I’ve always thought I loved shopping, but the greater truth is I loved shopping with my mother. Oh, I still love clothes. I will play fashion show at home longer, and without the prompt of any “fashion week.” And I still visit the same stores we went to when returning to the US. But it’s not the same. And that’s not to be sad about it, but to celebrate it for what it was — pure joy! I can still hear her comments. Even when I knew something didn’t fit properly, I would come out of the dressing room just to hear her say, “That’s nice, did they have it in your size?” I use it to this day, even on myself. I’m still laughing. And when the outfit is good, oh, I let myself know it too! Just as she did, with unbridled enthusiasm. With an extra voila! With extended mirror time. With longer strides around the room — that’s the funny thing about joy, it always makes you taller!
I suppose it’s true about everything. It’s about the company we keep. Think about your favorite vacation. Your most delicious meal. Always more who than what.
I try to be mindful about my branches. Open, yet thoughtful. Fluttering among those that make this seemingly ordinary stretch of wood unforgettable! I’ll see you up there.
There’s only so many times, even with youth’s tenacity, that a person can run around a farm house and only come in second place. He was always fast, my cousin Shawn. And while I was happy for him, being related and all, I did want to beat him. We wore a path around our grandparents’ home. My bumper tennis shoes always just in the shadow of his latest trend from New Brighton. I mention it only because that was my first thought — it must be his city shoes that outran my local Iverson’s. Or, I hate to admit it, I did have the thought, well, maybe it was because he was a boy…even then I cringed and ran around again.
He was staying for a week. So I stayed too. Each day we ran in circles. Each day our grandfather walked to the field. Each morning we ate Kellogg’s cereal from the variety pack box. Fueled by pure sugar, we chased the morning down.
Sweaty and fed up with losing by Wednesday noon, I asked my grandfather when he returned for lunch, what was the difference between patience and enough already. He took two steps to my four and said, “work.” “I don’t get it,” I said. “You have to enjoy it somehow, the work of it, or there’s no point.” “But I keep losing?” “But are you having fun?” I started to think. I did like being here. Outside. Summer. Racing. Round and round. I did love it. I smiled and ran to the house.
I think about it now. How he never said anything about his lawn, about the paths we wore so very thin, while his patience never did. I’m sure in his head he must have gotten to “enough already,” with all those grandchildren. All those questions, but it never showed. I guess he loved us.
I can’t tell you if my blue bumper tennis shoes ever crossed the front sidewalk in first place. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But I ran. We ran. Over and over. Around and under. Within summer’s warmth. And I won.
I’m still winning. Painting in my sketchbook daily, I suppose you could call it work, perhaps patience. Or am I carrying that farmer to his field, step by step? I have no need to finish. I keep on loving.
I met her for the first time yesterday. She asked if I was a dancer. I smiled, not because I am, but because I think she saw my friend Loie.
Loie was a professional dancer in Chicago. We went to visit her in California this year. And seeing her move with such grace between rooms, or simply standing in front of the garage door, I think, I hope, I took a bit of it on — like a French accent, or the joy of my grandma Elsie.
People have always asked me how I started as an artist. It may sound unusual, but I can honestly say that the two most important things in my career (probably just life) have been to surround myself with the best people, and to pay attention. And what a pleasure to know, as I’m standing in my ballet flats in the south of France, it’s still working.
I wrote a poem for my grandma at the end of her life. Telling her how much she meant to my mother, to me. Promising her that when people see me, really see me, on my very best of days, they will see her. I don’t always succeed, but on the days when you say, that this painting brought you joy, or these words touched your heart, I think, I hope, I know, that you saw her too!
And in all this joy, this friendship, this love, there’s nothing to do, I suppose, but dance.
