That Dreamy Little Cabin in the Woods

There's no accounting to taste. Just exactly why it is some people adore Terry Redlin's perfectly darling paintings is unfathomable to those art lovers who declare unequivocally that any mess by Jackson Pollack is (ahem!) real art.

It comes as  no surprise that one might find a Terry Redlin or two on the walls of Woodbridge Clinic, since among the residents it would be difficult to find an admirer of, say, Piet Mondrian: I'm guessing Terry Redlin lovers almost certainly abound. 

I can't quite make out the painter who did the image framed and hung on the wall outside the bath, but I noticed the painting when I was next in line for a dunking. Like almost anything by Terry Redlin, a powerfully comforting source of light drops a heavenly radiance over it all. Here, it's a cabin in the woods (you're surprised?) surrounded by a gorgeous forest, every last limb of the blessed pines encircling the place hung heavily with lovely lake snow. Comfy. Sweet. Nary a mosquito. 

For years my wife and I nurtured a dream of buying a cabin like the one that lights the whole scene so warmly. We thought (maybe I should say I) that maybe we could swap the bare naked prairie of northwest Iowa for some Minnesota hideaway beside still waters or lost among towering pines someplace breathing out warmth like this one. The image the picture offers is almost exactly the sweet image we (one of us especially) painted in our hearts. 

When the opportunity finally arrived, we backed out of our Terry Redlin dream. Family matters kept us in Siouxland, the emerald eastern edge of the plains. A painting like the one on the wall of the home, right there at the nursing home's bath, I reckon will never, ever be ours. 'Twill always be the dream it was, both of us far closer to 80 than we'd like to scribble down. 

Redlin's work is not great art, nor is this knock off; but it did get me thinking, which is something great art should at least begin to offer. I was  in line for the bath, waiting for the soapmeister to wheel me in for my turn in the suds. When I looked up at the painting, I wasn't thinking of Terry Redlin, wasn't even thinking of the perfect charm of the log cabin in windless, saintly pines all around.

I've been here at and in the home for coming up on three weeks. How long I'll stay is anyone's guess. There are things I have to learn, I'm told, things I have to master before I'm shoved out into the world behind a walker or throned in a wheelchair, things as elementary as how to put on shoes, or get up from a toilet--unbelievably difficult stuff when for the most part you've got no legs.

Amazingly, just about the moment I looked at that sweet little warmly-lit cabin, the I couldn't help believing I had no business dreaming of the place because I had no way of getting there. That heavenly cabin has no ramp. It's beaten snowy path is no place for a wheelchair. I couldn't cross the bridge. I couldn't even dream.

I've changed, I'd guess. I never would have thought of what I couldn't do. What I saw was that I could never even get there.

For the record, the bath was big and soapy and hot on my swollen, numb lower legs, just what I needed. . .just exactly what I needed.