We take turns driving. When I’m not at the wheel, I’m in charge of the Time Machine — the music. Each melody transports.
I could feel it before I hit play. Graham Nash’s “Sleep Song.” It was the first song Dominique ever sent to me. We hadn’t yet met in real life. Not that love has a final destination, but I was tumbling toward it, within it. I had just finished a gallery show. My mom came to spend the weekend. We were still in the throws of the show’s excitement. Still too engaged in our own tumble to go to sleep. I put her blow-up mattress at the foot of my bed. My phone started to ping from France. We began to giggle. All the what-ifs and could-bes of potential love are so tickling when you share it with your best friend. Then he sent the song and our laughter tears turned to tender tears. We all were dreaming, none of us asleep.
“It’s a beautiful song,” he said, hands at 9 and 3, facing Memphis. Traveling on.
People often say, “…if I only had a Time Machine…”. But we do. We carry it with us. At the speed of love.
Happy travels, my friends. We are journeying to the new year. Some loves will sit beside us. Some loves we carry in our hearts. Some are waiting, just up the road. The adventure begins, and begins…
We didn’t have backpacks. We had lockers. When we transitioned from the one classroom of sixth grade to the multi-class cycle day system of junior high, they gave us combinations and a stacks of books. Theft was not a big problem. Not that we were morally superior. The five minutes allowed to get from class to class was barely enough time to search your own locker. I wasn’t worried about my coat. Or my boots. But my books. My underlined, yellow-highlighted, notes in margins, heart clutched books…I loved them. My most prized possessions. I carried the stack from class to class.
At the first teacher’s conferences, I got the standard responses. They told my mother I was doing well. “But she doesn’t need to carry all of her books to every class.” My mother smiled, “Actually, she does.” She knew me.
I suppose I have always lived in the word. The comfort. The hope. The beauty. They danced from my mother’s mouth, until I learned to partner with them myself. They have never left me.
As we travel from city to city, the first thing I look for is the bookstore. Even if I don’t go inside, I do need to know it’s there. I trust a city that reads. A people that live word by word.
My suitcases are weighted with this trust. Books in every zippered flap. Some might find that silly. Some might say you don’t need them. With the assurance of heaven smiles and heart whispers, I tell you, “Actually, I do.”
I never asked for toys. My friends had every page of the Sears Christmas catalog marked. It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to make something. Something I could paint. Something I could form, or mold, or color. Because I saw it as an extension. When they opened their gifts — their plastic toys — the excitement was there for a minute, but it seemed to end. For me, to get the gift of creation, it was like I got to open a new gift every day. It kept giving and giving.
Thumbing through my photos this morning, all the lights of Christmas were shining. And for just a brief second, my heart felt a little melancholy. It’s all so fast. How do we keep those lights burning? I reached into my suitcase for the answer. A gift I received. A beautiful leather bound book of ancient paper. Ready. Waiting. Just for me to create. I touch it. Feel the possibility. The endless hours to come. The love in the gift that says “I know you.” Once again I am five years old, beginning, warmed by the light of it all.
I suppose we’re all given that gift, daily. The day opens and we get to decide what we’re going to make of it.
Let me always see the gift. Ever be part of the giving.
Maybe it’s always the little things that connect us. Keep holding us.
When I first met them in New York, I flashed to my grandfather and smiled. Their tags said the name of their store was “Stuff.” They were bright and shiny blonde women from Kansas City. It was my grandfather, a man of very few words, who politely exited each sentiment with, “and stuff.” We knew that in those two words, all the important things rested. He would tell us to “be careful around the electric fence, and stuff…” We knew exactly what the “stuff was” — it was that he loved us. The stuff I still carry.
Now I only see these women every few years at best. I walked into their store, filled with people, and glorious stuff. They called me out by name. My name. Just two words, but within them, I felt recognized, worthy, even loved.
It takes so little. I hope I can remember to do it — to do the small things — I hope we all can. The little stuff. It can, it will, hold.
