{"id":174,"date":"2015-02-16T10:54:48","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T15:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=174"},"modified":"2015-02-16T10:54:48","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T15:54:48","slug":"the-print-tales-of-redemption-resurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"The Print: Tales of Redemption & Resurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>\u00a0My mother imbued me with many things. Her taste may not<\/i> have been one of them. I\u2019m pretty adept at picking my own clothes (no plaids with stripes), avoiding stringing tacky Christmas lights (less is more), and finding the vintage red amongst a bunch of Tuesday night, boxed beauties. But charged with the responsibility of choosing the \u2018big art\u2019 to hang over the couch in her newly purchased condo, I dropped the ball.<\/p>\n

I may not have shared her preference for overdone roast beef \u2014 but I knew color trumped content. In short, if it matched, it could have be tastefully presented road kill. Armed with this knowledge, I emerged from our local art shop with what has, over the intervening three decades, come to be known as \u2018the print\u2019. A large (40 x 60), abstract, stylized \u2018landscape\u2019 in soft mauves, dusky roses, pinks, blues, and off-whites \u2014 all (tastefully) mirroring the palate in her love seat and chesterfield. I had a winner!<\/p>\n

Wrong. Agnes, long known for her forbearance and mantra of \u2018if you can\u2019t say something nice. . . \u2018, rarely expressed disapproval. I should have suspected the line had been crossed when the usual effusion of gratitude was elbowed aside by a troubled silence and pained smile. A few weeks of \u2018getting used to it\u2019 failed to soften and back to the gallery it went \u2014 those being the days when one could trial almost anything from mink to milk; and have it gratefully accepted back by the shop owner.<\/p>\n

Imagine the surprise, and frankly Twilight Zone moment, when \u2018the print\u2019 appeared a few years later in the waiting room of the mental health centre on which I had cut my psychological teeth. Little Albert and his fur phobia had nothing on the tingle that ran through as I collected my first patient of that surreal day and beheld the framed embodiment of my mother\u2019s principal disappointment in me \u2014 that I knew of. There it hung, disapprovingly for the next half dozen years or so. . . until Ministry funding allowed for a renovation on the already once reclaimed nurses\u2019 residence. Off the wall to god knows where \u2014 my censure was complete.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, the next incarnation had my own fingerprints all over it. Private practice looming and a need, once again, for big art \u2014 I\u2019d caught sight of \u2018the print\u2019 peaking out between the cast off curtains, draped over dysfunctional file cabinets and frail, stained sled chairs in said mental health centre\u2019s \u2018storage\u2019 room. Lazarus-like it rose again to adorn the entry hall at the newly christened office space \u2014 until a practitioner ballot (not even close!) voted it off the island \u2014 coincident with the Holstein lamp and the dead philodendron . Forwarding address: U-Stor-It, 123 Main St., Anywhere, ON. And there it remained, wedged between the cast off commode and bed-rail, all balanced, in the musty darkness of this rent-a-garage, atop the fold-out bed with its inquisitional \u2018mattress\u2019. Small comfort that it was reunited with old friends from those short-lived, halcyon days of condo living.<\/p>\n

And so to 2014. Mother now a dozen years gone and a downsize of our own staring us in the face, the call for a holding tank was heard, yet again. Sorting the trash from the treasures, the recyclable from the rejects began in earnest. Well-travelled luggage would make perhaps its terminal trip \u2014 to Goodwill. Salvageable furniture, from Depression-era to Ikea, off to House of Blessing or a final fifteen minutes of fame on Kijiji. Horse blankets, hide-a-bed, terra cotta this and decoupaged that, boots, bottles, and headboards \u2014 all well past their BBD \u2014 were earmarked for a more ignominious fate. Landfill. And, sadly too, \u2018the print\u2019 failed to clear waivers. Into the pick-up\u2019s already brimming box, Jeremy at the wheel \u2014 I think he lives for these cathartic scenes.<\/p>\n

I missed the last rites moment. But Jeremy is an excellent historian. And I cannot doubt his account. The seagulls circled, disappointed with the absence of anything organic. The \u2018dump stewards\u2019 scrutinized to ensure metal was fully segregated from less durable materials. Time being money, there was little ceremony. No blessing of the raised toilet seat booster (new meaning to \u2018booster chair\u2019). No quiet prayer over the faux-silver drinks tray. No elegy for the mis-matched kitchen dishes. But as he scattered a few handfuls of dirt over \u2018the print\u2019, he was sure that he eyed a figure in the shadows \u2014 just possibly planning its next life. In the immortal (as it were) words of Harry Miller: \u2018the print came back the very next day, the print came back \u2014 it couldn\u2019t stay away\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0My mother imbued me with many things. Her taste may not have been one of them. I\u2019m pretty adept at picking my own clothes (no plaids with stripes), avoiding stringing tacky Christmas lights (less is more), and finding the vintage red amongst a bunch of Tuesday night, boxed beauties. But charged with the responsibility of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}