It functioned, of course, but it took a minute for me to fall in love with our kitchen. I suppose as with any love, I had to show it what I really needed. Not just breakfast in the morning, but a welcome. A real welcome of comfort and possibility — joy in every shade of blue. So I painted it. Just like in the cartoons, I want the scent to make a hook and lure me in — so I make the bread. I want to avoid the fax machine blare of the espresso maker — so I brew the coffee, puff by liquid puff on the stove. I, we, bring it flowers to say we know how lucky we are to be here, together, at this table.
Certainly I learned it from my mother — if you want to be loved, be loving. From my grandma — if you want to receive, give something. And it was from my ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Rolfrud — if you want to be a part of someone’s story, you have to share yours.
I see it more easily now, because of them. In places and people. So I’m able to fall in love with my kitchen, daily. My bathroom. My husband. Myself. My life. I step into the blue of the morning, and think, isn’t it lovely?
She’s far too beautiful to be called Lilly, the plant in our entry. Bloom by bloom, her name is Lillian. And yes, I call her by name each time I compliment her fragrance. I introduce her to the field that hangs behind her. Tell her I will care for her with the same hands that painted the picture on the wall. It’s not unlike how I used to interact with my wagon full of dolls and stuffed animals. They all had names and adventures. As they traveled with me along VanDyke Road they learned the hazards of gravel and the freedom of travel. They dared Hugo’s field. Even helped me count the change in my pocket as we walked the mile to Rexall Drug to get a frozen Milky Way. And in all that fun, I guess I was learning.
They say that play is how children learn, and art is how adults play. I couldn’t resemble that more than by definition. And oh, how I want to keep learning. So I paint the birds daily. I cut the wood to make the panels. I stretch canvas. And give names to the flowers and trees. I greet each butterfly by my mother’s nickname. I let myself play. Is it silly? I sure hope so!
In the fifth grade, under the guide of Miss Green, we took spelling trips. We wrote reports on our imaginary travels. Of course we were learning how to spell. How to write. How to form sentences. Without our knowledge or permission, empathy grew for our fellow desk mates, fellow travelers, and we played ourselves into Central Junior High, a little bit wiser than Washington Elementary, a little more Lillian than Lilly.
As I finish today’s blog, I make another click on my gratitude counter, because giving thanks should be fun too. I pass her on the way out the front door, smiling, we are both a little more Lillian!
Of course they wanted to have fun, but it was a serious thing to play. This was back when card tables were actually used to play cards. They set them up in the kitchen. The dining room. Into the living room. They gathered in fours, my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Not a lot more than table high, I could see their hands and their “hands.” I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I liked that they had a language. That the cards dictated it. Gave them the words to speak, or even the looks that spoke for themselves.
I think of it often. Not because I learned how to play, but because I invented my own way. I make the greeting cards, I suppose, because it gives me the language, a way to speak, even when “across the table” is across the sea. Or further yet, from heart to mind.
I was timid at first to “lay them on the table,” – all these feelings of mine. Because it’s not really the French way. Hearts are not worn on sleeves. But I’ve worked my way in, little by little, and now it’s not a surprise any more.
She picked the card up by her plate, because of course it was for her. Not for a holiday or celebration, just a Tuesday for lunch, and a whole side of feelings. And it’s not French, and it’s not American, it’s just us. Our language. We see each other’s hands and hearts, and keep playing.
I say it every year, but shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t we? Be excited and completely in awe of summer’s return? I long for it. As if it were the last day of school before release. That first breeze that kisses my newly bared legs erases the years in between and flings open the school doors of youth. It sings the song of children’s laughter — a year’s relief. It races us to the open windowed bus and flies the paper let go from chubby hands. It drops us off one by one into this beginning — this beginning that will last forever, if we just remain in the driveway of summer vacation. But the wiggles in our legs and the jimbles in our hearts say go, Go, GO! And we race in, because joy bars none, and knows no time constraints.
Is that too much? Too much to expect from summer’s first breeze? No. Never. What does it matter that I haven’t ridden a bus in decades? My knees still quiver in the morning driveway. Ready. Always ready to carry me into the ever of joy.
