She often ranks atop my Pinterest list. And I knew that I could see it, her beauty, but it always pleases me when others can.
It’s why I share the stories of my mother, my grandmother. Their beauty must be seen. Packaged so differently, it’s funny that I use the same word for them – beauty – but it is fitting. Because beauty, like love, has the ability to change and mold, and become. And while that may seem scary, it is really beauty’s (and love’s) greatest gift of all.
So I never fear to thin the graying hair, nor hide the wrinkles. Life breathes of imperfections, and this should not be feared, nor frowned, but pinned, up high, daily!
Placing them beside each other, these opposite on the color wheel, it creates a strong and satisfying visual impact. This technique is often in art, fashion, and design. It even goes beyond that. This mixing of hard and soft, bold and quiet, strong and tender. When used in music, they call it harmony. When on the farm in Minnesota, we called it Grandma and Grandpa.
I didn’t have the words for it then, but this blending of differences. This long and lean mixed with short and cuddly. This thoughtful quiet mixed with continuous giggle. This practical and practically anything. This melding was the strength that I leaned on, learned from and live with still.
I was reminded of it yesterday listening to a podcast with the queen of elegant roasted chicken, Ina Garten. She, always in a Talbot’s blouse and an Hermes scarf. How could I not be drawn to this harmony? It is the cradling I grew up on. It’s why, I suppose, I wheel the opposites of red and green. Why I wear the expensive boots with my $5 beloved thrifted jeans.
I can’t figure out what we’re so afraid of — in our differences. When they may be the only things that bring us together, that give us the harmony that we all crave. Whether you’re red or green, Talbot’s or Hermes, you need me, and I need you. We were meant to ensemble. How satisfying it is to be together.
There was no turkey, nor stuffing. Certainly nothing pumpkin, but I was thankful. My friends brought napkins from Minnesota on their most recent visit. They didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me at all that they would go perfectly with my French plates. These little pieces of paper, barely more than air, had, have, the gravity to tumble into my heart, and fill it.
Before we were allowed to stir, or guard a heated pan, we were expected to set the table. I suppose it was years of practice, of placing knives and forks (silverware that wasn’t silver) and glasses (that weren’t really glass at all, but colored metal), before I realized that bringing some things to the table, was actually, what “I brought to the table.” Grandma Elsie knew that being a part of something was to participate. Gifts, however small, were gifts.
When my stepdaughter came to dinner, she, being in need of nothing but the magic of time spent together, was welcomed with a Minnesota napkin on our French table. (A Minnesota nice.) A gift of love passed from home to home to home.
In a world of so much “haves”, I often wonder what I have to bring to the table. Then I paint a portrait. Offer the love that I have been given since my arms had to reach over my head to set a plate. A waft of Elsie smiling from a far away kitchen kisses my cheek. And I am home.
You could tell Grandma Elsie was a social being, by the amount of wrinkles on her apron — all those gathered in left a mark.
I used to think it meant only a bad thing – this leaving of a mark. I heard it on the playground daily. Falling off a monkey bar. Being pushed onto the cement. Scratched, pinched, horse-bit and sometimes with teeth. (We ran wild at Washington Elementary.) It’s funny we didn’t even mention the tears that ran down pinkened cheeks.
I was shy as shy could be back then. I didn’t speak without a broad opening. I suppose that’s what grandma laps are for. And in the softened safety of her welcoming apron, I let it all out. What I thought. What I worried. What I dreamed of and hoped for. And by the time I reached what I long imagined I had climbed and twisted and twirled in her flowery folds. Entangled, she looked at her apron, and said, “That’s going to leave a mark.”
My mother didn’t get paid from Herberger’s, but she often worked there. And it’s hard to call it work, it was simply something she could see. She could see the women in the dressing rooms. She knew what would work for them. What outfits. What colors. And it wasn’t just the clothes. She could guide them through the make-up department, the shoes, the jewelry, accessories. She visualized the final result long before the last earring was attached. She was the intelligence, long before it was artificial.
Visiting the studio, he admired this painting. But also wondered where it could be hung. I made the renderings on my computer. Placing it in the large Italian kitchen. With different frames. Moods. Some will call this quite impressive. And it is something. But it is not something new. Writers, artists, teachers, people of all kinds, have been doing it for centuries. Placing us in the stories. Giving us empathy. Helping us feel less alone. That’s what we do when we see people. We show them how they fit. How they belong.
Technology is useful. Human contact is priceless. I sit at my computer, but I’m never that far from Herbergering.
It was maybe the first time I was asked. First grade. Gerald Reed. He leaned toward me, only with his eyes, as not to be detected, and without words, raised his eyebrows as if they were questions. Being as naive as the red ruffles on favorite dress, I continued the conversation with a furrowed brow. He looked to the front of the class. Mrs. Bergstrom was writing something on the board. He mouthed the question. I shrugged my shoulders. He said it again without opening his lips. My cheeks began to ruffle in red, I really didn’t hear him. He decided to risk the whisper, (with the same success my mother had in church), and the whole class heard him ask, “Can you slip me the answer?” Mrs. Bergstrom turned to a sea of laughter and immediately told us to pass our papers forward.
The questions change through the years, but we all find ourselves from time to time, looking for the quick fix. A fast solution. But it’s been the same since Washington Elementary, the only way out is through. I don’t know if my answer would have been right for him. Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s right for me. But I keep doing the work. And when I forget, I have the answer written on my heart, and on my wall, and it slips inside with a whisper. The answer is still, and again, love.
I suppose it’s the recapturing of youth. The fear of anything sharp in the grass was far outweighed by the release of winter toes into the cool dew of spring. Socked and booted for months, to be set free in this sea of potential green was an exhilaration that could only be described as the combination of hope and joy — (either alone are fantastic, but laid out together, as a welcome mat, was beyond our wildest dreams.)
I can’t blame winter anymore, it’s often just my own fear that keeps my heart socked and booted. And it’s not Dorothy’s red shoes that I dream of, but the carefree nature of barefooting. To dare all that lies ahead with hope and joy, with a wiggling and release that says, I still believe.
So I bring them to life on canvas. And match them, toe for toe, hope for hope, joy for joy. And one way or another, I am not going to simply wiggle, I am going to fly.
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.
