Portrait of Piotr and Ola (or is that Ola and Piotr?)

Kid O is in her on-loan playpen while we sit – One, my mother-in-law, Ola, Piotr and myself – at the dining table where we have just finished a typical Sunday dinner of roast chicken, potatoes and beetroot. We are now enjoying coffee, tea, and cake, and discovering the updated versions of one another having not met for years now. I know Piotr from a work setting eight years ago and Ola, his wife, from a year or two later. We’ve all aged, time waiting for no man, but perhaps we wear the damage less than most, than some, as the years have clearly been kind and Ola and Piotr look in fine health. They have always struck me as a strong, inspiring, and highly intelligent couple with whom we always spend a delightful time together. Kid O is circling the table, crawling happily away, probing the personal space of our visitors’ bubbles and then withdrawing again to the parent zone, as the adult conversation crosses the tabletop in multiple directions, sometimes whizzing and joyously dancing across. The Polish tongue prevails as I write – having slid into my own creative bubble - and everyone has been kindly speaking in English as well to accommodate me. It is as ever it was.

Piotr and Ola have modern haircuts with short, shaved sides and moussed longer hair on top. Ola’s is a dark rich brown and she is wearing a stylish and elegant olive green well-fitted dress highlighting her slender figure. Her eyes are a piercing green (which we clarify with the aid of her Polish ID card which states as such, given that nobody had actually known what answer to give my question quizzing their exact colour) and her whole appearance is striking – her glamorously pointed nose, her delicate zirconia drop earrings and bracelet and ring and her sculpted eyebrows that fit her face (unlike many) as though done by an artist. Piotr requests an upgrade from ‘zirconia’ to perhaps ‘diamonds’, but it might be too late now as I write rather quickly. Piotr has one of those friendly faces that never seems to age (not that Ola’s has either) and if it has, well, ‘ageing gracefully’ could certainly be written and I doubt that would be asked to be changed. He did earlier state that if he were not freshly clean shaven, his beard would be almost entirely white, Santa-esque. Babcia is now holding Kid O on her lap and Polish conversation is joined by the baby’s gorgeous gibberish.

Piotr is wearing a navy blue short-sleeved shirt with lots of white birds soaring, yet never colliding. It’s more tranquil to look at than such a real sky of birds would be, especially having watched the Hitchcock film The Birds (which Ola mentioned only a moment earlier in reference to a story about a cyclist accident Piotr had had with a young boy 5 years earlier).

Kid O is back from having her nappy changed by mummy. Babcia is telling a story to our guests and the satisfied buzz of everybody post-Sunday dinner can be felt moving around the air of the room. Ola’s character dances and that energy is worn on her facial expressions and gestures. Piotr is a calmer presence in words and movements, and it makes for a wonderfully blended partnership. Piotr has red shorts on and is the picture of summer chic, a tidy adult boy charm, and the couple is beautiful. They make an elegant pair and alongside One in her stunning white floral dress and Kid O in her blue and white vertical striped dress, it is a beautiful group.

Beyond the long lounge lunch, we go for a walk and then sit in the garden, Babcia remaining inside for both. We enjoy the rocky route (with Kid O falling almost immediately to sleep) that crosses where the stream passes near the entrance to the forest, which is just where we decide it is an adventure too far and turn back. One throws tales of her childhood in this forest village of fields, water, and trees out to us and we catch, admiring what sounds like a peaceful and idyllic start to life. It certainly retains its boomerang charm.

After a drink and a bite to eat with words swimming through the summer air into each other’s ears, a relaxing time in draining summer weather, Piotr takes some photos of the writer in a couple of different settings around and nearby the house. I then aid in putting Kid O to bed and we sit down at the table to eat something else, a typical Hungarian dish of Leczo, which is very popular in Poland, and talk some more while the newly born photos are uploaded onto our computer. Babcia sits quietly for periods of the earlier and later meals, as we speak English, and she listens more than contributes.

We make plans to meet them five days later and to reignite the flame and write part two of their portrait (this here living and breathing text. If you listen in close enough you will catch the sound of gentle exhaling). Sadly, owing to extreme weather and an unavoidable change of plans the second half does not happen on this occasion. That will have to wait for an entirely different occasion. Today has been a splendid Sunday shared and the book on a friendship long remains open. Distance is more a mental barrier than a physical one. If I imagine a frame for their portrait, I should have to conjure the grandiose and yet not detract from nor amputate the absorbing contents within. Every picture tells a story, moving ones are novels of indeterminate length. Ola and Piotr, Piotr and Ola, whoever comes first they are passing through their story very much on the same page. 

Based on a meeting, 2nd August 2020, Poland

Portrait of Lucy

The first aspect of Lucy that strikes me is the frequency with which she smiles. Every photo she has delivered to me has a near-standard grin, transforming what might ordinarily be a plain face into a Christmas tree with lights on, beaming across the room, flooring its inhabitants.

