I realized quickly that there was no need to wait for the random field trip. At Washington Elementary, once a week, we were marched down the terrazzoed hall, past the drinking fountain, the boys’ and girls’ lavatories, and up the stairs to the library. With no need for a signed permission slip from my mother, no bus fumes, no pleather stuck to the back of my thighs, I was allowed (just imagine!) to pick anything, any book I wanted. And take it. Just take it for a week. Go on the journey! Be the girl with the pesky little sister, or the big dog. Be the cowgirl, or even the horse. Live on the prairie in a little house. Fall with the boy down the well. Or be the mother of them all. It was better than any trip I had ever imagined. (And I had (have) a big one.)
The most beautiful thing of all, we never have to lose our tickets. I take a journey every day. Within the pages of a book that I read. On the pages of my sketchbook that I paint. I don’t need permission to become a poet, or a baker, or a gardener. (Even though my mother would have signed any slip, and still does with a heavenly wink.) For she was the one who loved books first. It was my mother I was following long before the line past the fountain. And when I read a passage today and think, Oh, she would love this, I stop myself and say, She does love this. How could I not believe that she continues to make the trip? Once you’ve made the journey, gone past the gravel road, the railroad tracks, the Viking statue, Olson’s Super Market, beyond the elementary school, the middle, and the high, the college, and the state and the country… you don’t stop. With hearts as open as pages, we keep wondering, we keep wandering — no slips required. Only love.
It’s not lost on me, the irony, that my current most popular painting on Pinterest is of the woman taking flight by reading a book. And I’m as guilty as the next person, searching the internet for all things analog. But I do find comfort in the fact that we still celebrate the sketchbook, the written word, the paper and pencil. The intimacy of heart and hand.
And maybe it’s the pushback to all of this Artificial Intelligence. Maybe it’s the understanding that’s it’s all about the gathering. The joy of the gathering.
I’m so happy that I grew up in an age when you had to go to the library. You had to search for a book to reference, sometimes only to get to another book. And then another. Feeling each cover. Smelling each page. Digesting each word. Feather by feather, I suppose, we earned our wings.
I see it in my sketchbook. How one simple little bird became another. And then became a French bird. Or a bird on a wire, and a purse.A stack of books. On a person’s head. And that person became another. In a different time. A different race. Each with a different story. A different song. Together. So many feathers. So many wings. All that flight from the gathering.
I wonder if we can do the same, with everything, reaching with heart and hand…
You can’t imagine the amount of stories I have heard, just from people who play the ukulele. And it makes me so happy when people see themselves in the smallest of my paintings. They find themselves in a ruffled blouse, or my grandma’s kitchen. Beside a red truck. In a striped shirt of a French bird. Because it’s no longer me on the way to the mall with my mother. It becomes their story. With their American mother. On their way. And we are all connected.
And it occurred to me, if you can hear the music of this little bird, if the violin sings to you, and we find ourselves under the same sky, branch to branch, then certainly we could see each other, human to human. And what if we did… really see each other… imagine how that music would sound. Just for a moment, let’s listen.
I can’t tell you how or why I started painting French birds. No more, I suppose, than I can remember the first time my mother said, “Let’s go shopping.” Some things just take on a life of their own. And now I joyfully find myself wing deep in berets and stripes.
Maybe it’s the unlikeliness of it all. We had no money, and not much of a mall. No history passed down from my grandmother. No gps in our car. No google – no computer even. Just the pure desire to dress our way into lives we knew our hearts were already living. So we gassed up the used Malibu and wore a path on I-94. Passing fields and billboards as if winged ourselves. And we found ourselves at the Dales. Ridgedale, Southdale, Brookdale even, when something just needed to be found.
I see it now more clearly. How we fit striped tops over our wings and found our way. Found ourselves.
Here in France, because my mother dared the freeway, I find myself in front of my sketchbook, and I am not lost, but ever wing deep in joy.
Something told me we wouldn’t be there long. It was more than basement dark. The whole house seemed to know that changes were coming. Still I picked a color for my bedroom that I thought would change things. Yellow. Yellow carpeting. Bedspread. I tucked myself inside all of that hope. Of course my father still left. We had to sell the house. So you might say it didn’t help at all. While it’s true, it didn’t change circumstance, it did change my mood, and my heart to this day.
