In each of the four stages of life shown in ‘The Voyage of Life,’ from ‘Childhood’ through ‘Youth’ and ‘Manhood,’ to ‘Old Age,’ is pictured a small boat with a human figure aboard. On its prow is a figurehead holding an hourglass. In the first of these, ‘Childhood,’ this boat leaves a mysterious dark shore behind, heading into the brightness of a new Edenic dawn. Its passengers are a baby accompanied by a protective haloed and winged figure in white, but this baby, now grown into athletic youth in the second painting, waves an absent-minded farewell to the angel, who remains on the shore. The youth has eyes only for the hazy outline of what appears to be a monumental white castle in the distance above and beyond him, but which, Conrad mused, might well be one of those optical illusions we sometimes see in changing cloud formations when we study the sky. In the third painting, ‘Manhood,’ the young man’s confidence has been severely shaken. He stands up in his boat, hands clasped in prayer, as his boat rockets forward into the whitewater of dangerous rapids. The sky is ominously dark above. In the final picture, the boat lies becalmed on the river of life. The boat’s passenger, now an old man with a long white beard, looks up at a winged angel hovering above him who is pointing to a sunlit radiance far above the surrounding dark cloud, within which another angel can be seen awaiting his arrival there. In this final painting, the boat has lost its figurehead, an indication that the earthbound voyage was now over, for in the next life, Conrad had sensed intuitively, eternity had no need of clocks.
In the car, and sandwiched between his parents in the back seat, Conrad prepared himself for more of his aunt’s bullying, but mindful that she was an inexpert driver and had an unnerving tendency to turn around while at the wheel to address herself more pointedly to the audience behind her, he decided to say nothing in response to her question. He could not understand why she did not want anyone to sit beside her in the front seat. Perhaps it was because she called it “the suicide seat.” Or perhaps it was, thought Conrad, because it gave her the chance to exercise even more authority and control than she already had as Dr. Edna Bray, Principal of Castor Valley Catholic Elementary School. Her husband Arthur seldom accompanied her, for he was a reclusive figure, older and sedentary, a retired dentist. Did he, too, sit in the back?
Aunt Edna repeated her question, turning sideways once again. “I said, ‘Don’t you just love Georgia O’Keefe?’ I do!” It was not really a question, but an opportunity for another of her notorious assertion. Conrad’s father, her modest, self-effacing brother Robert, answered. “I‘m not artistic… but I know what I like. I don’t remember artists’ names.”
“And?”
“I like… seascapes-- lighthouses, fishing boats, and piers,” Robert replied. “But you know that.”
“Same as always; you never change!” Dismissively patronizing was her tone, as always.
“I liked the blue vase…” chimed in Conrad’s mother, characteristically querulous, “but that wasn’t hers, was it?” she asked uneasily.
