A List of Things to Miss and Danish Artist Peder Mork Monsted

The good outweighs the bad with the upcoming move. About time!

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
— Albert Einstein

"You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on."
— Tupac Shakur

"Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness."
— Steve Maraboli

Another whirlwind week. Coffees and lunches with friends, listing last minute finds on Facebook marketplace, and a nervous breakdown. Or two. I was doing pretty good until yesterday after church.

My brother’s family and I attend the same church here in town. If I stay for big church - sometimes I just go to Sunday School, then play hooky for a good cup of coffee at the bistro across the street - I sit with them in the balcony. My brother is TALL, so always chooses the offset pew upstairs that lets him put his legs out.

Sunday was my first time back at church since my mother’s funeral. I started feeling weird about halfway through the service. To be honest, I could not tell you one word of the sermon. I was distracted and anxious, but no idea why.

It hit me when I got in the car to drive home. I miss my Mom. I MISS MY MOM!!

Our church has a live online service and she would watch ‘her’ preacher from the comfort of her armchair three and a half hours up the road. On my way home, I would call my parents, let them tease me about whether or not I’d been on camera in the balcony, then we’d get down to business and discuss the sermons. And the music - my mother loved the music and missed her choir friends.

I got a little teary in the car. Then, once I was home, I had to go through another damn closet and throw out things that I’ve carried around for years. I tried to talk myself through it - “Really, Fraulein Zen, there is no good reason to take your senior college sorority photo array to yet another country. It’s been forty years.” (FORTY YEARS?!? How is that possible? No way.)

I have reached the final stage of moving - that last painful 10 percent. And I hit a wall, as if my sorority photos weren’t enough. I got down the box of stuff that wasn’t good enough for Mom to move with them when she downsized, but assessed as ‘too good’ to throw away. So she funneled them to me.

Among them, boxes of old sheet music from the twenties and thirties. My mother had taken them from her mother’s house when my grandmother died, and they’ve been in the boxes ever since - untouched, frayed edges, yellowing notes. I sold them to a nice lady through Facebook marketplace, she is keen to learn to decoupage.

I had to call my sister to walk me through the valley of the shadow of death, because, even though there’s a faint memory attached, they definitely aren’t good enough for me to stuff them in the shipping container and take them to sit in a closet in Tasmania. Time for SOMEONE to bite the bullet and get them to a person who will make new memories with them. But it was ROUGH. I felt like I was abandoning her in some weird way. Yuck.

Then I saw a picture in my phone from late October - Mom and Dad playing canasta in her hospital room. She was sitting up in the faux leather chair with an intent look on her face. My mother never played to lose. And it cracked me like an egg.

My husband wandered in and out of the living room while I ugly cried in my leather chair, asking what he could do. I finally got him to understand that he could do exactly NOTHING. BUPKIS. ZIP! Just leave me alone and let me cry for a little while. He managed that with alacrity, and I went on for a few more minutes until I started hiccupping. And after that, the nice calm that comes after a good cry wafted through me and I was able to get up and watch a little TV with the man. So it’s progressing. I know it will take a while, but at least I’m letting it out when it hits.

Now to the good news. (Sorry to start always with the bad, but it helps to release it, and then I can end on a positive. Much better for my brain.)

Drum roll - I am finding houses I like in Tasmania. Realestate.co.au is my new addiction. I am starting to get excited about new types of vegetables and seafood. I can’t wait to see a wallaby and a platypus. And a Tasmanian Devil or two. My curiosity is building and, as it grows, the fear lessens. It’s a zero sum gain.

I am making a little list in my head of ways to adjust. For example, when I shopped at Aldi today, I talked to the woman walking in with me, I talked to another woman while we both selected our bunch of bananas in the fruit section, I chatted with a friend from Sunday School in the wine aisle. (Awkward!) I even visited with the cashier. You do that in the South - you talk to freaking EVERYBODY about absolutely nothing. We are the best at nattering about nothing in a charming way.

Wait, make that second best. I think the Irish have us beat. I had to give up and walk away from an old Irish lady buying cat food in Dublin, I could take no more of her happy, sing-song stories of her little munchkins. And the taxi driver in Belfast almost made me wish I’d taken the bus. Now THAT’S a lot of gabbing. I hate the bus.

When I lived in New Zealand, I realized that everyone does not always want to talk. Sometimes you can just make eye contact or nod. Or even avoid eye contact. I know, it’s primitive! But you get your grocery shopping done a hell of a lot faster. So there’s that. Note to self - smile, nod, but don’t start with the yammer unless someone asks you a question.

Oh, and here comes a good memory about Mom from my other sister. When Mom visited her in London, they were about to cross the street and a man stood next to them while they waited for the light to change. My mother took a breath, started to lean in, and my sister said quietly '“MOM! He doesn’t care that we’re going to the Victoria and Albert Museum.” HAH! Like mother, like daughter. I can but hope I am as quick to catch on as Mom, who restrained herself, smiled and looked straight ahead like a real Londoner.

ANYWAY, on the art. Peder Mork Monsted (1859-1941)was born at the end of the “golden age” of Danish painting, Monsted can be described as a product of that era.

A landscape painter renowned for the clarity of light common to the painters of that age, his naturalistic “plain air” view paintings made Peder Mork Monsted the leading Danish landscape painter of his time.

At an early age, he began to receive painting lessons at the art school in Aarhus, and, at the age of sixteen, from 1875 to 1879, he studied figure painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts with Niels Simonsen and Julius Exner.

Peder Monsted was also much influenced by his teacher Andries Fritz, court painter to Prince Ferdinand. Monsted´s style developed further in the studio of Peder Severin Kroyer and through a brief period in Paris with William Adolphe Bouguereau.

Although established in Copenhagen, Monsted travailed extensively throughout his long career, being a frequent visitor to Switzerland, Italy, and North Africa.

The onset of WW1 curtailed Peder Mork Monsted's travel to Norway and Sweden, and in the 1920s and 1930s, he returned to the Mediterranean. Throughout his long career, Monsted continued to paint the Danish landscape and coastline.

Peder Monsted’s work was frequently exhibited in the Paris and Munich Salons. He is widely recognized for his luminous winter snow landscape oil paintings often featuring water, which demonstrates an almost photographic quality and supreme technical skill.

An artistic style all his own which won him great acclaim and affluence in his own lifetime.

I love that hat. He is sitting like he’s afraid that some crazy Southern belle is about to ask him where he shops. But I would never interrupt. See? I’m already learning. (Geez, I hope I make new friends quickly, otherwise I might explode!)