{"id":10535,"date":"2015-04-01T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T06:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=10535"},"modified":"2015-03-14T13:04:03","modified_gmt":"2015-03-14T19:04:03","slug":"the-lacemaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/10535","title":{"rendered":"The Lacemaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m often mistaken for an unhappier woman \u2013 though<br \/>\nin the Metropolitan\u2019s Dutch wing, I crack a smile<br \/>\nat Maes\u2019 painting of a young mother quietly sewing<br \/>\nlace. I know why she\u2019s looking down so intently<br \/>\nat the white threads in her lap: Her toddler boy,<br \/>\nhimself encased in lace, and seated in a wooden<br \/>\nhigh chair elaborate as a baptismal font, steadies<br \/>\nhis pacifier and ball like stones ready to go over<br \/>\na bridge. It\u2019s supposed to be a picture of maternal<br \/>\nbliss (Maes himself was a family man) \u2013 yet I see<br \/>\nthe tornado looking out the boy\u2019s eyes. As a mother,<br \/>\n<em>I know<\/em>. The ceramic porringer she placed near his chair<br \/>\nalready has caught a silver cup and rattle. Even that,<br \/>\ntoo placed. I wonder if after his next flings, and then<br \/>\nhis bawls, she\u2019ll line his things on his tray or let him<br \/>\nwail. Because I have allowed the sob, then felt that<br \/>\nsocking <em>cry-fail-cry-fail-cry-fail<\/em> rhythm in my belly.<br \/>\nI don\u2019t see that exalting touch of painters\u2019 light flooding<br \/>\nseventeenth-century rooms to hymn bread-making<br \/>\nor letter writing. You can tell it\u2019s a dim morning<br \/>\nfrom the joyless light on the floor boards. And she<br \/>\nmust be a mother of one, I think, as I consider her white<br \/>\ncap, collar and apron, unstained, unwrinkled. Maybe<br \/>\nher husband commissioned Maes to record his bride<br \/>\nand first-born son in this way, the way many men<br \/>\nenshrined their wives. Yet here, the painter caught<br \/>\nher, how she focuses too hard on her lace, waiting<br \/>\non the next thud and squall, and how the boy knows he<br \/>\nis master. He has bridled her already. And I know this:<br \/>\nFor a long time, she won\u2019t remember the girl she was<br \/>\nyears ago, when she threw rattles arcing in light,<br \/>\nlaughing at how clean, how perfect that light really was.<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"\/nashvillereview\/archives\/10400\">Nicole Rollender<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m often mistaken for an unhappier woman \u2013 though in the Metropolitan\u2019s Dutch wing, I crack a smile at Maes\u2019 painting of a young mother quietly sewing lace. I know why she\u2019s looking down so intently at the white threads in her lap: Her toddler boy, himself encased in lace, and seated in a wooden [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-2JV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10536,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535\/revisions\/10536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}