Looking Out | Happiness is a frame of mind
“Wow! I like that painting,” I say, laughing, to my beloved wife, Marsha. It is a Sunday morning, and we are walking down a street in a resort town we are visiting. Nothing is open. The streets are deserted. This suits me fine, since there is nothing I need or want to buy.
Marsha looks through the window of the art gallery in front of which we are standing.
“I like it too,” she says. “It’s a very funny painting.”
“It’s a good thing the store isn’t open or we’d spend some money and go home with a painting and then have to find wall space in our house,” I say.
That night, I dream about that painting. We are heading home the next morning as soon as we can get ready, which means 40 minutes after I wake up and several hours after Marsha wakes up. This gives me time to scoot downtown and buy that painting for her.
It is early when I arrive at the store. It isn’t open yet. There is a couple standing in front of the store, laughing at the painting in the window.
It depicts three mature women and a cat. They are all laughing. One is drinking a glass of wine; one is laughing vigorously. The third is holding a smoking cigarette and smiling wistfully. The cat also seems to be smiling. It is a happy painting.
The store opens and I go inside. I’m hoping the couple from the sidewalk will come in and buy the painting so I don’t have to spend any money on something we don’t really need, but they stroll on down the sidewalk.
“May I help you?” says the owner of the gallery.
“I think I’d like to buy that painting in the window,” I say. “The fun-loving ladies and the cat.”
“Ah, yes!” says the nice man. “Everyone seems to like that one.”
“How much?” I ask.
He tells me. I gulp.
When we first married, we bought posters and cheap metal frames to decorate our first apartment and later, our first house. Sometimes we spent as much as $5.00 for a poster, but the frames were usually $10.00.
As we grew up and had kids, our tastes changed and we started accepting presents of old art from our parents and grandparents, who had acquired more than they had room for in their own homes. These gifts were definitely attic-and-basement treasures. There was no question that, like us, our forebears had never spent more for artwork than they did for frames during their youth.
I pull out a credit card and buy the painting. Alas, it is an unframed canvas. A print of an original.
Marsha is delighted with it.
“How much did it cost?” she asks.
“Plenty,” I say. “But we’ll finally own a painting that cost more than the frame.
Back home again, we take it to a framing shop and wait a few weeks for them to get around to the job. At last, we receive the call. Our painting is ready. I drive to the store to collect it.
It looks great. It makes me smile.
Until they hand me the bill.
“How is it possible that we still don’t own a painting that cost more than the frame?” I say to Marsha as I hang the picture on the wall.
“It is a beautiful frame,” she says. “And the painting makes me laugh.”
That was years ago. We still laugh when we look at our cheap painting in its expensive frame.
Happiness is a good investment.
Jim Whitehouse lives in Albion.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Jim Whitehouse: Happiness is a frame of mind
