My Grandfather's Last Supper

It was vintage Da Vinci, framed and hung in a deco kitchen on Fremont Street. Jesus and his disciples chatting and blessing at their long table, watching me pull cheese from my baked ziti at our oval, Formica one. Here was a masterpiece configured for suburban consumption: The Last Supper lined and numbered on a cardboard canvas accompanied by burnt umber, say, corresponding to the number six blobs, carmine to those numbered with tens. The kit, like the kitchen table, was from the fifties, the kitchen set firmly in the seventies of my mind. The paint-by-numbers composition made an impressionist of Da Vinci-- all lines of realism removed, the faces and robes, the plates and food, the dining room figured out of pigment changes and articulations of shadow and light. Every hand of every man gesticulating like my Italian relatives gathered for holy day meals, all talking at once and trying to be heard.

What did my grandfather know of Da Vinci? He knew Catholicism, having converted to it when he married my grandmother. What did he know about making art? He made things as a craftsman makes things. After the Second Great War, he left the navy to build houses. When his heart condition sent him into early retirement, he made vast gardens of vegetables and flowers. He made screened-in porches. He made huge vats of sauce and meatballs for Sundays with family, and he made Easter Pies by the dozen-- ham and ricotta with thick, buttery crusts-- for every aunt and uncle. He was always either making or tipped back in his leather recliner, nursing a hernia or bad back. He was always the color of red ochre, too tan for his fairness, always bent over some project in the backyard, sweat beading on his lower back, a square nitroglycerin patch stuck somewhere on his torso.

As early as 1517, the Da Vinci original began to flake. Some of the earliest attempts at restoration began in the eighteenth century, first by Michelangelo Bellotti, then by Giuseppe Mazza. In the nineteenth century Stefani Barezzi tried to restore it, and in the early 20th century, Luigi Cavenaghi and Oreste Silvestri continued the effort of preservation. In the 1950s, when the paint-by-number version was released, another cleaning and restoration was undertaken by Mauro Pelliccioli. By the 1970s, when I became cognizant of the painting only through my grandfather's version, the original was seriously deteriorated. However, from 1978 to 1999, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon attempted stabilization and tried to reverse the damage caused by dirt, pollution, and the misguided 18th and 19th century restoration attempts.

The last time I saw the Last Supper, it was slumped and mildewed against the wall of the alcove leading to my mother's basement. Prior to that, it hung from its hallowed spot in my grandmother's kitchen, offering benediction above a wooden Sears table that increasingly became cluttered with mail, pill minders, and occasional mouse scat. Age had finally taken the care out of my grandmother so that the painting hung askew from its faux gold-leaf frame, and the patina of greasy dust grew thicker every dwindling year of her life. The Last Supper was a movable feast, from kitchens of the seventies and through the decades; it moved from Fremont Street to Cold Spring to Patricia Gardens to Smith Street, which was my grandfather's last house, until it finally landed just a few thoughtless actions away from becoming trash, a few steps from the mounds of forgotten detritus that live in my mother's basement. All the years of my grandfather's absence-- more than thirty years now-- allowed us to making nothing much of the hours he must have put into the painting. So much for preservation. 

So I like to picture him laying out the supplies and getting to work: the board, about two feet by three feet; the many small pots of paint required for a kit this size; the several tiny brushes: all spread out on a vinyl table cloth under the circular fluorescent ceiling lamp, switched on with a pull string. But it's added for extra illumination because he's painting in the afternoon, sun coming in through the casement windows, the tassels of his planted corn waving to him from the backyard. He has his reading glasses on, and his white hair is combed back, still with a little fifties pomp. He's dressed in his usual polo shirt and laborer pants. The only things moving are his right hand, which dips, paints, rinses, and repeats and his French Blue eyes, which flick around the canvas looking for numerals. He takes great care with the feet, small toes and slim straps of sandals requiring a steady hand. The image of Jesus's final meal assembling like a jigsaw puzzle as Connie Francis and Hank Williams click through their eight tracks on the stereo. 

Easter and Christmas for Possibilians

Neuroscientist David Eagleman says this about religion: "Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story." 

This stance I find particularly appealing, so I consider myself a Possibilian, which, in my mind, is a very generous way to approach religion. However, I was raised Catholic. As a result, Christmas and Easter are emotionally complicated.

Wrapped up in all the brightly colored memories of baskets packed with hollow chocolate bunnies, Peeps, and stuffed animals is the story of how Jesus saved my soul through personal sacrifice. Wrapped up in all the flavors of jelly beans, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and those pastel -colored candy eggs with marshmallow inside are sweet memories of taking palms to the cemetery, going to mass in a yellow dress and bonnet, and sitting down for a meal that was not about candy but was about family and religion. All the beliefs that bolstered the holiday and gave it weight. 

The same was true for Christmas: All the "magic" of Santa Claus and a boatload of presents paled in comparison to the carols sung in Jesus's name, to the story of his birth (Do you remember that scene in the Charlie Brown Christmas special?), and to the nativity scenes shimmering in the snow and white Christmas lights outside the various churches. 

It's all past-tense now, and lives in my memory as bittersweet nostalgia for when I could believe without question. This would be fine to live with during the holidays when I want to recapture something special, but all I'm left with is the difficult decision of whether to chose traditional jelly beans or something more dynamic in flavor. The problem is that now I have a child, and my husband and I have to decide how to approach religion. 

Some parents choose to hand down religion. This is how I came to be raised Catholic. Yet I'm not going to foist a religion on Dexter, especially since I'm skeptical of organized doctrines and frightened by dogma. On the other hand, what is wrong with some kind of gentle introduction to a system of beliefs that he can chose to adopt or dismiss when he gets old enough to make those decisions?

Dexter goes to an Episcopalian preschool, and his Easter party is next week. I have volunteered to bring fruit to the party, and I'm hoping Dexter eats more fruit than candy. I know that St. Mark's offers the children a very simple introduction to the story of Jesus. Dexter is being introduced to Christianity, and it doesn't really trouble me, even if I largely don't buy into it anymore. I at least like the inclusiveness of the Episcopal church. And frankly, I would rather my son had some foundation for the holidays: something that lends them gravitas. It was why they mattered when I was a child. 

Does this mean that he might become a church member? I don't know. He might reject it all when too many questions remain unanswered by religion. I suppose that's the deal with faith, which is a hard pill to swallow. He's also welcome to choose religion; I just hope he chooses one that reflects the kind of values we care about in our home, which tend to be humanist and progressive. Can a religion uphold such secular values while still preaching Christian ideals? I suppose anything is possible.