I was listening to a short story while walking yesterday. Somewhere between the farmhouse, the stranger, the shooting, the sheriff, the horses, the chase, the lost love, the death, the title revealed, my feet had climbed the Montaiguet without ever telling my breath. And it really came as no surprise, stories have always carried me.
I began to learn the power of words at age five. Mrs. Strand read to us in kindergarten. I loved her for it, but I had a sense of urgency to get to the first grade where I knew we would learn to read for ourselves. I’d like to think I took my time. I’d like to think I thanked Mrs. Strand, but I can’t be sure. It was her words that launched me into the front row of Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade class. I wanted to sit as close to her as possible. If the words she wrote on the blackboard were to travel into her pointing stick as she tapped the word on the board, and be flung into the open and wandering minds of all the wriggling 6 year olds, I wanted those words, that power, to hit me first — so even in this front row middle seat, I leaned ever forward, closer still. And I must have been breathing because I’m still here, but it felt like a year, a glorious year of inhaling.
I joyfully rode that air. Every word she gave to us, I gave to my mother in poems. When the wind was knocked out from inside of her. I, we, replaced it with the hope of each letter. Arranged them again, and again, until we were lifted. Until without our knowledge or permission, we were looking out gratitude’s vast view, and we were saved.
I don’t know if it works for everyone. But I take the chance that maybe it does. I keep writing the words daily. Bringing you inside farmhouse and classroom, on top of bicycles and mountains, on the chance that you too will forget the labor of breath, and only feel the heights reached from all that inhale.
He was always doing the “walk back” from the field. In need of a certain tool. Not because he forgot, but because of a new situation. And selfishly, I must say, I loved those times. I didn’t wish him any problems — and I knew that’s why he had to walk back from the field to the shed, to the barn, to the house, but selfishly, I also knew he would be a captive audience.
It’s no surprise I still feel the same. It’s why I fall in love with a pencil. It is my wrench in an open field of pages. It can start my day, or finish it. When not in my hand, I know exactly where it is. In any situation, any walk back of the day, I can get to it. Hold it. Let it help me to become again.
There were no cell phones. Nothing but wide open spaces and my two steps to his one. It’s possible he was merely thinking about the task at hand, but he seemed like such a good listener, which made me want to talk all the more. Jumping over cow pies, I told him everything I knew for sure, and asked him everything I didn’t. The latter outweighed the former.
I was certain my grandpa knew everything. And this was confirmed by how he never looked for a tool, but walked directly to it. He wasn’t the kind to say it, (not that he could get a word in) but I knew he loved those tools. He took care of them. Respected them. In my head, this is why they always worked for him.
Is it a lot to say about a pencil? Maybe. But at this moment, it’s what I know for sure, and it’s enough, to run along beside you, to tell you, we have everything we need.
I told him I needed a ladder. No, my grandfather replied. “But I have to get it back into the tree,” I said without crying, but just barely. Not about to change his response, but curiosity getting the best of him, he asked what. “The nest,” I said. He just smiled and again shook his head no. “A bird’s nest,” I reiterated, as if he just didn’t understand and surely with the added description he would go get the ladder and help me. But he didn’t. “The babies…” I pleaded, having never actually seen them, only heard them from below. “They’re fine. They’re already gone,” he explained. “How did they know? Were they ready?” I asked, still assuming we were all afforded that luxury. “You find a way,” he said, both of us knowing we were no longer talking about the birds. Both of us knowing that it was my house, my nest, that I missed. It was a ladder back to when my father lived with us. When everything seemed certain. A ladder back to the nest of trust and security. There was no ladder. We both knew I would have to find a way. He put his finger on the sore part of my heart, “They will be ok,” he said without crying, but just barely. And I knew, with the certainty of tree and the absence of ladder, that I would be too.
I can’t say that through the years I have not asked for the ladder. Thinking, just get me over this. But I eventually get there. Never over. Always through. And my heart moves from sore, to soar. And I am saved.
