At 7:25, I knew she would already be at her desk. Skirt smoothed. Lipstick on. Purse neatly tucked. And I awaited the call. I started each day with my mother.
We went through the usual checklist. What we were wearing. If we slept. Shoes. How we felt. Accessories. Unseen compliments and laughter. There was certainty at 7:25. There was love.
Through her working years, I knew 11:30 was lunch. 4:30, home. I didn’t watch the clock, but sometimes the second hand would wrap itself around my shoulder, because I knew where she was.
Traveling to New York or California, I stayed in the knowledge of her time zone. 7:30 no longer meant the desk, but she was up, “putting on her face.” When I moved to France, her 7:30 awakening became more like 8:00, which was 3pm for me. At 4:00 I would call. The check list varied, but the love never did.
Someone else has her phone number now. But I will always know what time it is in Minnesota.
Long before I could read them, I carried them. I knew the words of the books, my mother having read them to me night after night. Not being able to read yet myself, I was under the assumption, (or I was probably just of the age to hope) that if I kept the words nearby, cradled in hand and tucked against hip, that they would stay with me. They did. Now, I can’t say for sure that it was because I held them close, pressed them dear…but I can’t say that it wasn’t.
I have done the same with love. Kept a library in my heart.
I walked a new path yesterday. My feet plodded up the unexplored hill. My head peaking above as I neared the top. A school. A soccer field. And then, not the promised land, but a box filled with promise, a community library. And the biggest surprise, two books in English. The collected works of Mark Twain was as thick as my open hand. I clutched it to my heart and put the paperback in my back pocket. The proportion of books to body was nearly the same as when I carried them in youth’s palm. My steps, as light as they were then. Carried in the word.
I had been right. It stays with me. Coddled close, this love for word and promise. Did I walk home a little faster? Probably. Did I smile the whole way? Indeed.
I’ve always loved paper. Even before the freedoms of learning to ride a bicycle and then a car, there was something so liberating about the writing of words. The clarity of question, thought, and answer, right there at the end of a #2. We all knew it. I suppose that’s why we passed the notes in class. All feelings could be declared or denied, with the simple checking of a box. Do you like him? Check yes or no. Where are you going after school? Check practice or Hardees.
Maybe it’s why I continue to write — a simple checking of yes to the day. It’s still so powerful and clear. A way to remember. A way to forget. A letting in and a letting go. Simply with words.
My #2 is often replaced electronically. But it will never replace the feeling of holding it in my hands. The questions. The hopes. Dreams. The story.
When I tell you mine, and then you share yours, it is the pedaling of banana seat bikes and wind in our hair. It is the release of laughter ridden into. It is an open car window on a summer’s road, releasing music from an AM radio – KDWB 63. It is the exclamation point of a giant X that goes beyond the edges of the yes box.
Humans were made to connect. I ask myself daily — Can we do this? Can we do this together? Can we feel the freedoms of connection? I know my answer. Are you checking yes or no?
I washed the windows in the studio recently, reminding myself that in order to paint the light, you really need to be in it.
People will always be quick to tell you what to do. Even knee deep in the mud, they will advise you on your path. While all the scattering of their “should-haves” and “supposed-tos” merely block the way. And doubt, not one to miss a dim light, will often seize the opportunity and join in the chatter. And so I turn…
I can’t say I love to wash windows. It is work. And the efforts are never rewarded with longevity. You know it going in, this won’t be the last time. But when it hits you, wraps itself around you, nearly lifting with clarity and grace, as sure as a mother’s embrace, my heart says (with no apology for the pun), “aaaaah, I see….”
My brain has never been the kind to live by the calendar. Perhaps it was because of the kitchen table in my grandparents’ house in Minnesota. Around it, the dates remembered were of snowstorms and the dearly departed. Behind coffee cup and pipe, as they began to recall, I shook the numbers from my head, and ran into the open space and possibility of the front yard.
And it’s not about denial. I remember every feeling of nearly every day. There are some though, with just a number, that won’t let you look away. Like today. And we shouldn’t forget. The horror. The courage. The fear. The coming together. The after. What did we do in the after? What are we doing today?
That’s the thing. After the storm, they still gathered together at the kitchen table, as one.
Today is Pascal’s birthday, my brother (in law and love). With the heaviness of this date still ringing in my head, this is the gift of hope, the gift of a swinging screen door and an open yard. A reminder that even in the most unlikeliness of time and place, we can find the good.
It wasn’t obvious. Nor was I looking. And I wasn’t supposed to. I only saw what a child needs to see. A root beer float.
There were no visible sharp edges to Grandma Elsie. She was round and approachable. She was the scoop (or two) of Schwan’s vanilla ice cream in her frequent afternoon root beer float. I can see it now — that it could have been more than just a sugar craving. It was simple. An easy decision with a consistent result. There were no maybes or what ifs to it. And didn’t she need that? In her world of uncertainty — all those kids (because even old they were) and grandkids tugging, and the farm, would it rain, would it sell, would he ever make the walk from field to kitchen — all umbrellaed under the certainty of a root beer float.
