As far back as I can remember, PopPop painted.
It wasn’t that he ‘loved to paint’ — although perhaps he did, I can’t be sure because I never asked him. As a child, it never occurred to me to ask. But whenever my parents bought a house, he painted.
He painted my childhood room from a muddy mustard yellow to a sky blue. He painted the downstairs office, even when he doubted my mother’s dramatic burgundy color-choice (it ended up looking fabulous). He transformed my sister’s boring beige bedroom to a warm welcoming pink.
It wasn’t that my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t have gotten around to painting, they could and they would have done it all themselves — but they never needed to, because PopPop painted.
What a great and simple love is built of things like that: taking care of the painting.
