A PORTRAIT IN THE PANDEMIC
They sat down to rest on a wooden bench at the bottom tip of the botanical gardens of Hawaii’s Big Island. Surrounded by pink orchids, yellow Hibiscus and verdant ferns, they settled into each other as a tired foot in an old slipper, my daughter nestled into the crook of my husband’s arm. He crossed his legs; she stretched out hers.
His white shins were rid of the office socks that were normally pulled up to his knees underneath a suit and tie. Sun-kissed, he sat comfortably slouched in running shoes, Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian-print short-sleeved shirt, a Panama Jack hat and sunglasses.
Her 11-year-old legs extended like two pieces of al dente spaghetti, one Nike-sneakered-foot with its knee bent and the other firmly planted on the ground. My cotton Indian print shirt, which she loves borrowing from my closet, opened up loosely on her alabaster collarbone, and almost covered her bubble-gum-pink shorts. Her hair, normally tied back in a tight ponytail, hung loosely and curly on her shoulders. Her long, guitar-playing fingers delicately held a rolled-up map of the gardens.
They watched the ocean splash in front of them in a comfortable silence, collapsed into each other like tired roommates sinking into a feather duvet. Few knew that these two hadn’t spent much time together over the past month. Few knew how much she longed for his company at home, and wished he were more present at family dinners than business meals. Few knew how excited she was for this special trip to Hawaii for her 11th birthday, and that she would later refer to it as the best vacation she had ever had.
I spied on them from behind a nearby palm tree. I photographed the scene, making note to remind her of it when our vacation would end, when he would go back to long work hours and nights out, when she would ask for him again at bedtime.
A sign near the bench, given to the botanical gardens in honor of a donor’s father, read, “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
I wasn’t the only one to notice the two on the bench. A visitor of the garden stumbled upon them, and asked if she could photograph them. She explained she was a painter and wanted to recreate this scene on a canvas back at her studio in Idaho. She gave my husband her business card, and he wrote his personal email address on the back of hers. He tipped his hat at her, and they parted ways.
A month later, we now find ourselves quarantined, somewhat lonely in lockdown, with newfound hours of family time. We can’t bear to look at the news anymore as there are few good stories.
This past Sunday, as we entered our third week of being shut in at home in San Francisco, my husband received an email from the stranger of the botanical gardens. She had completed the acrylic painted portrait and sent us a photograph of it from her studio.
“As an artist,” she wrote, “I was struck by how happy and comfortable (as well as young and beautiful) the two of you were as father and daughter.”
We wrote her back, offering to buy the portrait, but she refused, wanting simply to send it to us. We told her we would only accept it if we could make a donation in her name to a charity of her choice. She has asked that we donate to either healthcare workers or people making deliveries during these critical times.
As it turns out, she is a retired second grade teacher, and her husband is a member of the folk group, The Highwaymen. All she knew about my husband and daughter were their names, and assumed, rightly, they were Italian. In our exchange over email, she expressed her grief and sadness for Italy and its people during these trying times of COVID-19. Perfect strangers united by words and art, we bonded over the misery we share for our respective countries.
Every morning, as we read the latest reports about Italy on our phones, and by now, about America, we grieve and wonder how our respective countries will ever recover. As the death tolls rise daily, my two former stomping grounds, New York and Italy, are now battlegrounds. As I write this, nearly 15,000 people have died from the virus in Italy, and almost 120,000 have tested positive. In Manhattan alone, 52,000 people have tested positive, and the state’s death toll (almost 3,000) has nearly doubled in the last three days.
To heal, we huddle together as a family, and long to see our families both in America and in Italy, all of whom we can now only reach through a computer screen.
We look back on those Hawaiian days as if they were from another decade, and that leisurely moment on the bench frozen in a seemingly care-free time capsule.
The painting should arrive in the mail soon when an essential worker will risk his or her life and carry it to our doorstep. We will hang it near the dining room table where we now sit down together every night, in famiglia, and Sofia smiles when devouring the meal that her father is now home to prepare.
The photo I snapped of them before Susan Helton, the artist, saw the shot as well, and proceeded to paint it.
