When I was young and spent the night with my grandparents I felt so lucky. First of all, because my mother’s parents and my father’s parents lived two doors down from each other. Even my other cousins weren’t this lucky. And on this road, I had a great aunt or two. The second fun part of this convenience was that if my folks were visiting the one set of grandparents I could run and be at the other grandparents’ home.

Both of my grandfathers were carpenters. Mom’s dad was more of a cabinet maker. But when mom was young he actually built a wooden roller coaster and a Ferris wheel. There were pictures in the local paper with mom and my aunt as girls in these rides.

My dad’s dad was more of a home builder. When these two close families moved from ‘back east’ they bought land near each other and mom’s dad copied nearly every nail strike from my dad’s dad. Thereby their homes were very similar. I can still see and smell those two homes. Mom’s parents’ home smelled of cedar. Dad’s parents’ just smelled clean like wind-dried laundry. Mmmmm!

That doesn’t include all the food smells. Mom’s mother specialized in pies and cakes. Dad’s mom was best at meats and dumplings. Not to say they both weren’t great cooks! My mouth is watering at this vision.

But back to spending the night. The walls of both grandparents’ homes were textured with stucco, a kind of relief feeling and then painted. I remember laying on their beds and finding pictures in the textures.

As a mom of four, we had a house that had a bathroom with fake marble lined the wall. As you would sit on the ‘throne’ you could see ‘angry dad’. Beard, mustache and all. Yes, he was an angry cuss at times back then. (Not my current husband.)

Here in this house, I have found another set of Rorschach tests in this bathroom. One in the fake wood panel of the door. The others are from spackle patches that we still need to paint over.

Anyway, here are cell photos of the muses.

The only picture with true color is the wooden door one. These other two are white on sky-blue. I don’t know why they turned gray.

Anyway, do you see pictures? I have been meaning to capture these by drawing and seeing what characters I feel as I draw. Here are my first renditions.

Those were only quickie sketches. But for some reason, I felt nearly obligated to draw them out. It is like they want to be in a story or something.

Does this happen to you? Do you see pictures in tree-bark or leaf patterns against the sky? Do you feel they call to you to be represented? What do you suppose it means?