Those smiles are not for the camera, for the portrait, they depict a woman who naturally glows with joy and laughter throughout the day - able to entertain herself with thoughts, words, games even - drawing the elegant magic of moments, writing it into her own work, capturing a special force in a bottle as few are capable of.

Her eyes are a swirling, lovemaking combination of brown and hazel, flickering from excited to clouded, from vibrant to inspired, carrying the weight of her powers and her beauty neatly tucked inside, not hidden, swelling and shrinking, blooming and withdrawing.

She opened herself to the portrait, asked a few questions, I held her cyber hand and walked her through the tunnel of explanation. She listened, she understood, and she enthusiastically decided to participate. She shared older photos and took one immediately upon my requesting it from her. It was a simple interaction and looking at her face in photos, with a smile lit on her mouth that spread across her face like a plague in all its unstoppable glory, regardless of the change in hair colour, it felt like proof of how successful communication between two people could actually be.

One of the photos Lucy sent me was taken in Paris. Well, it included the bonus prize of being five photos in one. In each, a delightful smile the viewer could almost taste. In one part she wore a beret in typical French style as she sparkled in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Then she joked in front of the Louvre museum, smiled wearing sunglasses while standing with the Cathédrale Notre-Dame behind her. The final two had the lit-up-at-night Tour Eiffel and then the legendary edifice masterpiece Notre-Dame cathedral again, both photos with genuine smiles planted upon her lips, leaking again across the surface of her face. Three of the snaps show her wearing the same top, from a sightseeing tour of Paris. The other two are probably from the same trip, possibly even the same day. It looks like a magical time was had.

In most images her hair looks to be a natural mousy brown. In one outlier, she has bright bleached blonde hair, a look that denies her natural presence. Trying out new hats is natural for an artist such as this female poet, this she-force of kindness and imagination.

Videos of her reciting her own poetry online showed her to have beautiful diction, language meaning something, the message of her words also transmitted on her delivery, as well as the expressions on her face and her dancing mannerisms. As the words tumbled thoughtfully from her lips, every part of her was steered towards the task, designed to maximise the potential of her language and find the mark they were intended to hit, one after another landing at its centre.

As I listen to her, allowing those caressed words, as they were mothered, nurtured and unfurled, it is clear love is all around us. It lives in what we do and how. Lucy possesses a beauty that stuns and stops, seizes and drops.

Her pale white English skin crumples like delicious paper as another smile forms. Her scrunched-up nose of several photos is another typically bright feature of her radiant face and her hair flows well past her shoulders, sometimes let loose and at others in a ponytail or even pigtails. In Paris she wore lipstick but in other photos she has naturally light pink naked lips. Her top front teeth appear to jut inwards slightly, and her cartoon smile is undeniably contagious.

As the eyes light up and the smile returns to the bones of her face, I notice how the cheeks protrude, making the lines from her nose to her mouth fierce, how a horizontal line halfway down, or perhaps up, between her bottom lip and the upside down peak of her chin becomes more stated, and having a couple of photos of her in armchairs as well as ones of her out and about, it’s hard to avoid the sensation that she is at her most radiant and happy when at what looks like home, in the comfort of her own environment and with her own possessions, surrounded by the words on pages in books on shelves that she must surely have. Or… it occurs to me, she is on the verge of releasing some of her own waltzing words as she sits, smiling, her thoughts a group of beasts about to be uncaged.

While many people become dull after initially appealing, based on looks or status, Lucy  exudes a charm, a neat trick indeed, that depicts her as someone who would become more interesting over time, a gift that keeps giving, a book you re-read, a place you visit over and over.

Late September 2020

(Portrait done from photos)

Portrait of a Family

We have been here for ten minutes and words have been spilling out of our mouths at some pace, a-tumbling they go. One, our daughter and I have come to visit a family of friends. The German man and his Spanish wife (she is actually half Spanish and the other half is German) have a daughter two weeks older than our own excited child (a bag of toys was introduced to the room not long ago). Our friend’s daughter, Freya, just switched her face from uncertainty to an enormous smile, lighting up our own faces. That is the magic of children. She was eating in her highchair until only moments earlier and is now sitting on the floor with Kid O as they are facing each other and playing with toys, analysing one another, becoming reacquainted after a while without meeting. Freya is showing Kid O her toys and there are sweet snacks on a plate now being passed between the children. The mother, Consuela, seems more Spanish than anything, and her and her husband, Michael, flank their daughter as they all sit on the floor, the adults watching the children, One sitting with Kid O in the foreground in front of me and in between me and the lovely, friendly young family. Their flat has a wide-open patio door to their balcony and the church bells that loom high over their flat – mere footsteps away – chime frequently and splendidly, pouring into the room from just around the corner in the town square as Sunday afternoon’s unique charm washes over us all, relaxing in the rooftop flat they live in.

