My Mother is the Sea

found object assemblage 2020, 30 inches X 24 inches

 

My mother, Nancy Lea was a larger than life character – amazing and terrifying all at the same time.  My siblings and I decided we would surprise her on her 79th Birthday with a “This is Your Life” style party.  We determined she would not be expecting that as she would be expecting an 80th birthday party.  We rented a theatre in Elizabethtown and got her there under false pretenses where she walked into the theatre filled with her friends and family.  Her recliner was on the stage and we made her sit there while family and friends paid tribute to her.  For my tribute, I wrote a poem “My Mother is the Sea” and read it to her that day. 

 

She and I went scuba diving together in La Paz, Mexico so she could swim with the giant manta rays in the Sea of Cortez.   One day about halfway into our journey back to port the seas calmed into smooth glass and we caught site of a sea turtle chasing our boat.  We stopped and jumped into the water and frolicked with this sea turtle who seemed very happy to be swimming with us.  So happy in fact that our dive master had to swim him away from the boat when we were preparing to leave to be sure he did not get caught in our propellers.  And even then the turtle swam after us for a bit of time.  Many years later my niece Emily was living in Cincinnati and my mother went to visit her and they went to the Newport Aquarium where they met a sea turtle with a damaged flipper.  My mother decided that she had a spiritual bond with this sea turtle and that in fact it was the same sea turtle that she and I had encountered years before in the Sea of Cortez.  She swore that the Sea of Cortez turtle had a damaged flipper (I don’t recall that) like this Newport Aquarium turtle.  She even insisted on finding one of the Aquarium’s staff members to ask where this particular sea turtle had come from – a question they could not answer.  I have often wondered if she truly believed they were the same turtle – something that would be fantastically coincidental if it were true, or did she say it just to be eccentric and colorful, or was it a fantasy she so wanted to be true. Her great, great nephew CJ (Emily's son) at age 3 is very into sea creatures.  And he is intrigued when Emily tells him about Nancy Lea.  This piece was made for CJ.

 

not for sale