The best is yet to be.” So we were invited by the English poet Robert Browning. These lines came into my head this afternoon quite unexpectedly, and with quite surprising force..
During the current pandemic crisis all kinds of activities are compelled to change the way in which they operate, if not to suspend altogether. Various ingenious solutions are being devised, and for the first time in my life I am beginning to appreciate the value and versatility of contemporary electronic communication. The regular life-drawing class I have been attending at the Ilkley Art School is a case in point, which is currently in suspension. Yesterday I received an email from them asking me to send in a drawing of hands.
Today I rose to the challenge and asked my wife if she would mind posing for me. So this afternoon we sat at the kitchen table, with pencil and paper in front of me, and I did my homework. It was an interesting challenge, and in the end I was quite pleased with the result, which took about twenty minutes to produce. The experience did hold one surprise for me.
I realised early in the exercise that usually I don’t pay much attention to my wife’s hands. Although I have drawn her on several occasions in the past, her head has normally been the focus of my attention. It was quite shock to realise that the hands I was drawing were those of my grandmother. There is a level at which I am aware of my wife’s age, but it never seems to be a relevant datum in our relationship. Somehow we have managed to grow into our seventies without it ever being a significant fact.
The experience reflects that which I had the other day, when it occurred to me quite suddenly, in the light of the current pandemic, that from an official point of view we are regarded as “elderly and vulnerable”! However did that happen? Continuing the quotation from Browning, however, I’m prepared to believe with him that “the best is yet to be.”