We are on the downside of our annual family reunion. I am still working on the upside and will publish it later. (If that’s a problem for you, wait a couple of weeks and you can read them in order.)
As I write, I am in Dianne’s art class with Christina Chastain and Luna and about 20 other industrious and creatively talented artists and wannabes. Most of them are working on a hazy, lazy fall landscape scene in shades of grey and purple. I love this class Christina, of course, is a very good teacher…. patient and generous with her perfectly timed advice. Everyone here appears to come ready for fun. Lots of laughing and painting. “Keeping a dry brush with wet paint is really hard.” “Make sure it’s different shades of purple.” “Get some of those gold, red, yellow colors on your canvas.” “use too much brown and the dark colors “… “Is the music too loud? I’m taking a tai-chi art class next week.” “ What? Do you hold the brush with your teeth?” What a warm and happy community Christina has created in her space. “Do you guys need to spray your palette?” Voices of participants bounce around spreading warmth and joy.
Let me describe her space. It’s about a 50 by 30ft room decorated by floor to ceiling supports dressed to look like trees with tiny white lights and random, dripping winter Christmas lights. She has also placed large white globes, about 4-5 feet in diameter, with daisy-like metal flowers on the ends of spokes. The ceiling is high and the effect is one of a winter wonderland. There are pictures on every single wall signed by her various students over the years, including a couple of signed Tiffany Copen’s.
Dianne’s working on a bird picture, a kingfisher with a kill in his beak. She is focused on the background and declares she is not happy with the results. We have to leave early to go to an appointment—but I can’t remember what or why. I think we ended up going to see MamaMia at a theater in Ballantine Village. Di and I couldn’t get two seats together due to the crowd of people longing for a good ABBA fix. Later in the car going home it became apparent that Di and I had watched two completely different films. Me: where the daughter of Merle Streep, Sophie, returns to the island after Merle dies. She leaves her fiancé in Manhattan. His name is SKY…that information becomes important later… She holds a huge party to celebrate her mother’s life. All three of her fathers fly in for the celebration. In the meantime, Sophie meets and is intimate with three different boyfriends. SKY returns and she sleeps with him. The rabbit dies and she is pregnant. Sophie tells SKY he is the father and about 5 months later Sophia has the baby and all three of Sophie’s father’s are present for the celebrated birth, and all three boyfriends show up, also Cher shows up as Sophie’s Grandmother and sings her heart out! Everybody in the theater sang along with all the cast in the MamaMia finale.
We agreed the movie was a lot of fun. But Di saw a film that had two different young women who had two different babies. She thinks SKY is the father of Sophie’s baby, but there is another girl in the movie that has her baby “all alone” That’s all I know. She’d have to tell you what that means to her. She was very moved by the ending that happened in her film. I didn’t see her movie.
Of course, it rained all afternoon again. I swear, I must have done something wrong in a previous life. It looks like it is going to rain every day this entire 6 weeks of vacation. I’ll get back to you, if anything happens worth telling before I leave for home in Henderson on August 19th. We have plans to go to Lake Jocassiee if it stops raining long enough next week! I’ll keep in touch.