Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [70]
I took Dan’s article out of my purse, and moved my chair under an outdoor light.
A Midwesterner Searches For
Uncommon Beauty
By Dan Singer
When a Midwestern boy from Michigan relocates to Santa Fe, his definition of beauty changes. Beauty, once an obvious companion, becomes a playful vamp, one he must find in uncommon places.
No longer does he find beauty in the Midwest’s wrenching changes of season—the golden autumn crashing into three months of a white-covered world, which stumbles suddenly into a too-short spring and then a blazing hot summer. Instead, he looks for the subtlety of the Santa Fe weather. The flat stretches of dirt brown don’t change, nor do the salmon-colored curves of the mountains or their dotting of green bush. Instead, he keeps a watchful eye on the first prickling of vibrant blooms in early April, waiting for the flowers to dress up the Plaza like a woman putting on her makeup, when she knows visitors are about to arrive. And he waits for the crowd of canvases and sculptures to appear on the street, letting him know that the gallery shows have started and summer has emerged. The August rains whisper in his ear, telling rumors of a coming fall, and when the wildflowers make their appearance, he knows the rains were telling the truth. Christmas, for him, isn’t symbolized now by pine and holly but by the burning farolitos lining the rooftops.
The Midwestern boy can’t find beauty in his family any longer, for they lead different lives thousands of miles away. Now he watches his new wife lifting a pan out of the oven or arranging yellow buds in a coffee can converted into a vase, and he thinks that this is more lovely than the family reunion he will never have. The Midwestern boy and his new wife have created their own family during this search of his, and the baby girl who has entered their lives shines with an internal beauty, one her father hopes never dims, never has reason to.
His old Michigan landscape, hilly and forest green, crisscrossed with highways and roads and covered with lakes that reflect the navy blue of the sky, is no longer there for him. Now he turns to the single lonely byway connecting Albuquerque to Santa Fe. He finds comfort in the stillness of the vast expanse, in the lighter blue sky that is bigger than he could have ever imagined, in the brown trickle of the Rio Grande.
He no longer looks for redbrick, black wrought-iron railings and patrician columns to tell him a house is beautiful. He turns, instead, to the rounded corners of squat blond adobe, to the flat roofs, and the blue window frames.
Santa Fe has changed the boy from Michigan. It’s changed his thoughts and the places he seeks comfort. It has told him of an uncommon beauty lingering in its corners, and in doing so, it has found him a home.
I read the article twice more, struck by the spare loneliness, the use of the word boy to refer to himself, and the mention that Dan had been searching for something. The article seemed intent on showing that he had found it, that he had located whatever he was looking for, but I didn’t quite believe it. I didn’t know my brother any better than I knew molecular science, but there was a lingering feeling there in the article, one of desperation, one that I thought I could relate to. I’d been trying to convince myself that I belonged in Manhattan since I moved there at the start of law school, and yet, I still felt like an outsider, one who wanted badly to fit in. Maybe I did have something in common with my brother after all.
I scheduled a massage for Saturday morning at the hotel spa, and as the therapist rubbed the knots and stiffness out of my body, I wondered why I didn’t do this more often. After the massage, I sat in