My parents spent most of their lives differing in their opinions of the world and what to do about it.

He felt that the ultimate sin was adultery. She felt that the ultimate sin was misusing a semicolon.

He tended to vote Republican, while she tended to laugh loudly at jokes about Republicans. He grew up believing in hellfire, damnation, and the Baptist church; she believed in reincarnation and pondering such issues as what, exactly, the Bible's authors had had against women. He listened to country music; she liked Gershwin. He would have been happy dressing in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie all his life--she forced him to color coordinate.

Where Dad rebelled against his strict background by smoking and drinking, Mom rebelled in practically everything she did.

In particular, she enjoyed rebelling against Dad's sacred cows. However, by the end of her life there weren't many things they still disagreed on. By now Dad was reading auras, eating health food, and voting Democrat. He's even adopted her tastes in music, decor, and clothing. It's hard to wind someone up under those circumstances, particularly if they are kind of weepy over your impending demise.

So it isn't surprising that during the last months of her life, Mom found a brand new thing to rebel against. Dad hung her High School picture in their bedroom.

Now, we don't know what Mom had against that picture. My brother thinks maybe it was that she no longer resembled it. I worried that she'd overheard me remarking that she looked like my brother in drag. (There's no shame in that-my brother does fabulous, convincing drag.) My Dad thinks it was her usual annoyance at anything sentimental.

Whatever her reason, she kept taking the picture down and hiding it.

Dad kept finding it and hanging it back up.

This kept them amused for weeks. Even when she could barely crawl out of bed, Mom would take that picture down and hide it again, each time in a more inventive place.

"This time," Mom warned him the final time she hid the picture, "I'm hiding it where you won't ever think to look for it."

One day it was finally over, all those months of changings and medications and checking on Mom several times a night. There was nothing left to do except plan the funeral. Consequently we all threw ourselves into that project as if it were the Olympics.

Since Mom's funeral as she wrote it, includes a slideshow of her life, all of us became very concerned with finding that picture. We felt it was a very defining picture of her, showing very clearly the transition between the awkward girl she was, and the sophisticated, mischievous woman she became. Besides, she is so beautiful in that picture. Everyone loves it.

Having a slideshow that didn't include The Picture, was unthinkable. In my zeal to locate it, I cleaned the living and dining rooms, dusting each picture and book individually, hoping to come across The Picture. We searched the piano bench, linen closet, and upstairs closets. Nothing. It wasn't there, but the place sparkled.

We went through boxes of wrapping paper, old photos, blankets, anything we could think of. "She wouldn't have thrown it out....would she?" My sister was genuinely worried.

"Where would Dad never look?" I mused out loud, as we paused to pant furiously and slam some icewater.

"His desk?" my brother suggested. Dad's desk is piled high with several years' worth of paperwork from running four businesses simultaneously and doing his own taxes. And of course he does not intend to touch it til after the service....so I gamely dug through a Pike's Peak of paper, filing much of it for Dad as I went. The Picture wasn't there, but the pile is now more like a snowbank than a mountain range.

My brother and I both searched a hole in the wall Dad's been meaning to repair for about five years....We got above the cabinets in the kitchen and dusted...we went through old food, pitching some of it...we even dug through all Mom's clothes. Any box that looked big enough to conceal an 8x10, got opened, including old board games we haven't played in a decade.

The last place we looked, was in a box under Dad's bed. We were nervous about it. The last time we all looked under Dad's bed, we found boxes of Playboy and Hustler, and Dad is such a private person.

But there was always a chance, so, we screwed up our courage and out the box came. Dad came in at just that moment. "What are you doing?" he asked, looking at us as if we were aliens who had just confessed to shooting Kennedy.

"We're trying to find The Picture!" we chorused, still fumbling with the box lid.

"And you think it's in here," he said dubiously, but he submitted to the search in the name of the cause. The lid popped open, and there were some things in there we had never seen before.

Our ruthlessly unsentimental Mom, who frequently threw out our paintings because they "clutter up the place," hadn't thrown them out after all. She had saved every watercolor I made, every letter we wrote her.

We were shocked. Mom had made such a show of rebelling against normal motherly stuff like baking cookies and bronzing baby shoes, and yet here it all was. Baby shoes, a decidedly corny and lengthy poem I had written in the third grade, (entitled Spring Is Lovely,) and old cartoons and papers my brother had written...programs from all the plays we'd appeared in, reviews clipped from newspapers, articles about the spelling bees we'd entered. We looked through it all together.

And of course, there, at the bottom, was The Picture of Mom, smiling that Mona Lisa smile, a glimmer of mischief in her eyes.

And that's when I began to wonder...Mom had to know that "someplace you'll never look," would make us think of the desk...and she knew that my obsessive, methodical nature would lead me to go through every nook and cranny of the house until we found that photo. She knew, better than anyone, how each of our minds work. Did she write the slideshow in, so we'd have to find the photo?

After all, she knew how lonely Dad would be, and that looking for that picture was bound to keep us kids in the house for days.

It would be just like her, to have arranged that whole frantic scavenger hunt on purpose. All those years she teased Dad over his sentimental nature, but now I know she treasured it, understood it, relied on it. I wonder if Dad knows....

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Edited by titannia at 07/25/2006 7:05 AM

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Edited by titannia at 07/25/2006 7:11 AM