My Art Historian Daughter
The Louvre, from our trip to Paris last month.
My art historian daughter rolls her eyes every time she takes a picture of the Louvre.
She’s archiving the memory, not for the 2042 version of Instagram, though the likes or the points or the social currency of this deeply digital generation do send a ricochet of endorphins through her brain. No, my art historian daughter takes this photo because she knows I need to know she’s alive. Activity is her love language. My art historian daughter is studying abroad in Paris, because we asked her to, because we can afford to, because we weren’t even sure if 2042 would exist and now it’s here.
My art historian daughter is more a character from a play than an actual offspring. In actuality, they will see accounting or engineering as an act of rebellion. They’ll push against everything I am and I’ll still be thrilled because they’re forming their own personhood. Or they’ll never exist at all.
My art historian daughter goes to the Louvre every week, trading her textbook money for a membership because why read when you can smell the paint? She spends each day in a different room because she knows she could never truly see everything. She speaks French, unlike her parents whose phrases are limited to Tu parle anglais? and mutterings about chiens. She laughs at our accents and still we smile because we thought the Earth would be gone. We thought there would be no more French.
The Water Lilies by Claude Monet at the Musée d’Orangerie.
Today, my art historian daughter prefers the Musée d’Orangerie, losing herself in the smudges of water lilies that Monet painted all those years ago. She means to go to the spot where he painted, but she loses track of the time. And maybe she’s me, always two days short of a lifetime. Today she prefers the Musée Rodin. Today she prefers the Musée d’Orsay. Today she prefers the Pompidou, where she fell in love with a stranger and never caught their name. I never laugh when she changes her mind. I change my mind all the time.
She steals Lincoln Logs from her kindergarten classroom because she wants to own something. They fall out of her backpack while we’re at the grocery store and I’m transported back to the same memory from my own 5-year-old body, back when I thought the phrases “on sale” and “for sale” were synonymous because we didn’t buy otherwise. Unlike my own mother, I don’t get mad about the toy. But we fix things. The grocery store is our time together.
La Rue Montergueil by Claude Monet at the Musée d’Orsay.
My art historian daughter loves more openly than me. She doesn’t have to teach her mother how to say “I love you.” But she does have to teach her. She writes about her own daughter without the fear that someone will read it as a pregnancy announcement. This is not a pregnancy announcement. My art historian daughter doesn’t have to worry about the minute by minute sexism she experiences because she does not experience it. Because she lives in a society that has fixed that. Because she’s not my daughter, but my son. Because she’s not my son, but my child. Because she’s not real at all.