CHAPTER 1: THE QUICKENING
Leslie Jamison’s words awaken Peter’s memories of his daughter’s birth, even as he mourns her death.
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“The Quickening” by Leslie Jamison
Peter Bruun
2020, 15”x22”, watercolor, gouache, ink & pencil on paper
I make my trek to the water’s edge two miles from home, the promise of spring in the light air. I sit, pull out my lunch, and read my new book, a collection of essays by Leslie Jamison.
“There you were: an arrival, a cry, the beginning of another world.”
Nostalgia for my Elisif: such promise, so much pain.
My thrill at her birth (more than 30 years ago now) rendered by Jamison’s words. From them, my drawing: a seed becomes a child, her fate her own, flowing like a river.
(There she was, before she was not.)