This woman's entire substance - and soul - loved you, even before I committed her image to painterly posterity. She adored you from afar, without even the molecule-thin chance to actually have you for her own. She has never really known who she is, yet she persists in cheerfully chaining herself to the intermittent attention of your eyes. She will abide there, forever. This woman was heavy with children, even before I commenced her portrait. More than ever before, the painting changed in the process of it's creation; it became a stolid, patient, tree trunk, standing sentry in a far distant forest of the mind. Even before she prostrated herself before you and loved you, she was the mother of ...