Saturday I decided to take advantage  of the  afternoon sunshine and attempt to photograph my most recent painting outside on the driveway behind the house. The house next door to ours is under renovation and painting crews had been dodging the rain all week trying to finish their work. They were back at it with the same notion I had  — take advantage of the afternoon sun.

After finding a sunny spot on the asphalt, I set up my easel. Then, camera over my shoulder, I carried out the new painting I titled The Ark of the New Covenant in which a pregnant Madonna, cradling her unborn child with her hands, looks slightly off to the side, smiling in beatific contemplation. It will be one of my Christmas card images, with an inside text reading, “Love is born at Christmas.” I know it may be unexpected, even a little jarring for some folks to see Mary depicted as obviously pregnant, but for me that’s always been what Advent is about: expecting a miracle.  I especially like this image because I based it (loosely) on my cousin, who is bringing the next member of the Duffy clan into the world some time this month. But I understand it may not be to everyone’s taste, and I have had some qualms about even printing up the cards and trying to sell or distribute them. Would anyone want them?

Just as I was trying to figure out the best camera angle to photograph my expectant mother, I heard, “That’s a beautiful picture.”

It was one of the young men working next door who had turned away from the trim he was touching up to smile at me over the fence.

I laughed, “Thank you. I’m a painter too, but a different kind of painter.”

He continued to look at the picture. “She’s beautiful,” he repeated dreamily. Then he suddenly asked, “Do you do portraits?” I said yes I could, although most of my work consisted of religious pictures.

He went on, “The reason I asked is my mom died when I was 14. I’ve wanted a portrait of her, but I never thought I could get one.”

Immediately I was touched. I conveyed my sympathies as he went on to tell me that his mother died of a brain tumor just like another member of the family who had a similar genetic predisposition.  I didn’t know which moved me more – the fact that he’d lost his mother at such a young age or that he wanted to honor her memory with a portrait.

Although I hardly consider myself a professional portrait artist, on impulse, I said to the young painter, “If you have a picture of your mom, I’d be glad to take a look at it.” He didn’t have one with him, he said. He only had two pictures of her, and neither was very good.

Two pictures of a mother he would never see again in this life. I lost my father to cancer when I was 20 years old and he was 50. I’ve already outlived him by 5 years. Before her death in 2009, a loss from which I am still reeling, my mother was widowed for  33 years; they were only married for 22. Some times it’s almost as though my dad never existed — until I go through the boxes and boxes of photographs, yearbooks, and slides that show him at all stages of life from infancy to middle age. I have pictures of him with his parents and siblings; as a grave young corpsman with the Third Marine Division on Iwo Jima; with me and my mother and my cousins; with his friends; pictures of him in serious studious poses like the poet and scholar he was, and pictures of him clowning to the camera like the consummate actor he was.   I have my father’s life captured in photographs (I even painted his portrait once), and when I want a good belly laugh or a few wistful tears in his memory, I have a wealth of material from which to choose. At the bottom of this post I have placed a picture of the two of us in 1960 on the lot where my parents would build their only new home — with a VA loan. I love that we are looking off into the same direction. It was my father who taught me to have a vision.

The young painter has two pictures of a mother he lost at age 14, six years younger than I was when I lost my much-photographed dad.

Unfortunately, before the two of us could speak further, the wind picked up and blew the painting off the easel. The painter cried out in dismay, but the canvas fell flat on the asphalt driveway undamaged. I’m pretty casual with my paintings in the way they are stored and displayed, but I can’t photograph a moving object, so I had to go inside to ask my husband to come out and help hold down the canvas. The young man returned to his work, repeating, “It’s a beautiful picture.”

After a couple of snaps we picked up my gear and took everything inside. It was just too windy. And, it turns out, too sunny. The picture threw back too much glare to make a useful photo.  An hour later, my husband, who had returned to the back yard to corral our errant dogs, came in the house to get one of my business cards. The young painter had requested it.

Whether or not he’ll commission a portrait I don’t know — and I wonder if he even has a photograph suitable for a portrait artist to work from. I think what moved him was not the quality of my work, but the subject, the fact that the Holy Mother is so obviously pregnant, so obviously in love with her unborn child. And by extension she is also in love with us because she is the Mother of the World. Each one of us is her child, and she carries and nurtures us, bringing us to new life in the love and spirit of her son. Not to employ cliche, but I believe the young painter saw her image and felt the love. I don’t care now what anyone else thinks of that picture, or if I sell a single card. The one person who was meant to see it saw it.

I know the Blessed Mother watches over this motherless young man, and I believed she showed herself to him for a reason. I pray that he feels her loving presence, and, keeping that presence in mind and heart, remembers that under her protection none of us is ever orphaned, a promise which deeply comforts me as well.

Wishing you a space for grace in your life today,

Kate