The Kindness of Imparting Knowledge

"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."
― Leonardo da Vinci

Several years ago (ok, decades), I had the amazing fortune of studying in Florence, Italy -- a truly idyllic experience.  Thanks to a terrific art history professor, I fell in love with Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture.  Last year, thanks to Google, I found her teaching at one of the ivy league universities here in the United States. 

Though I was not sure that my former art history professor would remember me, I wrote to let her know what an impact she had made on me, and how I still remembered the paintings and her vivid descriptions.  She wrote back right away to say that it was nice to hear and that perhaps my children would share my enthusiasm for the Renaissance.  She shared that another one of her students in Florence now had a daughter taking an art history course.  She closed by saying:  "It's a wonderful thing to see how those magical times, now long ago, live in new ways."

This weekend, I walked through the National Gallery, drawn as always to the Italian Renaissance works.  To my great surprise and thrill, one of my children wanted to see the Italian Renaissance paintings so much that she was not happy when I insisted on taking a tour before.  After the tour, as I walked with my daughter among the Italian Renaissance paintings, I pointed out the colors and the figures in much the same way that my professor had decades earlier.

I wrote to my professor to tell her about the experience at the museum with my daughter.  She wrote back:  "I was just thinking this morning how we don’t know anything that we don’t remember and that in a sense memory is knowledge and that I was glad I’d always insisted that people memorize the works they studied so they’d always have them.  And there you are – enjoying the paintings you still have all these years later.  I’m so glad!"

Rooted in her great love for the art and in her wisdom, my art history professor gave me an incredible gift years ago, one that I am trying to impart to my children.  And so the kindness that she shared during a magical time lives on in a new way.