Waited all day for email containing the 'prompt' for a subject.
Guess I'll just have to trust that a topic I pick is just as worthy.
Got a posting today from my brother Martin in Texas asking if anyone knows about the painting Grandma (Maude Otto) left him called 'Syrian Girl'. It is dated March 16, 1964, which is about a month after her 70th birthday. A quick check at Mom's notes shows this is just after Maude's mother had a stroke and just before her husband, Grandpa John, has his heart attack. She did a portrait of my older sister around then, too. Maude must have started down-sizing for the move from the farm into town at this time because she gave away some of her paintings to family members that summer. I imagine painting was a relief for her from all the daily cares. Or knowing her, she possibly just decided to use up all those tubes of oil paint rather than throw them away.
This is the woman who had a shoebox labeled 'pieces of string too short to save'. Full of very, very short pieces of string.
Anyway, I checked Grandma's notebook and didn't see anything about the Syrian Girl.
Learned something about resilience, though.
