A window to my past. by Mark W. Ó Brien

"After Hart." ("A Scene in the Helderbergs near Albany.")

© Mark W. Ó Brien 2017

Recently it was the anniversary of my Mom's death. So it seemed appropriate to take my daughter and granddaughter to one of her favorite places. 

One of the fondest memories of my youth is that of walking through museums with my mother. 

Many was the summer when we wandered through every museum from Glens Falls to Albany to Williamstown Mass. and Bennington Vermont. 

One summer I remember she read someplace about the burgeoning art of gravestone rubbing. The next thing you know she dragged us to Vermont to make a rubbing of Robert Frost's gravestone!

By far Mom's favorite museum was the Albany Museum of History and Art and it was always a highlight of my summer when we went to see "The Albany Mummies." Capped off by seeing The Hudson River School Landscape paintings!

Mom was an amateur landscape painter who never got to fulfill her dream of art college because "Women didn't go to college back then."

So, when I reached college age and wanted to go to art school she happily lived vicariously through me.

When my children were born I did likewise by taking them to museums whenever I got the chance. By then there was also the New York State Museum in the Empire State Plaza. 

My kids still talk about the time I took him to see an exhibit on the making of windows. They sat with me through the most boring slow paced movie about handmade windows ever produced. I loved it! And they enjoyed it just because they were with me.

The other day, for the first time, I went to the Albany institute of history and art with my daughter Sarah and my granddaughter Josephine. Passing on a tradition now four generations long and strong!

~

I miss my mother
And our walks through museums
She taught me how to see.

~

© Mark W. Ó Brien 2017

"Loaded with convincing reasons to go..." by Mark W. Ó Brien

"Sunset Road."

© Mark W. Ó Brien 2015/17

My father loved his big Irish Catholic family. One of the things he always wanted was a house to support it and a car to move us around in comfortably. In 1960 he got the house, but it took a few more years before he achieved the vehicle necessary to haul us all at once. That car, was a Madeira Maroon colored '67 Vista Cruiser! Equipped with a "Jetfire Rocket V8" engine powered by 315 horses, a sporty "Vista View Roof" and the patented "forward facing third seat" that "made everyone feel like members of the family!"

Three years separated my younger brother and I from our three older siblings. They sat together in the middle row of seats and enjoyed the "Unique Tinted Glass Vista Roof Views" as we tore down the highway. In many ways my younger brother and I were more like a second family. Although we faced forward, we knew we were in the caboose and tended to watch scenery out the back window instead.

Most weekends during the summer months Mom and Dad would take us up to the local John Boyd Thatcher State Park, in the nearby Helderberg Mountains, for family picnics. I remember hiking the Indian ladder trail, swimming in Thatcher Park pool, and playing tag with my siblings along the split rail fence lining the cliff edge. All the while the smell of hamburgers and hotdogs wafted about on the breeze...

Afterwards, just for fun, or to make the day last a little bit longer I suppose, at my Mom's request Dad would often drive the long way home through the mountains. Those were happy times, their sunsets and landscaped silhouettes left lasting impressions in my mind.

My thoughts would drift and blur with the activities of the day...

I learned to appreciate
how life and beauty recede 
out the back window.

~

© Mark W. Ó Brien 2015/17

"Because God's grace has spilled over into our lives..." By Mark W. Ó Brien

"Because God's grace has spilled over into our lives..." 

© Mark W. Ó Brien 2015/2017

I dreamed I found the Seanchaithe's buried treasure and hoarded bequests in my mind brimming with the light of great stories. Inside my head I stood beside Ononta'kahrhon as nightfall arose from an expanding afternoon. Suddenly, I knew I must pour this light out like a bucket of sunset upon the heads of my children's children. The light, of memories of a future far away place in June. The light of an unexpected fire that I drew on a chalkboard, as an apprehensive child, when I looked out the window 'til the window disappeared...


It was a good dream,
I saw my dark haired grandchild
climbing up your hill!

~

© Mark W. Ó Brien 2015/2017