My mother painted not only on canvas, but inside my mind.  That is the terrible privilege of being Mother – you are granted permission to step through a doorway which widens only for you and across which threshold, whatever you conjure will become part of the Realness of another human soul.  And on a few occasions Mom cast the spell of her father’s garden on my inner world, filling me with noble Lombardy poplars, and tantalizing white peach trees and the heavenly embrace of lilacs upon lilacs.

And I have been looking for that place ever since.