I just saw it today. The similarity of these two paintings. This taking to flight. It’s inside all of us, I suppose. But only some will dare. Because to gather in the wind, one must expose the heart.
I see him continue to throw back his arms. Taking tests day after day. Higher and higher scholastically. I told him I was proud of him. I wonder if he knew it was not because he does so well. Scoring among the elite. This is wonderful, but just as worthy of praise is his shedding of weight. Letting go the confines of youth’s sweatshirt and fear and facing the wind, head on. This is spectacular!
Today will bring its challenges, just like yesterday. What will I, we, do in the face of the wind? My heart already knows.
I never thought of gull being slang for gullible. Maybe in not knowing, that’s exactly what it makes me. But I see them, living free by the sea, and if that’s being fooled, it’s a pretty good trick.
We have so many words for it, naive, Pollyanna, but I’m still a believer. And I suppose sometimes, even my own brain thinks of my heart as a white and gray bird near water, and yet it comes along, footprinting in the sand, knowing somewhere in all that belief and misbelief, we will take flight. I guess I don’t know how to live any other way. I have brushed away piles of sand upon sand. And still. I have averted hands swatting in the air. And still. I squawk, when others seem to know the words to the song. And still, I believe.
Because isn’t all that blue, lit by yellow, grounded by sand, isn’t that for everyone? I think so. I still believe. I’ll see you up there.
I suppose I heard it on the street. On tv. Someone called it a lemon. Maybe it was a car. Loving yellow, I looked around. I didn’t see anything. When explained that it meant something bad, something not up to standards, well, I just wasn’t having it. Not my lemons, my beautiful yellow friends. The color of my bedroom, my bedspread. The highlighter of all things important in every book. If anything, I thought they were more than special, these “lemons.” Braving all that light. I wanted to be that brave. Shining in a color so brilliant. What would be given so much notice, if it weren’t worth seeing?
It’s not always as easy now. As the “lemons” get bigger. But I think, still, maybe this isn’t bad, it simply needs to be seen. And maybe I’m not the beautiful glorious yellow of it all. Sometimes I’m the book, carrying all the highlighted words. Sometimes I’m just the table. Worn and weary, but smart enough to hold up the light of the lemon.
Maybe that’s too simple, but I’m not sure everything has to be so hard. So I highlight the words in my heart. Stand strong. Give me your biggest lemon. I know what to do.
I don’t often work in this color palette. But it suited her, my mother-in-law Lucy. Near the end, when time took to wrinkling, it was the pink of youth that said “not just yet.”
And maybe that’s the way for all. I hope so. I can feel it myself, that girlish vigor. From the pink of the gymnasium where we ran off our preteens. Cheeks, thighs, everything pinkened with beginnings. The blush remained through unanswered questions in classrooms to the bus stop, trying to time the line just right to sit next to the high scorer of the junior basketball boys’ team.
We grew and wandered under a blanket of rose. Beginning and beginning. Our hearts and minds must have sensed that all the change would bring with it challenge and heartache and pains of growth, but it was the pink that lifted us, the pink that held up the hand to our adulting years and whispered, “not just yet.”
I remember asking my grandma if it all went so fast. She giggled, partly because of the “of course” of it all, but mostly I like to think because most of the pink still remained.
I bought pink Lillies for Lucie. Placed them by her portrait. Not at her grave. But in the morning of the bathroom. She keeps beginning. Her palette remains.
All field trips were welcomed. Turning in the signed release form from my mother was always a bit exciting. Seeing the curve of her “I”, still ignites a feeling that something good is just a bus ride away.
That giant yellow box on wheels took us stomping the bog up north. Crawling through Crystal Cave. Orienteering is some forgotten forest. To the zoo. Knute Nelson Home. The baseball stadium. And then one day, without my knowledge or permission, straight to the door of my first love, The Walker Art Museum. I bought two pencils from the gift shop and saved them like pressed corsages from a high school dance.
I suppose you never forget your first love. It changes you. Not only the love you receive, but finding out the love you are able to give. This infinite supply that says you will always have a reason to board that bus. To try new things. To believe in them. To see the beauty all around you. Ever. Still.
That’s what The Walker in Minneapolis did for me. Does for me still. Even a country away. I pulled out my most recent purchase from last year’s visit. I read the back of the shirt. Minneapolis, MN — the World in New Ways. I couldn’t have imagined what that would mean. And I couldn’t love Minneapolis more than I do now.
