She was right about that.

I love this indestructibility aspect of porcelain art for itself, but also for its direct contrast to the fragile humanity – patron, subject and artist – who bring it into being.

I had warned Sandra that my wife, practical person that she is, with a deep aversion to being the subject of flattering attentions, would not have the same emotional reaction I had to the portrait. Even so, I was embarrassed to tell Sandra that Honey had asked, “Is it a trivet?”

Sandra responded with good humor, writing that, “truthfully, I understand her feelings because I am not an ‘oh wow’ recipient type of person either.”

Honey has rightly concluded that her portrait is really a gift to myself, but there’s more to it than that. I especially wanted the grandsons to be present at the little party when her youthful portrait was unveiled. They know their grandmother well. They know her many skills, her good deeds, her knowledge, her strength of character, her loving kindnesses, and many other wonderful traits. But they know her, they see her, as a matronly woman with gray hair.

I wanted them to see her when she was young, a girl with long red hair and a light in her eye. A beauty, a real real beauty.

(P.S. I finally got some emotion out of her. She cried when she read this.)

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