An Uncommon Family by Christa Polkinhorn Page A

yellowish haze. Jonas kept the balcony door and the windows open, but there was hardly a breeze. He stepped out on the balcony. In the north, heaps of black-gray thunderclouds began to form.
    Inside in his studio, Karla was painting with oil pastels. She was wearing an apron to protect her clothes. Her hands were smeared and there were streaks of green, blue, and red on her face. Small pearls of sweat had formed on her upper lip and she kept wiping her forehead, adding more color to her face.
    Jonas laughed out loud and Karla looked at him surprised.
    “Come on, I’ll show you something,” he said and pointed at the mirror on the closet door. Karla got up and the two stood in front of the glass and grinned at Karla’s colorful face.
    “Like an Indian on the warpath,” Jonas said. “I guess today is almost too hot for working. But let’s see what you got.”
    They looked at Karla’s picture. It was a summer scene, a landscape with a pond, skirted by trees and bushes. On a blanket next to the pond was a picnic basket with fruit—apples, bananas, grapes—and a big bottle of what could have been lemonade. A little girl with dark hair stood by the pond, obviously Karla. A woman with long blond hair sat on a blue blanket or towel under a yellow sun umbrella. As in many of Karla’s paintings, her mother was present. It was almost an obsession and Jonas knew it was one of the ways Karla tried to keep in touch with her.
    Whenever she drew or painted her mother, her painting habits changed. Normally, when Karla drew other objects from imagination, she didn’t bother with a realistic outlook of her drawing. She was very inventive and it was that kind of unusual composition that gave her pictures power. However, when Karla drew her mother, she tried very hard to make her look realistic. She kept erasing her drawing, which she didn’t do when drawing other objects. It was as if she wanted to re-create an exact likeness. Often the drawings of her mother were less successful and lacked the strength the other objects in her paintings had.
    “Your mama?” Jonas asked, pointing at the woman, although he already knew the answer.
    “Yeah,” Karla said and glanced at him, then looked back down at the picture. “I paint her so I don’t forget what she looks like,” she said in a low voice.
    “Oh, I see,” Jonas said. “But you have photos of her, don’t you? They’ll help you remember.”
    “Yeah, but it’s not the same.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Karla wrinkled her forehead. “It’s . . . like cheating.”
    “Cheating?” Jonas asked.
    “Mmm.” Karla nodded. “I need to remember without a photo.” There was a tinge of panic in her voice.
    Jonas sat down and put his hand on her shoulder. He sensed what Karla meant. He remembered the first time he became aware that Eva’s face was fading in his memory. It gave him a little jolt and he stood in front of the photo trying to bring her face back. It was a natural progression, time erasing both reality and memories. And for a young child like Karla, it must be frightening.
    “I think I know what you mean, but I don’t think looking at a photo is cheating. A photo is like any other work of art, like the pictures you draw of your mother. They just help us remember. I look at my wife’s photos all the time. See.” Jonas got up and opened the door to the living room. “Look at all the pictures of her.”
    Karla came to the door and nodded, scanning the photos in the living room.
    “I don’t know, Karla, but sometimes I think the two of us make a mistake.”
    Karla looked at him surprised. “Why?”
    “We live too much in the past. I still grieve for Eva and I know you miss your mama. But we need to move on and live in the present, not always think of those who are gone.”
    “I don’t want to forget my mama,” Karla said, her voice determined, almost angry.
    “You don’t need to forget her. You’ll never forget her. But you can let her rest once in a