For A Little While

There is a clock on the mantle place of a dining room in the Frick Collection that is more than a foot long. It’s made of bronze but it gleams like gold, in the light that peeks in from the windows facing central park. It dings, every hour, on the hour, a noise loud enough that you can hear it a few gigantic rooms away.

There is a bookcase, 4 rooms over, where the tops of the books are covered by a leather pad to keep the dust off. The books are a dark green, mostly, though some are read and black and the kind of faded color, dim enough that you don’t know what the shade it started at. Some of the titles are worn off, but some are still legible. I love books, but there wasn’t a single one I saw that I would want to read.

The Frick Collection is a strange museum. It’s housed in a mansion on 5^th Avenue. A mansion that used to be the home of the Frick family. They lived there, along with the paintings and the vases and the priceless furniture. It was their home.

That’s all I could think about as I stood there, staring at the magnificent paintings. That this was a home to people. They slept here, ate their meals. They read books and had conversations. Spent time in this place.

And now, people pay admission to come in and look around their lives. And it’s magnificent, of course, overwhelmingly beautiful. The collection houses hundreds of paintings. A mix of styles and colors. Embossed bronze. Ceramics. Furniture with golden plating. Sculptures and canvasses of every shape and size.

Henry Clay Frick had two small children, and as I walked around the rooms of the collection I tried to imagine their lives here. Did they study under paintings by Rembrandt? Did they giggle together under works by Van Dyck?

I left the collection with my uncle. We had come there together, but walked around separately for the most part. He had studied art history in college, and knew details about the paintings and their painters that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He took them all in with a trained, careful eye. I floated around from room to room, reading plaques and trying to comprehend the enormity in front of me.

Once we left the building we headed back uptown towards my apartment. We walked slowly. I still limp a little, and it’s not like we had anywhere we needed to be. We walked and we talked and I thought about how lucky I am.

My family’s house is fairly large. Not a mansion, but big enough for all of us and an office and a dining room and a basement where my brother and I used to play. It feels warm, though. Full of life and love and comfort. There are paintings on the wall, yeah, but there are pictures on the fridge of my brother and I am and of the children of my parent’s friends. There are beautiful sculptures and wonderful art—some of it from artists, but some of it from a 7 year old Jordan (who, come to think of it, probably would have considered herself an artist too.)

I’m sure the Frick family lived a good life. A happy life, full of incredible things that I can’t even imagine. But I like my life. I like my world.

I like my uncle who I can go with to these museums, and then leave with, and walk down the city blocks, telling stories and laughing and feeling content. I like my house back in Maryland, and even sometimes, I like my apartment in New York. I like my family and the way we live-- together, even when we're far apart.

We stopped in a German restaurant and ate until we felt like we would burst. We shared food and stories and I loved it so much. The place was cozy and loud and they played a mix of om-pa-pa bands and 70’s pop. I ate sausages and sauerkraut and my uncle drank a beer larger than his head. It felt like a good place to be.

I’m glad places like the Frick exist. I’m glad I get to visit them for a little. But then I’m glad I get to leave them. Glad I get to go somewhere else, somewhere warmer and a little more like home.