Pictures from an old vantage point

This weekend, my dad showed me one of my grandmother's paintings.

My grandmother was famous for a lot of things in our family and one of them were her handpainted cards and framed pictures. Each of the grandkids has one, as far as I know.

Long after she has passed away, the paintings are still here. This one, as far as I can tell, is of the second to last house she lived in. I would recognize it anywhere because that house shows up when I am picturing a place when I read novels sometimes. The memory is sketchy and not necessarily accurate, it stretches to fit the new stories I am reading and the same goes for this painting.

Off in the distance, you can see a row of little houses that were never there in the first place.

She leaves part document, part fancy for us to remember her, but also her imagination.

That is what I want my pictures to be for my kids. Part documentation of what our lives are like right now, part artistic license and there will only be their interpretation of facts and memories to help them decide which is which.

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