It means Endless stories — the name of this French vintage store. (And what would be more fitting for me.) We visited it for the first time last week. It won’t surprise you to learn that I bought a canvas to paint over, and an old frame. Both, I suppose, in the attempt to keep the stories alive.
Maybe it was in Miss Green’s fifth grade class that I began the practice. Each week we took a “field trip” simply by writing a story about visiting a new area. To determine the destination, we spun around and placed a tack randomly on the large map. (Our version of discovery was somewhere between Pin the tail on the Donkey and today’s Google.)
We wrote weekly of our adventures. Our stories. I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped.
And even though Washington Elementary is now a collection of condominiums, and Miss Green goes by her married name, these stories for me have no end. I tell you my stories, and you tell me yours. And all the versions in between, including playgrounds and grandparents and main streets and penny candy. Bike ride and softball games. And the names may change, but the spirit of each story lives on. And on. (Sans fin.)
Today’s sun begins handing out the letters and I find myself somewhere between Donkey and Google, ready to write, ready to paint, to frame a new and endless story.
Mrs. Bergstrom surely had the patience of a saint. She wrote the words on the black board in a slow and strong cursive that, if you hung on to the chalk-ed endtails, it could carry you from seat to sentence to story. The chorus of the “sounding out” rang above our heads as she tried to reel us all in. With chalk pointing and pronunciations mouthed and exasperation released by hands smoothing out her pencil skirt and her perfectly bunned hair, she urged us, willed us, into being taught.
I thought of her yesterday, on hands and knees as I struggled to stretch the new canvas. Pulling with one hand. Willing with brain. Begging with heart. Stapling with the other hand. How hard I tried to make it taut. And I thanked her again. Not just for the letters. The words. The storytelling. But the patience. The work itself. The joy she would have felt in the comparison — the strength in being taught, the strength in being taut.
Tight as a drum, my new canvas awaits. I don’t know the subject yet, but I know it will come. I have the patience to wait. I have Mrs. Bergstrom to thank for that.
I could print it here for you, a poem that I’ve recently discovered, but that wouldn’t be the same. I know this, because I grew up walking to the library, not holding it in my hand. And what a glorious lesson this was — having my whole body in search of the information. Feet trudging to get hands winging through card catalogs. Eyes searching. Arms carrying loads. Books spread on tables. Thumbs thumbing. Pencils scratching notes. Reading again. Scratching again. Re-reading. Hoping. Willing the information from toe to head.
And when the test came, (they always come), what a thrill it was to walk the answer through each step and write it down on the challenge of blank paper. Every inch of your being smiling with delight, knowing “I helped.”
As you wander today through “the ruthless furnace of this world,” I encourage you to be “stubborn” enough to “delight” in the search of this marvelous poem. Read it. Trace it with your fingertips and feel the wonder.
I know it’s just a googling of the quoted lines, but still, when it pops on your screen, when your hands type and your eyes wander, maybe you’ll feel the joy, the delight, of a library trudged, knowledge gained, and a heart expanded.
There is a moment after finishing a painting when my heart sits as empty as the easel. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, but I seem to have to learn the lesson again and again.
And it’s not an abandoning. I will still have a relationship with the painting finished. It will just be a new connection. No longer of the “going through,” but the “how far we’ve come.” A new beauty stirs inside and shifts the ending to a beginning.
I was so nervous, my first job after college. Caught in the ending of school and the beginning of work, I really had no idea which way to move. It was Ron Miller, over the intercom, that set me free. When a situation arose in his department, he always used the intercom to call for help. He never referred to it as a problem. Loud and clear, he summoned aid by saying, “We’ve got an opportunity!”
Ron Miller passed on this year. As it turns out, he lives on through my apron in the south of France. Hanging on my empty easel, I hear him calling, “We’ve got an opportunity.” And so it begins.
One of the best compliments I’ve received lately was from a woman who said, while looking at the paintings, “I’ve seen the photos, but these feel alive.” That is the true success of a painting, I think. When the love you breathe in travels from heart to hand and lands gently onto the canvas, it continues to breathe, to welcome, to live.
She used to crawl all over me, with an urgent need to be picked up. It didn’t seem to matter how. Within my arms, clutched in elbows. Balancing on top of my feet that pushed her toward the sky, almost into flight. And then one day, without my knowledge or permission, she passed me in height, but the need to be lifted remains. Now, I simply do it with a brush.
Each canvas marks a bit of time. Serving as reminders that even though time keeps passing, love never does. Never will. Love remains.
