The Painting

46 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW CAROLINE KNOX THE PAINTING My mother will put it in a poem, for God's sake, of which Uncle Nick will do a woodcarving. And then Trintje will take a photograph ofit which she will kodalith. My father will write a law about the kodalith, and then his fatherin -law, my Grandpa Tom will say why it makes a better statute than an ordinance. Then Aunt Sarah who is married to Uncle Nick will put it on one of her hairy weavings and will also make a Library of Congress catalogue card for it, and Aunt Betsy will find out if it is sick, and if it has a temperature she will give it an antibiotic but not if it does not (Aunt Betsy is medically conservative, which my mother appreciates). Uncle Tom who is married to Aunt Betsy and is personnel director of a huge factory in Bristol, Rhode Island, will put is in a box marked THISSIDEUP and read a paper about it at a plastics convention. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Nick have a baby named Hopey and she will put it in her mouth. Uncle Tom and Aunt Betsy have two little kids named Wiener and Laura who stand up in rowboats. (Laura is really Laura Ingalls Jansen and is a genuine cousin of Little House on the Prairie on the Ingalls side,) We find them bratty sometimes but everyone is bratty sometimes. Granny Hope who is married to Grandpa Tom will make a watercolor ofallofus when we are doing the above at a cookout. and it will be like that picture in the Museum of Fine Arts called something like "The Children of Mr. and Mrs. van Rensselaer Satterthwaite" where the children are sitting around the living room next to vases and sofas reading books and doing other things that they like. ...