A Picture Is Worth...

It's amazing what a single picture can do.

Even a picture we haven't even thought about in many, many years.

I have been traveling in Michigan this week. I wish I could say that it was a pleasure trip with Diane or a fishing trip with pretty much anyone who wants to go fishing with me.

No; this has been a business trip. I spent Monday and Tuesday meeting with customers before heading to Lansing for a trade show Wednesday and Thursday.

Clara's Restaurant, located in an old train depot, caught my eye as I was looking for a place to go for dinner after setting up the trade show booth Tuesday afternoon. I love trains and old train stations and, as an extra bonus, this was just a short walk from my downtown hotel. While the food was good; it certainly wasn't something to write a blog entry about.

The atmosphere; particularly one picture, was a different story entirely.

Clara's was decorated with many photographs and paintings depicting life in the railroads' glory days. Many of the images were captivating; photographs of a family, long dead, dressed in their best clothes to have their picture taken. Others were thought provoking, or even sad.

One painting, hung high up on the wall, though, took my breath away.

As a kid we all loved going to Nana and Papa's house. Their house was so different from the hustle and bustle and constant change that was our home. Their house was decorated like an old person's house; with pictures that would seem out of place somewhere else, but seemed perfectly placed in theirs.

One of those pictures hung over the sofa in their living room for as long as I can remember. It was a picture of a woman with long hair in a flowing gown playing a grand piano. The woman was angled away from the viewer so you really couldn't see what she looked like.

We always joked that it was Mom in the picture.

And there it was; high on the wall of Clara's Restaurant in Lansing, Michigan.

It took my breath away.

I looked at the picture of "Mom."

Mom, who has been gone for nearly three years.

Mom; who never looked like that, dressed like that nor certainly ever played the piano like that.

But there she was.

The image, and all of the memories that came with it, washed over me like the crashing of the sea. Things I hadn't seen and thoughts I hadn't thought in decades came rushing back to the forefront of my mind. For a few brief moments I was there again; sitting in Nana and Papa's living room. On one side was the console television in a cabinet of deep mahogany with doors that closed over the screen.  Across the room was the sofa with a spot on the back where Papa's hair, combed with Vitalis, left its greasy mark.

Above the sofa was - The Picture.

The one of Mom at the piano.

The one that caused a lump to form in my throat and tears to well up in my eyes as I sat, unable to look away, at a table in a restaurant in Lansing, Michigan decades later.

I could talk about that picture without emotion any time through the years. I could even laugh at how the four kids imagined it was Mom without batting an eye.

But somehow seeing it again was different.

It was Mom, and for that brief moment, it was like she hadn't left us at all...