She asked me how long I’ve been living in France. I showed her the living timeline. I do not fear the passing of time. Love keeps lifting. (I am, however, going to need more paint.)
The bag of Twizzlers they brought from the US could easily fit into a small bassinet, and I coddle it to my breast with a love worthy of the same. It’s not just because I love the taste of the candy. Or that I can’t get Twizzlers in France. Not just because I know they love it too. Or that I know the drawer where they keep a rotating bag in their home. I suppose it’s all of these things that make up the language of friendship.
And now, just as I know how far it is from recliner to licorice in their home, they will be able to picture me enjoying it in every room here in France. The great exchange.
People always say, “no strings attached,” — but I don’t think it applies to red licorice vines.
When I go to the studio today, on a bit of a sugar high, everything will seem fresh and new, because yesterday, love walked through.
Standing in front of the bird in the hand, he asked me what was the English word for perspective. Perspective, I said. He smiled, not having to learn another word. I smiled because not only was he speaking in my mother tongue, we were talking about art — my love language.
We are meant to connect. I believe it.
So many things can divide us. Learning a new language, I suppose, is like opening yourself up to a whole new perspective. You can focus on all the differences, but the weight of that can be unbearable. Nothing is lighter than joy. And landing on a word, a phrase, focusing on the common, the similar, the connection — this, weighing almost nothing at all, can lift us, higher than we ever imagined alone.
Sometimes the “bird in the hand” (the gift) is simply the fact that we’re reaching out at all. Just a thought from this bird brain.
How blue the sky was the day the air smelled of hope, and not fear.
I was raised on turquoise. It was my mother’s best color. Even in the hardest of times, she never went dark. Her blouse, her heart, remained in the color of hope.
Perhaps the same racks that lured her in Dayton’s, led me as well to the colors of the Mediterranean.
I painted Dominique in one of my first memories of him. Beside the water in Cassis. So far from home, I felt the familiar comfort, the joy, of every shade of blue. It’s no surprise then for me to paint the children in all of that hope.
Maybe it’s the promise of being raised in all of that blue, to keep rising. Daily. To look up and not be afraid. To find the hope in every sky, is to live in love. How beautifully blue.
It’s funny to me that we don’t all turn the clocks at the same time. We did in France this morning. The US will do it next weekend. It probably shouldn’t seem strange, after all if I really think about it, when did any of us change at the same time?
I remember once at the Office Depot in Minneapolis, the morning after the time change, we were discussing it at the counter while waiting to ship out packages. A few liked the extra hour of sleep. One dismayed over the upset to her sleep pattern. Another, and the most surprising, said, “Oh, I don’t do it.” Well, what do you mean? We all asked. She explained, with complete certainty, “Oh, I just change my watch a few minutes throughout the year, so when the time to change actually comes, it doesn’t seem that drastic.” But then you’re never, ever, at the right time, we questioned still. “No,” she smiled, as if that were completely fine with her.
I guess we all find a way to navigate through this world.
My mother always loved to dance in the kitchen. In our second house on Van Dyke Road, there was a large, heavy light fixture overhead the “dance floor.” I was downstairs when I heard the call of the music. Peeking around the corner, my delight turned to horror, as I saw one of her long arms rising to the beat and knocking the weighted glass. It tumbled, just missing her head, and came crashing to the floor. Without missing a beat of the music, (the music always continues to play), she looked at the fear on my face and said, “But did you see me dance though…”.
So we fell back a little, we still have to, get to, rise up!
While most of the kids on Van Dyke Road were told each morning to “get dressed,” it was my mother who told me simply, quietly, to “dress.” I learned the difference quite early on. To get dressed was merely to cover. Anyone can do that, she said. We were dressing. Completing an ensemble. A package of self-esteem and self fulfilling prophecy. I watched from bathroom to closet to full length mirror. Proof that what she was saying was true, as it carried her with style and grace daily to Independent School district #206.
I dressed to go into Aix yesterday. We just had a few errands, but I made sure I was belted, smoothed and scarved. Approaching the other side at the first crossing into the city, she smiled at me and said that I was “Très Élégant.” I clutched my imaginary pearls and thanked her, feet no longer touching the ground. I’m not sure how long I floated, (I’ll tell you if I stop). Of course a compliment feels wonderful, and it will always lift you. (Never underestimate the power of a compliment.) But it was more than that. The smiling woman, the complimenting woman, she was wearing a ruffled blouse, a crisp, white ruffling Ivy blouse. Proof, once again.
