Henri’s Ennui

I got a thumb up, which I interpret as meaning, yes, you want to hear about my day:

Well, on Monday, my mother and I began a little road trip up the Great River Road (along the Mississippi) passing through old (and somewhat sad) river towns that look half abandoned. We had coffee at every cute coffee shop we came upon, and went in and out of *almost* every antique shop. We finally made it to our destination this morning, Maquoketa, Iowa. My mother, who is an artist, wanted to go there to visit Rose Frantzen’s art gallery. Rose does portraits, primarily, and she is awesome. My mom has taken her work shops before and so wanted to go visit the gallery. The gallery was great – it’s in the town’s old city call, which they renovated and saved from demolition. The artist’s eccentric 73-year-old mother, Ellen, runs the gallery for her daughter, while she’s upstairs painting away. The artist Rose was there so I got to meet her – and she is personable and talented and accomplished and young! Ellen the mum was really fun to talk to. I learned she has 6 kids – one is an opera singer in Chicago, one a composer in LA, one is Rose the artist, one owns a business in Prague, one is a social worker, and one is a green beret living in Germany. (Shit, she done good!) After spending 2 hours in the gallery, we went out for coffee in this renovated hotel on Main St. and invited the mum with us. (JK is rubbing off on me with all this “mum” business.)

So there I was, on a Tuesday afternoon, having coffee on Main St. in Maquoketa, Iowa, with two 70-something year old eccentric and beautiful silver-haired women (my mum and the artist’s mum – Rose couldn’t join), talking about art and Ellen’s 6 kids, and Rose’s efforts to turn Maquoketa into an artists’ colony, and the huge party they are having in July to celebrate Ellen and her husband’s 50-year anniversary with all 6 kids home at the same time, for the first time in years…. All this when, just a short while ago, on a similar Tuesday afternoon, I would have been in a suit doing lawyerly things in downtown Chicago and being miserable. Funny how quickly your life can change if you want it to.

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