Maybe it’s the exhiliration of spring, or just a new day, but whenever I need a lift, or want to give one, I turn to yellow. It doesn’t change the basement, but it does light a path. I pray you can see it. It contains a thousand stars. A glorious sun. Even the lemons know, and rely on the promise of what’s to come. So I send it on word and wing — all things yellow, all things hope.
It turns out my mother is currently living under the assumed name of “animal prints” on TikTok. I know this to be true, because yesterday when I posted this video, she was the first to respond saying “I love that striped top. I need to be wearing it.” That is so my mother.
We had a shared language. From ruffles to stripes. One developed through years of shopping malls and our own closets. Playing dress up. Fashion show. The joy flowed like well draped fabric. And I understood completely. For her to say she was “scouring the catalogs for that blouse” after seeing a recent painting, was the best compliment she could give to me.
So how could I doubt that heaven has TikTok?
I suppose believers will always believe. And I do. And if you needed any more evidence, there’s this — while typing today’s post, I checked google to make sure I was spelling “scouring” correctly — here’s the sample definition that appeared — “I scoured the mall for a blue and white shirt, but couldn’t find it anywhere.” Feel free to say hello to my mother on TikTok.
I don’t think anyone has to convince the birds to fly. Has to motivate them. Nor give them a reason. I’m sure it’s pretty clear. There’s the limb. There’s the sky. What do you want to do?
Repeatedly I’m asked “What motivates you?” I suppose we all want the answers from time to time. I know I did, standing on the shore of Lake Latoka. Watching, admiring, envying even, those on the diving dock. I’ve told the story many times. Seeing the older kids fly off into the air, like birds from a limb, my heart fluttered. Before I was even old enough to swim past the buoys, I knew, one way or another, I was going to fly. And it took some work. Battling nerve and wave. Every day braving a little further. But I did it. I did it!
I guess I simply keep making the same decision. Every day. Limb or sky. And I always choose sky.
It’s one of those things, hard to define, but you know it when you see it, when you see them, people at ease, comfortable in their being. The lack of tension in the body. I saw it in my grandfather, the leaning in. My grandmother, the letting out. I continuously try to paint this feeling. Mostly to remind myself — a reminder not to carry, to strain or keep. What I need will flutter in. What I don’t will fly away. And there is beauty in both.
Visiting our relatives in Kansas City, I experienced something special with the music. Maybe it’s the way with jazz. This letting in, and letting go. A lovely freedom. Not confined by paper or recording, but simply played — for the first time, and perhaps the only. And to hear that, a sound that simply rests on shoulders for but a moment, you feel a magic that was never meant to be contained.
I suppose it’s the same with love. With life. This letting in and letting go, with the grace of no restraint. No protection. When I remember this, I release, I relax, and let the music play.
With each new person I paint, the first question is usually “Who is that?” And I can’t blame them for asking. Didn’t I do the same at Jerry’s Jack and Jill grocery store each time my grandma stopped the cart and talked to the person in the aisle. Too old to sit inside, I hung on the front of the cart, and every word exchanged, looking, listening for clues to solve the mystery of who they were. Maybe they would say where they worked, who they were married to, or what they were making for dinner. I could never tell by looking at my grandma. She was nice to everyone. And not that fake kind of nice that I had seen, even experienced on the playground, or that she herself pointed out to me while watching Days of our Lives. She was just genuinely interested. She cared. She was curious. She was indeed the “party” of her party line, whether on the phone or at the grocery store. I could see that it didn’t really matter to her, the details for which I searched. She just wanted to visit.
I suppose that’s how I paint (minus the grocery cart). I’m just interested in all who appear. It’s a conversation of heart and mind. Grandma Elsie taught me that — that’s who people are — kind and curious and worth the pulling over.
When I turn the pages of my sketchbook, I have to laugh at the sizing. The weight I can give a sparrow!. And that’s wonderful, if directed toward joy. But I have to be careful that I don’t do the same with problems — make them bigger than ever possible. And that’s easy to do. But it’s also easy to shift.
When the weight of a random day is too much to carry, I try to paint it away. And once I begin, to squeeze out a little paint on my saturated palette (I’ve done this before), wet my brush to lip, begin to color the page, what felt so heavy on heart, is so much lighter on wing. It’s funny how that works. I suppose it’s not really even magic, more likely, it wasn’t that heavy after all. I mean, if the sparrow can carry it away… And so I keep painting, lighter, once again learning, hope will never weigh you down.
The morning sky is bright. It seems like it might be a good day to fly! I’ll see you up there.