I never liked the combination. I always no-thank-you-ed out of it. Grabbing a pack of Sugar Babies, or a Black Cow from the Lazy Susan — a whole corner cupboard of my own certainty.
Without my knowlede or permission, I adopted the habit of giving myself an easy decision. Some days I can tackle a whole portrait, others, simply a tomato. Both victories. There is comfort in that. In a world of how could this possibly be, to simply hold something plump and round and sure is a gift. It is the soft edge of an afternoon scoop, the embrace of a grandmother’s plump and generous love that ever holds. Of this I’m certain.
It’s a myth that time is a healer. More of a revealer, I’d say. Like a sculptor. It works daily. Sometimes minute by minute. To show what’s inside — what we’re really made of. And when I can think of it that way, it’s all manageable, even exciting, but sometimes though, that heavy tick of the chisel…
My mother often worried that she wasn’t brave. I suppose it’s easier to see it in someone else. (An artist always has to stand back to get the full picture.) When I’d worry, or be afraid of something, she didn’t negate it. Didn’t even say don’t. I’d relay the situation and tell her that I was scared. “That’s just good common sense,” she’d say. We’d laugh out loud, dulling the swing of the chisel.
It was Georgia O’Keeffe who said, “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life — and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”
There was a push for a while for everyone to be fearless. I never bought in. Of course we’re going to be afraid. We’re going to be scared and we’re going to be happy. We’re going to feel it all. And it will shape us into something beautiful. And then with the words that my grandma passed on to my mother, who passed them on to me, I will say to myself and the world, “Isn’t that something!!!!”
I missed it the first time checking the mailbox. I went back and read the email. The carrier said it was “delivered to a secure location.” I went back down the driveway. Oh, there it is… I guess for some, delivered to a secure location is simply thrown out of a moving vehicle over the gate and into the bush.
We all have our own definitions.
I don’t know why I called it a bean. Maybe I couldn’t say blanket yet, and certainly not security. It wasn’t big. I’m sure it came with one of my dolls. It had the same smell of their heads, somewhere between plastic and baby powder, and while clutching to my chest, the scent directly went from nose to heart, and I was saved.
There was always a frantic search before leaving the house. I had to have my bean before entering the car that would traverse the gravel of Van Dyke Road. I’m not sure we gave a thought to seat belts, but my mom and I knew that that mini blanket, this would save me.
I suppose it happened naturally. One day it got left behind and I made the journey without it. Maybe it was at the bottom of the laundry. Possibly even in the driveway. Somehow, the security remained. Enough to get me past the railroad tracks, the freeway, the airport.
L’Occitane makes a hand cream with the exact scent. I buy it here in France. It’s funny, with just a smoothing on my hands, I smile. Oh, Bean. I am delivered to my secure location, and I am home.
I could tell she was so excited to be surrounded by all the birds. Standing in my studio she said, (in French) “You know what my last name means…” To be honest, I didn’t even know what her last name was. “C’est Mésange.” (As if that helped.) She pointed to one of the birds on canvas, and looked up on her phone. “Chickadee?” I said. She looked at her phone, Yes, yes, yes. She beamed. Her name meant Chickadee.
I never have any idea what will connect us. But I do know this. People will find themselves, and in turn, you will find them.
It was always the blouse for my mother. Yesterday, the purse in the painting for my friend Sheila. And with each reveal, I learn a little bit more about those around me, just by seeing what they see.
I suppose we’ve been saying it forever. A mile in someone else’s shoes. But I wonder if we’re still doing it…making the journey from Mésange to Chickadee.
It was Halloween. I had just entered my trick-or-treating age. I could hear some of the Van Dyke Road kids already stomping a path. Explaining who they were in front of porch lights in exchange for candy. Standing in our entryway, no costume, I could feel all of the good candy slipping away. Tired from a day’s work, maybe my mother simply forgot. But then she saw me. Desperate in the entry. She grabbed the nearest solution. Down by the shoes. Under the coats. A stack of paper sacks from Red Owl. She poked two holes for eyes and one for mouth. I stood motionless. Unimpressed. How would I look in a sea of store-bought costumes? Seeing my hesitation, she pulled another sack. Poked the same holes. Her always red rouged lips mouthed the words, “Look, we’re owls.” Maybe it was how her lips matched the logo of the sack, or seeing them move independently, as if floating in space, I couldn’t help but giggle. Both of our sacks began to wrinkle with the uncontrolled laughter. That was one of the countless times I saw my mother become directly before my eyes. She transformed from mom to someone extraordinary, my super hero, as she pulled the sack from her face.
Yesterday, in the throws of a new painting, I was nearing the end of the day. Paint was still being placed, but the energy was dwindling. And then, a shadow under the eye. A change of hairline. Just a few strokes, and I could feel it, her becoming. There she is! I exclaimed to no one, as if I were standing in the entryway of our green house on Van Dyke Road.
Of course our neighbors knew who we were that Halloween evening. Still they asked politely as I reached out my sack. “We’re owls,” I said, not with the pride of costume, but the joy of my mother.