From the moment she introduced the assignment to the class, I had a plan. It wouldn’t be hard to find a shoe box to make the diorama. My mom loved shoes. She had a closet full of them.
Mrs. Bergstrom told us that we were going to make a “slice of life” — capture a miniature moment. We could do anything. She suggested scissors and cardboard and paint and crayons. Glue of course, Elmer’s. My head was spinning. Oh, how I loved to make things.
There was an hour after I got off the bus before my mom got home from work. I could have waited. I should have waited. But my seven year old self whispered, then shouted, “Don’t wait!” I opened my mother’s closet and took out the first box in reach. I took out the shiny shoes neatly resting head to toe in tissue paper. I’d like to think There was a moment I think, I hope, that I thought of keeping them wrapped in the tissue paper, but then that shouting self said it might be useful for my diorama — “If you colored it blue and crinkled it up, glued it to the box, it could be one of our 10,000 lakes.” The shoes were left naked on the floor.
I was knee deep, literally, in cuts and folds and colors by the time my mom got home. I was all smiles when I looked up at her from her bedroom floor. Holding the cut-out of myself.
She didn’t return a look of delight like I was expecting. No, it was a look I had never seen before. Deflation. I had been so busy trying to create my own slice, that I forgot about hers.
“It’s my slice of life…” I said sheepishly. She nodded. “And also mine,” she added. She helped me pick up the mess. Put it all on the kitchen table. She wasn’t mad. She even helped me finish. But I knew at that moment, it wasn’t all about me. I took special care to add lovely shoes to the figure that represented her in my tiny box. We were in this together.
I painted a bookmark yesterday of Maya Angelou. At the top are her words, “Then when you know better, do better.” It’s a good reminder for me. It’s simple, but so worth repeating. We are not alone in this life. We would do well to remember as we wander through each other’s dioramas. The word itself in French means, “through that which is seen.” My mother saw me. And I saw her. And oh, how she she made me, still makes me, want to do better.
If you find a pair of underpants that you love, it’s nearly guaranteed that they will stop making them. The same is true for bras and any kind of make-up. I’m sure there’s the male equivalent, but this is about me.
Being nearly out of my well advanced stock from Herberger’s (my mother saw to that), I recently went to Target to try something new. I picked out a pair. There was a good deal if you bought three, but who needs three if you don’t end up liking them. I bought one pair, with the idea that after a test run, (and yes, running would be a part of the test — if you read about the airport disaster of 2022, me running, dragging carry-on with one arm and holding up underpants with the other, then you know), I would return to get my deal on three more.
Holding their place on waist and in my heart, I did return to Target, only to find two. The clerk on the floor folding baby clothes in the aisle across the way on Christmas Eve was certain they were out and really had no interest in helping me look for the third, the last wiseman of my Christmas miracle. I searched through all the sizes, no more smalls. Only two. I bought them at full price.
I mention it only because life is about change. When Herberger’s left years ago, so did I. Not for the same reasons, but still…
We get to choose how we see things — No, I didn’t find three together… but I did find two! And one before. And I like them.
It’s the 26th of December. That could be a letdown for some. I remove the tiny hangers from my new underpants, and get ready for the day. The house is still filled with love. The possibilities are endless. And I can move about, run even – hands free – this is my tiny miracle. And I choose to celebrate! Happy 26th!
I read it every year — Maya Angelou’s An Amazing Peace. It is the manger of my Christmas decor. I don’t remember each word by heart, but the feeling, oh, the feeling that these words create — of understanding, of trial, of joy, of hope…and peace, well, they are permanently engraved in my heart. And those feelings latch on to memory and time. Of what was, what is, and what could be. And I live there, coddled in every word. Piece by piece. Peace by peace.
This is the first year that I don’t have the book beside me. It rests seven hours ahead in another country. But I am not without it. “I am not without.” I say the words slowly, truly, and perhaps learn the meaning of Christmas once more.
Isn’t it the same with love? It may not sit beside us. But we are never without. This is my truest peace. I hope you can feel it — on this joyous of days — ever.
