The Art of Appreciation- An Interested Life

My gorgeous grandmother just celebrated her 89th birthday. Above, Joseph and Frances Thomson shortly after they were married. They are such a handsome couple, aren’t they? He left us too early but she has led an amazingly healthy and interested life. Interested, yes, that’s what I mean. My grandmother is one of the most interested people I know, the primary reason I believe that she has and continues to live a healthy and vibrant. Her curiosity and interests, and attention to detail have always inspired me.

Frances Thomson, born Frances Chapman of Haskell, Texas, is a Texan through and through with a quarter Native American thrown in for good measure. An inspiration to our entire family, she is a graceful, fun-loving and energetic woman of the world. At the risk of sounding like Willard Scott, she paints, she exercises regularly (and always has), she loves a cool breeze, the fall foliage, and Jackson Hole. She has amazing style, always looks spectacular and knows what her “colors” are. She’s right on too. A fan of bold Chinese red and autumnal tones, my grandmother knows how to put on the dog.

Meme, as we lovingly call her, has a deep love for the Southwest and its Native American handmade jewelry, she has quite the impressive collection. I once drove out to the Zia Pueblo near Santa Fe with her to collect a few silver and black onyx pieces made by a local tribeswoman. We sat in the jewelry maker’s pueblo surrounded by her own family and barking dogs out in the town square, the smell of sopapillas baking and Zia chiles roasting in her kitchen, as she showed us each carefully crafted piece. My grandmother pointed out all of the details in the work, teaching me once again through her eyes, that great importance of detail.

Meme has always loved to paint but as a working mother found it hard to keep up with. The balancing act, it seems, has always been a challenge- not just for recent generations. Our culture looks back to the 50s and early 60s as a time when all women stayed at home with their children, the Peggy Olsons of that world an anomaly. While it may be true that most did stay at home, a great number of women were out in the workforce. Meme worked 3 jobs at times trying to make ends meet while my grandfather ran his dry cleaning business. To hear my mom recall her childhood, they literally worked morning, day and night supporting their four children in their small West Texas town.

When I was a young girl, Meme picked up her palette and paintbrush again. I remember her showing me how to illustrate a flower. We sat at the bar in my childhood home where she patiently painted a perfect Iris with me. I still remember how to draw that flower though I sadly did not inherit her talent. She paints with watercolors and has a innate sense of color and composition. She handpaints the most beautiful Christmas cards and I look forward to mine each year, they are truly treasures to behold. I value the way she holds tight to the things that she loves, making them an active and important part of her life- her painting, her appreciation of the seasons, her love of handmade things. I think it’s easy to have an affinity for things but another to make them part of your life. She has belonged to an art class for decades with whom she took yearly trips up into the New Mexican mountains during the peak fall foliage for both painterly inspiration and simply to admire nature at its finest. She knows how to slow things down and really appreciate the small things that make up the bigger picture. I’ve heard the saying “God is in the details” also as “the Devil is in the details”. It’s funny how that latter version really turns me off and I end up subconsciously not befriending those that live by the latter. My grandmother is a woman who sees wonder in those details and is not daunted by them but instead, delighted. 

Meme has a twinkle in her eye, a knack for unintentionally funny one-liners and an amazing way of completely ignoring matters that she does not approve of, blatantly ignoring them- works for her. She cracks us up and is our modern day heroine. She spent this past birthday with family, most of whom live in Texas (sigh- I was not there, I have always been the black sheep on the East Coast). I have missed too many of my grandmother’s birthdays and will be there for the next one when she leaves her decade as an Octogenarian and officially enters into her years as a Nonagearian, wow. What does that make me, a Trigenarian? Whatever it is, I’ll be there with bells on. Happy Birthday Meme, here’s to many more.

xoxo
Kelly

Meme and Daddy Joe at Los Angeles’ The Brown Derby circa the late 40s.

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