One day, Billy and I decided to fly to Amsterdam. I had been a teacher for six years and the summer allowed us to travel because he always took his vacation when I had mine. As an Art History minor, I spent many days in museums in New York City and Philladelphia writing about the Humanities, but I never took anyone I loved with me. It was beautiful, yet academic, at the time. What I did not realize was that the most novice appreciation of art is really the most honest and beautiful.
Two steel-toed workboots clapped loudly on the floor of the Rijksmuseum on Museumplein in the most touristy district in Amsterdam. Billy had finally met Rembrandt. He stood in front of this painting for more than ten minutes just staring and wondering-- mesmerized by Rembrant’s Night Watch
“How did he do that! That’s amazing” He said.
He walked back and forth, and back and forth, and kept looking at it wondering how it could have been painted because it is almost the size of one wall in our apartment. In my memory, it is the size of the side of a building. He just couldn’t fathom how the perspective and line were so perfect. As a welder, Billy always considered the size and shape of the canvas. His attention to deatail is alive and well in my apartment with my "hand made" steel DVD holder and bookshelf that he created on his lunch hour at work. His observance of this painting was scientific: HOW did Rembrandt complete this masterpiece? I told him that pulleys and lines and ladders were all used, but the look in his eyes was more important to me than the "academic ways" that painters in the Flemish school worked. I think we fall in love with our partners a little more each time we learn something new and this was that moment for me. That curious little cinch of his mouth,furrowed brow, and steely eyes on a painting that I had studied years ago in college was the moment I fell in love again.
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