It's curtains for you...

We girls walk down the street, State street in the sun, glorious and proud, swishing in our appropriately pink dresses, hers, nylon, mine, silk. We are stopped, and praised, and stopped again, we two, glowing in our self-generated radiance. There are days that are beautiful, now, with just us, secret places of pleasure. She clings to my hand, tugs, and I twirl her, sparkling, this gorgeous daughter of mine, in circles, in the sun, like the flecks of marble dust that give texture to the Tamayo paintings that we just examined.

We discuss his early impressionist brush strokes, she reminds me that she knows all about Van Gogh. We point at vanishing points, and compositional techniques, how the lines draw the eye into a focus, leading, leading. I ask her questions, and she answers, hesitantly, at times, wanting to guess the right answer, the one that will make her mommy glow with pride. There is an image, in grey, of an open window. There is a revolver on the window sill. "What do you think will happen? What do the colors tell us?" I ask, "Algo malo va a pasar," she replies gravely. "How do you know?" she points to the pistol, searches for the word in Spanish, and I supply it, and she nods. "Who do you think will get hurt, the person inside the room? or outside the window?"
"Inside," this time, with no hesitation.
We stand in silence, this child and I, holding hands, in our gauzy dresses and high heels. We move on. In the later period, in his darker phases, expressionism intimating its abstractions, but not fully developed, there are dogs, baring their teeth, bright colors, strident yellows, and reds, thick blacks, sharp whites. "What do you think is going to happen here?" I ask again, and again she replies, "Algo malo va a pasar..."
But this time, she notes, the violences explodes outwards, it is aimed out, not in, it is the colors, she tells me, that tell her about the anger, the rage, the snapping fear of the snapping jaws. She likes the guitarist, that is also shaped as his own instrument, but wants to move through, so we go, with her tugging me behind, back out into the sun.
In the morning she showered me with presents, a hand-made cabaza to shake in musical ecstasy, a ceramic announcement of her love, a hand-sewn decoration. She concedes to look pretty, for me, poses for my lens, pauses by the Siqueiros, and remembers about Trotsky. We go to the symphony and she snuggles her little head against my breast, enjoys the Bernstein, isn't too keen on Stravinsky's Firebird, puts up a valiant effort for Ravel. "I know Ravel," she says, and I kiss the top of her head. She decides to take me for Italian food, after all.

And the week slams into me with all the force of my stolen time, the hike in the foothills seems years away, and I wade through work, ticking off chores from my list. Tickets, purchased, house, cleaned (albeit, dishes were tackled by my dear friend Kik, and orchids supplied by another), papers organized, house sublet, cat de-ticked. The insomnia doesn't come from stress, I think, but lack of purpose, or excess of myself, and the curtains were hung, last night, to put the finishing touches on the room that promises to be a pleasant respite from the world, if only it could, by one taller than myself, that makes me laugh into the wee hours. So what if the darkened room lets me sleep past 8, to awake in a panic. "You're not a bad mom," she soothes, "but I wish you didn't rush me!" And I tug her hand, racing, racing with her tagging along behind at a pace slower than my urgent clip, struggling with her sweater, and wishing that she could have her weekend mommy back, just for today.