This is a photograph of "Raft," a painting by Alex Katz, on display at the Colby College Museum of Art. Though it looks tiny here, it is in fact huge. Tom and I went to Colby yesterday to check out the museum's enormous new addition. But the Katz room has been there for years; somehow I just never noticed this picture.

The woman stands just like my granny used to stand, before the osteoporosis took her down: one elbow bent, hip cocked. She even seems to be wearing one of her house dresses.

She once told my mother that the silverware in the drawer was plotting against her.

For my granny, every place in the world was like a raft in the middle of a lake.