I walked into my friend’s house one day and noticed a huge wonderful oil painting of a mother and a father standing with two children standing in front of them and a small child on peeking over the shoulder of the father. I told my friend Liz, “Wow I love that painting, is that new?” She replied “No. That is my family; I am the one on my dad’s back. We had it done when we were little and my mom just gave it to me.” I thought how wonderful that piece of art was and how nice to have it passed down.

Recently I was in a business in San Francisco that had an installation of local artists paintings and I fell in love with one of the artists style. I initially thought it would be great if he could do a portrait of my 5-year-old daughter, Olivia. That is when I had my epiphany. I contacted the artist and commissioned him to do a family portrait. The key was that he is a local budding artist so he is affordable. While I was creating a memory for her I decided to incorporate a fantastic family journey we experienced, hoping to further instill her experience in Egypt from her then 4-year old mind. Now she sees the painting on a daily basis and couldn’t possibly forget sharing a camel with her father while riding next to her mother on her camel in the Sahara desert past the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great Sphinx. I can visualize 40 years in the future, my daughter explaining to her friend “that is me, the little one sitting in my dad’s lap.”

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