After a break for some delicious apple pie that Consuela baked this morning - and explaining that my writing does indeed incorporate such details, coming across much like a literary paella – I get back to work with their portrait.

Freya’s toys are all over the floor, as the children play, explore, and quietly move objects and the adults’ things, anything they can get their hands on, around from one place to another. The children keep nibbling on small pieces of a banana cake that Consuela also baked earlier today. She is obviously a mother with too much spare time on her hands (nudge, wink!). Consuela grabs Freya, who has a huge piece of banana cake wedged unmoving in her mouth. It is approximately two inches wide. She then carries on about her business playing with her friend as if the food were not uncomfortably jammed there. Freya has very light brown verging on blonde hair (in German it is called ‘mittel blond’ and a fringe just over a centimetre above her eyebrows and hair cropped neatly (I am told cut by her mother).

Freya then starts to feed a piece of banana cake to Kid O – which is rather comical - before she opens her birthday presents we had bought her, as she turned one two weeks ago and we had not been around for the birthday party.

Freya is wearing a grey dress with white unicorns and some strange other creatures on it along with hearts and rainbows. It has no sleeves and underneath it she has a pink long-sleeved t-shirt. Her outfit is finished off with black leggings and bare feet (our daughter having also shed her socks, it really must be a thing). Consuela puts her hand into the red gift bag we brought with us and she takes out the olive green and white dress we got Freya as a birthday gift. The other present of jigsaw puzzle cubes had been opened and unleashed on the floor a little while ago, already forgotten by now, old news. They had also taken the card out of the gift bag and read it.

Michael is now lying on the floor on his elbows, with his head and upper body held up, observing the scene of the room. There is much activity – the kids and the adults constantly shifting positions and then suddenly, I am alone, everyone having departed for one reason or another. The family of three returns first. Michael is wearing a long-sleeved navy-blue t-shirt with squiggly horizontal white lines, a grey t-shirt underneath, just making an appearance at the neck, and blue jeans and light blue socks. Michael has a wedding ring on his right hand, as Germans tend to do, though he explains its presence there is that it would be too loose and therefore slip off if it were on his left hand. Consuela’s engagement and wedding rings are both on her left hand. She is wearing a blue dress with white flowers thereupon. She is also clad in black leggings and black socks with brown-framed glasses of the more intellectual variety. Her long, edging-towards-light-brown hair is tied back neatly in a ponytail. A few small collections of strands of hair fall around the sides of her face, creating a wondrously imperfect image, there to be tucked behind her ears, which she does every so often. Consuela is slim, has quintessentially Spanish-coloured skin, and her husband Michael is a smart and intelligent, pensive-looking creeping-towards-dark-blonde German man with a matching short and tidy trimmed beard. He has blue eyes, as does his daughter, while Consuela’s are green.

Freya has a small green tunnel that she crawled through earlier – starting on the balcony and ending in the lounge. We have all made a beautiful mess on the floor. There is no dining table. It was sold in the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic this year as there would be no visitors for a good while. There is a small wooden table near the patio and an abandoned balcony – as we all stayed inside in the shade. It is quite hot out and remaining inside appeared the sensible option. Looking outside, the pretty two shades of yellow awning, the table and chairs and plants in pots, it looks like if people were sitting there it’d be a scene to paint for Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir or the other classic Impressionist greats. Freya, like our own daughter, hates being told off as well as having the word ‘no’ directed towards her. She is wandering around the flat non-stop, searching for everything and nothing, doing what one-year-olds do. Michael is sitting on my right in a lovely yellow, brown, beige, and black armchair. The couple are tired and have been for a year as their child does not sleep so well at night and certainly keeps them on their toes. Despite their tiredness, they are infinitely welcoming, talkative, and amiable.

They have a recent sign of birthday celebrations – a balloon with HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it – and there are two shelves attached to the wall above Michael filled with books that look both rather old and new. There is also a lovely vinyl record player with a small selection of vinyl records – passed on by parents and grandparents – that are hidden from view in the cupboard below the player and are screaming to get out and be given a spin.

Freya gets to her feet and walks over to One to give her a hug - suddenly becoming affectionate with one of us for the first time – and then wanders off clutching a wooden spoon. The atmosphere calms and it becomes clear the playing and writing are reaching an end.

Afterwards, I ponder how the two girls were facing one another, touching, playing with, occasionally grabbing the hair or face of the other and generally enjoying each other’s company. Freya had kept looking at us, smiling regularly at us unlike on previous occasions, almost glowing with excitement, proving that we become increasingly familiar and trustworthy to children the more we see and interact with them. Freya is growing in every way imaginable, all the time, just as we see in our own child, and it is wonderful to compare notes with two delightful fellow parents.

It was an incredibly rich, vibrant, and hectic scene. The children - each a little hurricane blowing through the land of the room – were having a brilliant time together, and watching their interaction was a pleasure as the church bells chimed and that distinct Sunday buzz quietly filled the background.

13/09/2020