Merry Christmas, everyone. It is amazing.
“ Peace, My Brother. Peace, My Sister. Peace, My Soul.” Maya Angelou
Before Walt Disney made him into a character, the phrase Jiminy Cricket was used as an exclamation of surprise. Of course I didn’t know it at the time, but I felt it — every time he sang us into the school movie, “I’m no fool…” he warbled, and we all, seated anxiously at our desks awaiting movie day, exclaimed under breath, “Jiminy Crickit!”
We were all hovering in uncertainty and hope in Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade class. The snow had begun to pile up outside. Just days before Christmas vacation. Gerald Reed, the tallest boy in class, pulled down the long black shades. The movie monitor, an elected position, wheeled in the projector as we fidgeted in our seats. The click of the reel began. Jiminy Crickit sang us in, and the movie about the real Santa Claus, the true Saint Nicholas, began. A living Santa Claus, giving gifts. So he was real! All doubts instilled by older siblings and the high ranking fifth graders of Washington elementary were gone. Santa Claus did exist. Other than learning how to spell, this may have been the greatest gift Mrs. Bergstrom ever gave us — this one more year of believing.
As we drove the streets of the city last night, the lights were magnificent. One block outlit the other. Nothing but shiny hope. “Jiminy Crickit!!!” I said as we made our ways through the illumination.
Everyone in the house is asleep. Presents are unopened, but for one… I give myself the gift, once again — one more year of believing.
There are many theories to the lyrics in Winter Wonderland — “Gone away is the bluebird. Here to stay is the new bird.” Sometimes the most likely answer is true. It’s the one I choose — that bluebirds migrate away, but some arrive, like the cardinal (the new bird.)
Some of the other teams mocked us for our mascot – the Alexandria Cardinals. Them being cougars, bears and wolves — surely they assumed themselves to be tougher. But I knew something different. I knew what it meant to be strong. To stay when the weather got bad, when times were tough. To dare the longest of nights, and still greet the morning with hope. My mother was a new bird — a cardinal. A pure and beautiful symbol of the very strength we wore proudly on our uniforms. And to see it, even when the others didn’t, well, that just made it even more special. It made me, all of us, stronger. And so we sang our fight song proudly, “We are the cardinals, mighty, mighty cardinals…”
Wearing my vintage cardinal t-shirt, typing the words while the Christmas songs go through my head, I do miss my mom! But just as promised, she is here to stay — the new bird. I smile knowing the strength I too carry, easily underestimated I suppose, sometimes even by myself, but strength I wear proudly, carry with me. Hope, just like the cardinal is mighty!
Where your heart can rest, and your mind can wander, I guess that’s home.
We pulled into the town. I felt no connection. That feeling when you know you’re lonesome, but you just can’t pinpoint for what. We drove the Main Street. How could there be no parking spaces and yet nothing to park for? We turned on 10th per Google’s direction for coffee. It must have closed. Try ninth, she suggested. Driving slowly I saw the coffee shop, next to a bookstore. Yes!
The first sip was the familiar road. Entering the bookstore, well, that was home.Nestled in all those words, I was wander-welcomed. It’s a rare combination, this feeling of calm and excitement. This feeling that anything could be true, could be real, even the story of yourself.
I don’t have a physical place to go to, in the sense that some would call home. Not my grandparents’, nor my mother’s house. But I have something else. I have the stories they gave to me. I can take them anywhere. Everywhere.
Recently I found a note, a birthday card, tucked into one of my mom’s books. It was from her mother. I don’t know for which birthday. It would have been true any year. She wrote of what a lovely daughter she was and how she made the world a better place. These words are the open doors to my forever. My safe. My possible.
I’m the lucky one. I can walk into this unfamiliar bookstore, in this unfamiliar town, and be gathered in. Sensing the stories I carry, the words that rest on shelf and table say, “Come in, you and your heart sit down.” I do. We do. We all are home. Indeed, a better place.
