September Salt Marsh

By Carrie Jacobson

If my mother — Mary Ann Hook Cooper — were alive, this would have been her 85th birthday.

She’s been gone for six years now, but she’s with me, every day, every minute. She’s in the blood that runs through me. She’s in my long upper lip and my bad right foot. She’s in my taste for peanut butter, and she’s in my outlook and my optimism. My mother is in my love of color, my sense of adventure and my delight in laughter.

And she’s in my paintings. She is in the courage that it takes to start, and the tenacity it takes to keep going when – inevitably, in every painting – it looks like disaster is looming. She is in my love of the landscape and the creatures in it, in my love of color and movement and sense and sensation.

She is at my heart and in my soul, and she is in the heart and the soul of every painting I make.

Today, Mom, I miss you as I miss you every day. But today, more than anything, I celebrate you, and the beautiful, strong life you lived and which you shared with me.