Drawings
I was inextricably drawn to Mrs. Dessau's beautiful image as I davened (prayed) in shul (synagogue). I finally worked up the courage to ask Mrs. Dessau if she would sit for a portrait, after staring at her every Shabbas (Sabbath) and Yontif (Jewish Holiday).
For months, I studied the curves, lines, folds, and shadows traveling into 90 years of memories and experiences, finding childhood secrets sparkling and alive in her eyes. I wrote the story of Mrs. Dessau's portrait realizing I wished it were my own, and then never knowing how remarkable a woman she really is. G-d Should Bless Her and Her Family . I had intended it to be published in The New York Times, but the family requested for the sake of protecting The Evil Eye, that I withdraw the submission.
As Mrs. Dessau, (may she be remembered for the good) passed away this Fall, I am publishing my writings on my log.
Daily Log Entry Dec. 27, 1999 1:11 a.m.
I'm on winter vacation, and I am working on Mrs. Dessau's portrait. I observe last night's progress, as I do daily, when I must awaken at 4:44 a.m. for teaching. The slightest shift of the second round shine in her eye, a milliliter over, and I capture the sadness in her life of having lost a daughter- yet she still smiles, her warm, positive, confident, sweet smile of wisdom, some gentleness without being seen as only frail. She has a magic exuberance in her eyes that knows something about life that I pray I will reach, if I am zocheh (deserving) - that Life isn't easy - everyone has tszuris (tragedies), but you cannot go around wearing it - we must all overcome. And she wears the laughter from the happy times in the glimmer in the third wrinkle on her left cheek - it's from her childhood - as it is cute. The second wrinkle is of her son - as in all mother/son relationships (perhaps only those successful, where the mother is proud of her son, and laughs with that pride, and he gloats, knowingly) she must have heard some joke from him that made her laugh then ... through and through. Perhaps she didn't listen to her father and continued to suck her thumb, secretly, as her teeth have that slight (sexy, Cher-like) overlap. When I draw her jaw into neck, I find myself choosing to soften the line so as not to allow her to peek at the Austrian curtain-like sag of folds in the skin that must hang ... eventually. In the iris of her eye, I see what I see in my son's eye; some angel connection ... only some uniquely selected souls reveal this ... and her soft grey hair does glow angelic-like around her face like a glowing dusting of angel's halo. I placed a Victorian straw hat upon her head, instead of the dark-blue Derby she chose to wear, because the contrast was too harsh. She is so genteel and from a time when women would pick peaches, placing them into baskets to later make peach pie, and sit on white wicker rockers on a porch, as their families, inside the house, feasted on their delights ... she'd have a book on her lap and she'd look up, momentarily, digesting in the sounds of the family that IS the core of her essence of being. Because She knew and lived, and lives the life I wished for - but gave away for a Pot-Of-Gold, a glimmer on the horizon of something I was told tasted, smelled, felt, sounded, and obviously looked better through the window of my life's eyes. What glimmer will be captured in My eyes? Mrs. Dessau cares enough to wear her handmade sweater - a soft lilac color. Will I draw her hands that have made sculptures I've heard (from her daughter-in-law) fill her tiny apartment on the beach of Far Rockaway, where she now lives alone having recently been widowed from her husband of 67 years? (I saw the bright lights of hope in her eyes, dim dramatically, immediately after he passed away. I'd planned to draw her when her partner was alive. ) Sculptures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren fill shelves there, I'm told. My work has hung in museums and galleries, and has been offered for sale starting at $10,000. Will my great-grandchildren see my work? Will I be deserving to live and draw or sculpt their essence? I obsess over Mrs. Dessau as I phantom-draw her sitting in shul (the synagogue). (Jews are commanded to not create anew, on the Sabbath). I watch her eyes glow in the light pouring through the modern windows. Her hands are surprisingly adept in the way she hold the Siddur (prayer book) as she davens (prays). From time-to-time a great-grandchild crawls upon her lap and she laughingly and lovingly cuddles and securely holds that baby, because she is still strong enough to do so. She has retained something of the youthfulness of her young motherhood. She can still do that and stand, while my back, at 47 years of age, aches. She is surrounded by her daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren, their husbands and growing families, her son and his wife's mother and sister and her five children and their grandchildren and .... ... beyond any sculpture I have ever made, she created ush-pi-zim (ancestral guests) plaques of clay for the family Succah (Tabernacle) that are hung yearly, as that whole family (B"H), grows and gathers to eat as once the Israelites did, 3,300 odd years ago. What do I do? I spend my days and nights and vacations tweaking the lights and darks of my portrait of Mrs. Dessau, trying to capture this, not only as her portrait, but as mine. It should be noted that I was awarded the Frederick L. HIPP Foundation Grant from The New Jersey Education Association for Senior Citizen Portrait Project, 2000 which evolved into Portraits of Survivors and then Portraits of Survivors B'Torah. What I did not know, at the time I wrote this piece, was that Mrs. Dessau was a Holocaust Survivor and how other realities of her life had tested her being. She was not of the fragile, delicate Victorian visage I'd fantasized, which made her all the more my mentor.