Standing in the narrow, long bathroom made me feel claustrophobic. The room was odd shaped, more like a hallway than a bathroom. There had been a remodel done recently, and all of the hardware shone like scattered sequins. Tasteful mirrors hung across the walls, attempting to make the hallway bathroom feel more spacious by reflectively expanding the awkward room. This is a trick you get from reading interior design books and watching decorating shows, but in reality there is only so much you can do to a make a four foot wide space feel cavernous. Not only was the room tiny, it was also full of people. My closest friends wearing a color they would never choose for themselves. But I had let them choose the silhouettes, so I assured myself that they would wear the clothes again. A little white lie we tell ourselves to help ease our culpability. All of them accepted the lie with good grace, and they smilingly agreed with me while secretly plotting the fastest route to the Goodwill where they could fling the magenta garments out the car window, only slowing fractionally. I pictured them flipping off the clothing, their hands waving gleefully out of their car windows as they sped away, their transmissions straining and motors roaring under the sudden and dramatic acceleration. They would speed away like they would after a drunken one night stand with the neighborhood hobo - shame filled and mortified to be seen in such a state. But they wore the dresses because I chose magenta, and that is just what friends do in this sort of situation. The men at the donation station would smile knowingly at each other as they flung the dress into a bin. A week later the dress would be priced, labeled, hung, and some unfortunate teenager would get it to wear to prom. Her mother would assure her that no one would know that it was used. Another white lie passed on. In the bathroom, my mother turned to me suddenly, her face earnest and loving. "You don't have to do this," she said. "We can leave right now, and I will never hold it against you. I just want you to know that you don't have to do this, and I love you." Her father had told her the same thing minutes before her wedding. Even though she was pregnant, he assured her that she didn't have to get married, and that he would love and support her regardless. This had meant a great deal to my mother, and it was a gift that she wanted to pass on to me. We both new I wouldn't leave, but perhaps she had felt a moment of trepidation and considered taking her father up on his offer. I had been there with her in that moment, growing bones and nerves as she stood jittering before her vows. Here we were again, together right before our marriages. Her father was dead now, so she was the one to give me the chance to run. I must admit that I briefly considered it. Knowing I could leave still loved made it easier to leave that tiny, awkward bathroom and walk down the aisle. Maybe she had felt a lessening of the tightness in her belly, and I would have felt it, too, a trembling message sent through the umbilical cord. Maybe the offer helped her put one foot in front of the other and continue down the path that built our family. When my daughter gets married, I will pass on the same gift. Maybe she will not follow the previous generations and instead run like hell. Regardless, she will be loved. I know that just having the choice changes the world and makes the path easier and more sure. I left the bathroom with my pink clad guard and approached the man my mother had chosen not to flee. My father smiled at me mildly and said "Let's do this." White lies will be told, choices will be made, and families will be built. ****************************************** original watercolor, ink, gouache, and graphite painting "Portrait of a Bride" 8.5"x10.5".

Assyrian Pair of Winged Deities c. 874-860 B.C. Assyria (Iraq), Reign of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.) Gypsum a) 36-1/4 x 27-5/8 in., b) 35-3/4 x 29 in. (a) 92.0 x 70.0 cm, b) 90.7 x 73.5 cm) AP 1981.04 a,b The Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883–859 b.c.) at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu) is the earliest of the surviving royal residences of the Assyrian kings, lavishly decorated with monumental gateway figures and reliefs, whose discovery in the mid-nineteenth century created a sensation throughout the Western world. First uncovered by the pioneer British traveler and archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in 1845, the Northwest Palace consisted of a series of long, narrow rooms grouped around large courtyards. Seven-foot-high stone slabs that lined the walls of many of the rooms were carved with elaborate narrative, mythological, and ritual scenes in low-relief. The greatest and most original artistic achievement of the Assyrians, these images and accompanying inscriptions record the kings’ military campaigns and testify to their prowess as warriors and hunters as well as their sanctity as the representatives of the Assyrian pantheon on earth. One of the most recurrent and potent images on these reliefs is the depiction of a magic purification or protective ritual, in which winged griffin-demons (apkallu, “sages”) or winged anthropomorphic deities, holding ritual “buckets” and pinecone-shaped objects, flank a “Sacred Tree” that they sprinkle with holy water or pollen. The Kimbell’s pair of winged deities are fragments of two such full-length figures enacting this magic ritual, sprinkling or pollinating the central tree motif. As such, each figure would originally have held a bucket in his left hand and a cone in his right. The deities, marked as divine by their wings and horned helmets, are conceived in the image of the monarch, reflecting his facial features, stance, and physical strength. Their exaggerated musculature and luxuriant, tightly curled hair and beards suggest something of the king’s vainglorious power and virility. These reliefs come from a room that may have been used by the king for ritual ablution.