Preserved in oils.

On his way home from the office last night, my husband stopped by to see our friend J. He was on a mission... to deliver our Christmas gift to J and to pick up her Christmas gift to us. J had intended to drive up here to visit us and stay the night, but the summer was long and much too hot, and when the weather finally turned itself down to bake instead of broil, her back started to bother her. So much for a two-hour drive.... it just didn't happen, and she wanted us to have this gift.

I had wrapped up J's gift the week before in my pre-Thanksgiving gift-wrapping frenzy, which usually takes place one or two weeks before turkey day. The pillow I quilted for J had her favorite blue colors, plus a touch of golden yellow that I thought would look very pretty on one of her treasured living room chairs. If I do say so myself, I was proud of that buttery-soft pillow and my only regret was not being able to watch J take it out of the tissue paper.

My work on that pillow was a smidge in the universe when I unwrapped J's gift to us.

Back in May, after we closed on this hundred-year-old house, J drove up with me to see the property and to write down the directions as I drove. That way, she would be prepared to make the drive herself and not have to worry about getting lost and possibly ending up in Johnny Depp's driveway instead of ours. ("Well, Captain Jack Sparrow! I do declare....")

J had brought her camera that day and she took photographs of the house and the pastures. She fell in love with this big old house, just the way I did. She especially loved the squeak of the screen door on the kitchen, as did we. J noticed that the house had such a good "feeling" to it and it already felt like home even though it was empty and unfurnished that day. Sometime during then and now, J used those photographs to create an oil painting of our home, and that's what I found when I unwrapped her Christmas gift to us last night.

There was our house, the fountain, the fences, the front pasture filled with bluebonnets, the huge pecan trees to the right, the smaller trees to the left, the porch columns, the upstairs balconies. Our house, our home, in oils on canvas. I had to hold the painting away from me because I didn't want the tears welling up in my eyes to fall onto this one-of-a-kind original artwork.

My husband and I were both speechless.... we kept looking at the painting, and the more we looked, the more we could see. Of course I had to call up J right away to thank her, and to tell her we were just overwhelmed with her thoughtful gift.

J suggested that I move the painting from room to room before I set to hanging it up. She said to watch the sky in the painting because in different lighting, the sky will take on different hues and will seem to be changing. And she was right. The painting was in the dining room yesterday and the sky was bright, as if it were noon-time on the canvas. This morning, I put the painting in my dressing room and the sky was a bit more blue, more intense, sort of a tea-time sky.

Right now as I type, the painting is on my desk right in front of me. The sky looks like the sun is about to set and even the grass in the field looks darker, richer. J said to take my time, not to be in a hurry to hang the painting on a nail. "The painting will tell you where it wants to be," she said.

I am sure it will. I intend to keep moving it around till after the holidays, and when the Christmas decorations come down, this painting will go up.