My mother was always right. Something good is coming.
There was a group of men helping my grandfather. I suppose neighbors. Being the sponge that I was, I listened to them during their break. I could still fit underneath the table, amid the smell of earth from boots and overalls. They drank the coffee and ate the kolaches, and spoke as if they were one of us, even though they said the name wrong. Hvezda. Yes, it began with an H, but we didn’t pronounce it. It was vee-ezda, not he-vezda, I shook my head and told the table leg. Still, they finished the plates and drank the coffee to the grounds. Joyfully. And they would come back, again and again.
I didn’t ask why. The answer, for my grandfather, was always nature. So I walked in it. I hope I still do.
They say that Redwoods are smart enough to share with neighboring trees the water that they collect. Knowing that to hoard it would put them at greater risk in a wildfire.
My grandparents were Redwoods. What am I? What are we?
If you put flowers in front of a mirror, it makes them seem more full. It bouquets them well beyond two single tulips.
When I look at the painting of you and I, my friend, I can see it so clearly. We are that mirror for each other. This friendship that reflects between us, gives us strength. It more than doubles our gait as we walk through this world, beach or storm. Together.
And what a thing, to not bloom alone. I give thanks for it daily, for you, dear tulip, dear friend.
It was mostly on the major holidays, special occasions like weddings or funerals, and then the random calling of summer’s sun on the front lawn of my grandparents’ farm. People wandered in, as if on a Hvezda pilgrimage. Separating from front room to garage. I would tug at my mother’s blouse, raising a tiny fist in the direction of the unknown, (told that it wasn’t polite to point) driven by the desire to find out who these people were. Some turned out to be cousins. Others with labels of “step” or “half.” Some just neighbors lost or hungry.
I learned fairly quickly the real story was not with the others, but the ones I thought I knew. I had seen most in their own environments. In the homes they had made since leaving this farm. But something changed as they gathered. I could see it in my aunts, even my own mother. I had yet to read Thomas Wolfe, so I still imagined you could walk through that swinging screen door unchanged.
But experience changes your laughter, the shape of your tears. Your gait through the gate.
I suppose I was always watching. Not afraid. Just interested. And wondering. How would I maneuver the doors ahead? It seemed to me, we were all on this constant journey home. All. Maybe I was able to watch because of the sturdiness of my grandma. She stood sink side, without judgement. And welcomed. Where I would go was, still is, uncertain, but it was always clear who I wanted to become.
I stand sink side, knowing we all make our way home differently.
In my sketchbook, all the pages are almost absent of color. Not flesh, nor butter, it welcomes every image, and rests it gently, softly, without judgement. But for the flaps. The flaps are a vibrant red. Already set in tone, they present a different challenge. We call this an “underpainting.” The red cannot help but affect each color applied. And it can be tempting, this coming in hot. There is a vibrancy, a bit of excitement. And so it is with heart and mind.
Sometimes, seemingly without my knowledge or permission, I find myself in the flaps. But this! And that! And they! Should haves and could haves and supposed tos hovering in all that redness. And that’s ok, for a moment. I try not to add to the heat of the color by beating myself up. But rather create a space, where all are welcome. All.
We are living in a time of red. Perhaps an inhuman time. We’re not the first, nor the last, but It is our job to remain human. To love, to create, to inspire, to preserve the goodness. To be the pages that welcome, with all the gentle might of heart and mind.
I was just scaling the edge of my teens when my grandfather died. Too big to be carried, too small not to want to be. Of course I had seen them before. The processions after the funeral. But I can’t say I gave them any thought. No emotion anyway. Maybe we can’t, until we’ve sat in the line, the slow line that travels at the speed of grief. Each block a memory. Each intersection another line on his overalls, pinstriping the years, like colonies on the flag. My brain could only rewind the chorus from Amazing Grace. Perhaps because it was the last thing I heard, or the thing I wanted the most.
I’d like to think I thought about empathy. About how this changed everything. I’d like to think I made plans for patience in the future — patience when paused at the green light because grief was passing. Patience to know that we are all part of the procession. It is happening to all of us. I’m not sure I did. I think I do more. I hope I do more.
I try to remind myself. One of his portraits is the first thing I see in the morning. And even out of uniform. Even free from the furrows, he is leaning in. And I think I have to do the same.
