Obsessed With Water Lilies

                                                       Claude Monet: The Water Lily Pond                                1897-99

        A cheap reproduction of the water lilies had been hung in my living room for years. When I looked at it I always thought how much I loved dreamland art works, and how little of the world I had seen. Monet’s greens and blues made me daydream about faraway lands. For the first time I conceived two things I wanted for my life: art and travel. I did not have the opportunity to achieve them for years though. In the meantime I decided to name my then non-existing daughter after the painting.

      When Lily had finally arrived, destiny opened the door for me to reach my wishes. When she was just a toddler I started to take her to every museum where Monet’s water lilies were on display. Over the years, I gave her water lily earrings and books, dresses and necklaces, room decorations and lily-formed biscuits. So when she became a teenager I successfully made her hate everything that had to do with lilies. But I could not stop.

      When we moved to Paris I had more chance to fulfill my lily mission; we visited the Musee Marmottan-Monet at the Jardin du Ranelagh many times, the L’Orangerie in the Tuilerie Gardens with the wall sized water lily paintings, and of course we went to Giverny to see Monet’s garden and the Japanese bridge over the water lily pond. My Lily accepted her mother’s obsession with a resigned sigh. She even posed in front of each lily painting. I think deep inside, she secretly loved me for it. Her little sister, Pippa, was just simply happy to have a name, which had nothing to do with any flowers.

      Somewhere around 1882 Claude Monet traveled to the countryside looking for a home. He lived through many bad things until that moment; he had financial problems that led him attempted suicide by jumping to the river Seine; he lost his beloved wife Camille, who bore him two sons. He remarried with a woman with six children. He definitely needed a house.

      He was standing at the dashing away train’s door when he saw Giverny for the first time. He rented a house and a land there and when he became more successful, he bought the house and even more land. He created a colorful world where he planted flowers arranged by colors. “My greatest masterpiece is my garden,” he once said.

      He sent for particular flowers from Egypt and South America that flowers people said would be poisonous but he did not listen. Those were the water lilies. He watched the changing colors of the flowers depending on the light conditions. He painted over 250 water lily pictures even after his eyes became ill.

      Cataract affected his vision but he continued to work and created different kind of paintings; his brushstrokes changed, and the colors as well. Water lilies blurred. Cataract caused in patient’s eyes a special reddish tone, which they saw often. After two surgeries he even saw ultraviolet wavelengths. It got worse and worse but nothing could break him only death in 1926.

      My daughters and I walked around his house and garden, now divided in two because of the road that runs across it. We sat on a bench around the pond and painted the landscape. Lily and Pippa obliviously cavorted on the Japanese bridge, which is even more enchanting in person. Wisteria overgrew it, and willow’s arms stroke it gently. And of course, there were the vibrant water lilies under the bridge and everywhere in the pond. Hundreds and hundreds of them flooded on the water’s surface, a never ending dreamland of a remarkable painter.