I admire artists. I have several friends who have the visual arts among their gifts, as does the teenager’s dad and his family. They have « the music » too. Well, the teenager’s dad has a pretty good ear for music, but he doesn’t make any. But visual arts is a language he speaks. And he almost went to Pratt Art Institute instead of Moravian College.

Me, I have always loved all of the arts but I have an absolute tin ear for music—it’s just an alien language I cannot speak or hear as those who are fluent do—and I struggle with visual arts.

I practiced for years to learn the basics of fashion drawing and every time I stop doing it I have to get out the books and magazines and teach myself all over again.

I commissioned a fashion illustration from Renie Hanna that still hangs in my living room.

I love the Impressionists— Berthe Morisot is my favorite and my favorite museum is the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

My friend Rachel has given us watercolor paintings, which I hang with pride. We need new glass for one, the strange one, which is slated for a new home in the living room.

And the only painting I ever saw that I HAD to have was one by Heather Pasqualino Weirich— and it has hung in my “entry hall” for about a decade and still mesmerizes me with it’s vibrancy and simplicity.

Interestingly, the two paintings in my bedroom were done by me and my step mom in those “any idiot can paint” classes. I love them, but I know they are relatively crude and awful.

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How anyone can pull a picture out of their head and see the details to replicate on paper is a great mystery to me.

That is why I love photography. It captures moments that are happening. It freezes time. There are two great tricks to photography: 1. To take a lot of photos so you don’t miss anything and 2. To sense when a real moment is about to happen and not miss it.

My daughter’s latest iPhone has a camera way better than my iPhoneX and it has given her a chance to explore photography. Perhaps when she rouses from her bed on this rainy Sunday, I can convince her to pick a series of her favorites and host a show here on my blog.

But she took these photos of me yesterday, and I want to share them with you because they capture so much… We went to pick up her dress at The Attic clothes in Bethlehem. They are hosting online sales via Instagram and Facebook.

She asked to surprise her grandparents (her father’s parents) who live a few blocks away.

I said sure.

Now, my husband and I have lived apart for 10 months. We haven’t started divorce proceedings yet probably because it’s a new process and neither one of us likes to do new things that make us uncomfortable. There’s a whole lot of practical things that don’t impede our daily lives that we need to untangle. And we just haven’t.

So I always feel a little awkward showing up at his parents’ house. Especially unannounced as I have no reason to be there.

But I had a lovely conversation with my father-in-law and my mother-in-law fed us the leftovers her husband didn’t want to eat and she told the teenager stories.

And we compared the teenager to her paternal great grandfather who died before she was born. Pappy Buss was a farmer, a master carpenter who did some work for Martin Guitar, a pure-hearted Christian man who embodied everything a good person should be, and a mischievous prankster.

His first language was Pennsylvania Dutch and he played trumpet, unless I have my facts wrong.

But every since the day my daughter was born, I felt she had a piece of Pappy in her. And it gets stronger as she ages. Of course, she doesn’t have Pappy’s quiet demeanor.

So, here are the photos the teenager took of me at her grandmother’s kitchen table, eating angel food cake.

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