LA PALETTE DE MA MERE

It was a beautiful day in early spring, and after a very long and difficult winter the sun was finally out, the air was warm, and my mother's legendary rhododendron tree was starting to burst out into gloriously blowsy pink blooms. It was just the two of us that weekend, my mother and me, and the day before we had gone for a drive through the vineyards and we'd stopped for ice cream cones.

So that morning I felt like I really had to get back to work and I wanted to start thinking about making the kind of palette painting I'd done for her for her 90th birthday available to other mothers and daughters, or fathers and sons, or husbands and wives, or friends, and so on. 

My mother and I had had an excellent good time putting brainstorming colors from her past and present a few months before, and that morning she was looking perkier than she had in quite some time and I wanted to take a photo of her with the painting. Ever the good sport and always up for an artistic project together, she carefully picked her way down the stairs to the patio where there was some lovely light, and she posed for this photo cheerfully while I cursed indelicately at my obsolete camera.

A little later that afternoon some friends came over and we had an impromptu tea party under a striped umbrella and we planned the comeback of her exceptional rose garden and our ultimate victory over the greedy deer. We did not know that her heart was even then giving out. 

I would give anything to be able to live that weekend over and over again, but all I have are photographs and this painting, which I find is made all the more poignant by the fact that the colors which I attempted to capture so precisely were colors which she could no longer see and which existed for her, because of her failing eyesight, only in her own memory. 

My mother's colors are, from left to right, top to bottom:

  • Oriental Pheasant Blue, from her collection of 19th-century English chinoiserie transferware that has always been on the Welsh dresser in her dining room
  • The particular color green of her eyes

  • Sauvignon Blanc, from her nightly glass of white wine, which she would always have "with plenty of ice", despite ice being sacrilege here in the Napa Valley
  • Mayonnaise, from her habit of dolloping great big scoops of it on asparagus, artichokes, and avocados
  • Sevres Blue, from her collection of little boxes and her love of antiquing in France
  • Hockwold Green, from the two magical years we lived with my father in England, near the Lakenheath Air Force base

  • Gold Hoop Earrings, from her signature look

  • Cecile Brunner Rose, from the lovely scented miniature rose bushes she has always had planted about the house
  • Lake Tahoe Blue, from all the summers she spent in Tahoe in her childhood and for decades following

  • Ellis Lake Blue-Green, from the lake in the middle of her hometown, Marysville, CA, which she would walk past to go to school
  • Hermes Caleche, from the perfume she always wore when she was dressed up

  • Crabtree & Evelyn Pink, from the lighter rose scent she wore everyday
  • Morris Minor Blue, from the wood-trimmed car she learned to drive in England ("think left!")

  • Tahoe Pines, again from Tahoe, but from that particular pine-woodsy scent that she'd often pause and smell in the air wherever there were similar pines

  • Scotch Kiss Caramel, from her favorite See's Candies indulgence ("just one more")
  • Prom Dress Pink, from her 1950s dress, when she was a stunningly beautiful young thing full of sparkle and promise
  • Oriental Carpet Blue, from a particular rug with a deep navy base that has always been at the center of the house and represents home to me
  • Bambi Brown, the color of her favorite horse

  • Rhode Island Chicken Red, from her love of chickens (and eggs)

  • Lavender Sachets, from her genteel way of scenting her linens
  • Papier Mache Black, from her collection of Victorian mother-of-pearl inlay boxes and trays 
  • Teddy Bear Brown, from her beloved and slightly worn mohair teddy bear
  • Chris-Craft Brown, from the vintage wooden boats she restored with my father in Tahoe - she even won a racing trophy!

  • Historical Romance Pink, from her love of well-written novels by Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, and the like, as well as anything to do with love in the time of WWI or WWII