Girl With a Dark Complexion Kneeling In a Yellow Dress In a Wooden Frame (or: Maybe Actually La Virgin de Guadalupe)

For as long as I can remember, I have been able to go into a particular room where I lived and look at this painting, if I had the inclination. It is older than me. Prettier, too, and with bolder brush strokes. My mom and brother joke that it's eerie and call it my dad's Other Woman because he has kept it for so long. We all laughed about it. I knew it was beautiful.

Recently, I found out that my father used to paint. At the museum he told me about how he gave up modern art because he found it childish and replicable. This is a man who was formerly a drill sergeant in the United States Army, a former firefighter and paramedic; a man with some pretty good ideas on border control and the economy, and he was once in galleries for his paintings and sculptures. I was blown away. He never kept a record, though, and I have no idea what his paintings and sculptures could have looked like. I have a deep urge to see them. It would be like getting to know him when he was my age.

Lately, as the painting shown above was beginning to catch my eye again, I've wondered what artist was behind it. I looked all over the front but could not find any hint as to who was responsible. I turned it over, and my dad's initials were carved on the back of the frame. Thinking there was a chance, I called him and asked about it. A little disappointingly, he told me that this was because it was made for him, not because it was his painting. I took a look at it again and found in the bottom right of the painting itself there was, in fact, a signature that had paint smudged on it but was completely illegible anyway. It looks like Chris S, or Christa S, or Christa J. I don't know. I am frustrated.