17 January 2016

Going to the National Gallery of Scotland with my 3 year old daughter

(written Tuesday at the hipster coffee shop...)

Even the metal ramp leading up to the doors is embossed and beautiful.  Pull open the heavy doors and enjoy the warm greeting of the person wearing tartan trousers, who usually scrambles to help us when they see our bumbling, chaotic entrance, complete with buggy and baby and bags!  ''Look!  There are our turtles!'' all four of the them carved in stone, holding up the corners of the donation box planted in the foyer.  My child stands in the most inconvenient places, unawares, watching in unself-conscious wonder while other visitors try to skirt around her into the inner doors.  I feel them take a mental step back from us - but do not fear us, dear tourists and pensioners!  We only come to watch and learn as you do, albeit in small baby steps each time - which is why we must visit more often - to sip up quickly the sights before our attention wanders.

We have our favorite friends - the stone turtles, the wooden lions (with their chair-weight bearing claws), the donkey next to the naked baby, the 'reindeer' crying at his death blow, the 'dead man'  (Patrocles) lying like a slab of marble on the wall.  We spot all the dogs and all the horses, immortalized in motionless liveliness within their lavish frames.  My prancing, golden, high-pitched companion, though she only reaches my waist, sometimes sees the clearest.  ''Why does that lady have no clothes on?''  ''I think that's a man, my love.''  ''Look at that horse!  A big brown horse!'' (I think it is unfortunate, or perhaps artistic justice?  This certain artistocrat should forever be standing next to the rich warm luster of his horses' rear end.  The horses' ass outshines the appearance of his master.)

And we love to visit the upstairs gallery with the blue couches and the 'snowflakes' on the floor.  ''I want to stay here forever because they have snowflakes on the floor...''  Before I visited with her eyes, I had never noticed the color of the beige patterned carpet or the fact that the walls and sofas were such a lovely blue.  But then, there are 'our banerninas' (of Degas) and the painting of the horse we like and the sculpture of the tiger eating the antelope.  And this time we noticed, 'Oh, the most beautiful picture!  Mommy, come!  Come!' with pinks and oranges and blues and yellows ('and no other colors, mommy') splashed recklessly across the canvas - a bridge between this dignified tour of the past and the irreverent spillings of new things rightly relegated to the Modern Art Museum.

I study the portrait of the young boy memorizing his book, wondering how the artist captured the sheen of almost blonde brown hair that remind me of my own masterpiece's gleaming?  (But hers are brighter.)  I would love to preserve that shining.  Lifting the veil between the ordinary and the eternal.

And when we leave into the misty, cold, rain-slicked city, the whole world is a painting wherever we look.