She Dreamed of Santorini

Since childhood, Irene Dyck dreamed of seeing Santorini, Greece. She said she saw this scene on a calendar at a DQ when she was little and just absolutely loved it. It was no surprise that when she launched her career in art, this would be her signature piece.

The daughter of a seafaring man, Irene, (my mother), had a love of the sea she was unable to quell. The thought of Santorini, a village at the shore, perched above the ocean and bathed in the colors of sunset and ocean never left her.

Born in 1947, Irene Ruth Gaskill was the 6th child and the baby of the bunch until her sister was born fifteen years later. As the smallest of six, she was often ignored and as a hyperactive child was glad of it because it gave her the freedom to run around getting into all manner of mischief and basically wreaking havoc on her older siblings. Later in life, she would tell me that my brother was just like she was.

Born at the end of the Great Depression, mom was no stranger to hunger, and not just for physical nourishment. Growing up with an abusive father, she often found herself in trouble for things she had no control over so she lived in happy thoughts of that beautiful, far away shore.

When mom was only sixteen, one of her sisters met a soldier from Ft. Gordon, (now called Fort Eisenhower), and he brought a friend with him when he came to visit. That friend would later be my dad. He and my mother were drawn to one another very quickly and after that, wrote letters to one another every week. My dad would call mom to chat with her when he could and mom said to me that she had loved him dearly. Her secret hope had been that he would one day come and visit, with a proposal.

That didn't happen. Due to a misunderstanding with her father when she was in the eleventh grade, Paw-Paw called my dad and told him to come and get her, he didn't want her any more. So my mother was shipped off the farm to go and marry my dad and make a life for herself in Indiana.

Over the years, mom had a singing career and a number of odd jobs, but she always came back to music and art.

An old friend of mom's and a drummer, (Tom-Tom Koehler), once put together an art book just for her, that contained poems, prose, and beautiful little hand-drawn art, brightly detailed like the comics. At some point, one of her band members had a little girl who couldn't say my mom's name, so she called her "I-weenie". Tom-Tom shortened that in his book in a poem called "For the Love of a Weenie", and entered it as:

"Tom loves Weenie, with a flash, of yester-even's balderdash".

It was a silly little ditty he penned, but the moniker stuck and a lot of kids called mom Weenie over the years. Later in life, she even painted it on the front door of the little cottage where our band gathered to jam. My step-dad's name was Dean so she painted "I-Weenie loves Deanie-pooh" on it. Mom never took offense by anything because she knew who she was and she owned it.

After she and my biological father had divorced, we all went back to Augusta. My grandfather had long since passed away, and my grandmother could use help around the place. Mom still dreamed of one day sailing away to Santorini, despite her mission to help my grandmother.

My mother's people looked like Greeks. They had the hawk eyes, the pronounced nose and olive skin. They all loved the ocean and fishing, and I don't think any of them existed that wouldn't rather have been on a boat than anywhere else. The homes my grandfather built were concrete washed bright white with limestone and were very like the abodes you see in the photos of Santorini. So, it occurred to me that maybe my mother saw Santorini as some of the same she was used to, and not the the same she was afraid of.

After marrying my step dad, we moved away from there and mom began her art career to wild success. She loved the natural beauty of the world and painted such gorgeous places, but she always had Santorini hung somewhere in her house.

She landed her first big art showing in Brunswick Georgia in 2010, and a local magazine spotlighted her and her works.

She began painting with a fury and was once again happy. She kept saying that the money from those proceeds would one day give her the opportunity to see that great shore for herself. Mom joined the local art group in Columbus, Georgia and had many shows. Most of her accolades were attributed to her paintings of Greece.

I went to see my mother in 2019, shortly before the Alzheimer's and Dementia set in. We were chatting on her sun porch, a room filled with plants, sunshine, art supplies and paintings of Greece. Mama had a painting on the easel that was unlike anything I had ever seen her paint before. It was dark, and lightly scribbled in places. When I asked her what it was, she said that Greece was in her thoughts and in her heart, but not in her hands anymore. No matter how hard she tried, the things she thought she was painting never came out on the canvas.

My mother died in 2022. She never saw Greece for herself and never made a fortune from her artwork. She had a difficult life, and almost never got to do what she wanted to do, because something always got in the way. There was always something at the house that needed fixing, some kid who needed help, just...something. Cancer tried to take her from us, but she made a full recovery. For all that, she never gave up hope. She was always laughing, making others happy, and just generally enjoying life no matter what it threw at her.

The above painting now hangs in the hallway at my house, so that every morning when I head to the kitchen, and every evening on my way to bed, I can look at it and think of her... and how she dreamed of Santorini.

I am closing with some of my mother's artwork. (Irene G, Dyck). It is my sincerest hope that you enjoy it as much as I have over the years.