Knowing that the number one rule in improv (perhaps the only) is to always continue the conversation with “yes, and…” — and thinking that life is really one big improvisation — I try to do the same in my daily practices.
I got up early this morning to make the baguettes. The sticky dough questions my every move, and yes, I continue. My tiny spatula is barely a match for the fluidity. It’s like trying to herd cats or gather water in the palm of your hand. But the scent of bread baking is priceless. The impossible cut straight from the oven melts the butter, and beds the lavender honey, and there really is no better way to begin the day.
It feels good to begin in all that agreement. I will ride it to my sketchbook — the current sketchbook whose only rule is “Bird, and…” Every page must contain a bird. It started from the need to lighten the moment. To feel barely more than air. To fly. Thus, the birds, and… whatever I wanted to paint with them. Be it ukulele, purse, or human, it always continues with the bird, and…
The two most recent humans in the book, although pages apart, seem to belong together. And how telling of our world, I suppose. This “pages apart.” But I’m encouraged by the ease of paper turning…the smell of fresh bread, the taste of lavender honey… So as the sun questions, “Will we rise to the moment?” — I can only answer, YES!
If you ask someone what special power they would like to possess, the majority of people will say they would like to fly. But I think maybe it’s not so much about power, but about play. They will tell you how they would dance in the air, dart from place to place, glide over all of nature’s beauty, dive from the trees, spread their wings and call it all home. And the pure magic would not be to overtake the birds, but play along with them.
I paint them all the time, so certainly I watch them. But I was delighted to find out that perhaps they were watching us.
There is a YouTube video of a crow finding a lid on a rooftop and sliding down, again and again. And I have to smile because didn’t I, we, bundle from head to toe and wave goodbye to our mothers from the warmth of the kitchen door, grab our plastic, sometimes metal, discs from the garage, drag them by the broken plastic handles and set off for the nearest hill. And didn’t I, we, imagine, even weighed down by all that bundling, that we indeed could fly. I never imagined the birds were watching.
And maybe that’s the super power we should all be wishing for — to see others. To have some empathy. To learn. And to take all that knowledge, and simply play along. After all, what’s it’s all for, if we didn’t have a little fun?
She said she wanted to make a gallery wall of birds. As someone who’s been building nests since I could waddle to my mother’s bedside, I completely understand.
I called it my bean, my favorite blanket. I don’t know if I misunderstood the word, or simply couldn’t say it, but I knew in order to exist I had to have it. My bean. Because to exist was exhausting. Balancing on those chubby and wobbly feet, always trying to keep up with the long legged woman that called herself mom. When chase weary, I needed that bean between heart and face, coddled in the security of a springtime bird forever carrying a stick.
And when the sun went down, I snuck between the nightstand and the overflow of my mother’s bedspread. I rubbed my bean between thumb and forefinger in one hand and the edge of her bedspread in the other. And I was saved.
It’s no surprise to me that my grandmother’s portrait, the first landscape I remember, and the nesting bird, all come from the same palette. All sticks in the nest I continue to build. Beans.
I may not wobble any more, but certainly I fumble along, still blanketed in all of love’s comfort. Love’s gallery. And I am home.
I have almost no photographs of my grandparents, yet thousands of images live in my brain. To picture my grandpa in the living room, is to first hear the creak of overalls against the lounger. Then the crack of the foot rest locked in place by the side lever, making just enough room for me to crawl beneath. The trust had to have been palpable, as I arched between the space that could have cut me in half were he to pull the lever again. He emptied a pinch of tobacco and tamped it into his pipe. I played with the rice filled cushion that rest beneath the ash tray, and waved my hand through the cartoon waft of smoke that danced above me. Mixed with just a hint of sugar from grandma’s kitchen, the scent was warm and welcoming, and I tried to catch it on the tip of my tongue, like the first snowflake of the year.
He never rested long. A farm is impatient like that. He only had to give me the nod to signal his return to the field. I slipped between cushion and metal and he let down the foot rest. I ran off to nature’s imagination and he back to work.
I don’t know the name of his tobacco. I wasn’t yet confined by words. Nor was I caught in the pursuit of photography. It would be a handful of years before I ordered my plastic camera from Bazooka Joe gum wrappers and run over it with my own bicycle in three day’s time.
I mention it because I recently read something by the photographer Sally Mann in her memoir, Hold Still. “It is because of the many pictures I have of my father that he eludes me completely,” she writes. “In my outrageously disloyal memory he does not exist in three dimensions, or with associated smells or timbre of voice. He exists as a series of pictures…. It isn’t death that stole my father from me; it’s the photographs.”
I smile, knowing my images will never be torn, lost, yellowed, or stolen. They hold still, tucked safely in the ever of my heart.
I’m always asking for it. Yet, when it’s given freely once a year in the fall, this gift of time, I could easily complain about it. How to fill the extra hour. How it throws off my delicate schedule. (Insert eye roll here.) So yesterday afternoon, a bit disoriented in this extra hour, walking past the knowing eyes of Grandma Elsie’s portrait, I decided to make cookies.
A delicious use of my time for sure, but really, in the grand scheme of things, it was, as I so often heard on the farm, “the least I could do.” I heard it from my grandma as she baked for her neighbors. From my grandpa, getting in the car to go to the funeral. The uncles coming to help with the fields. My mother, elbow deep washing dishes for the entire Hvezda crew. How easily they all stepped in to offer their gifts of time.
I worry for the world, how far away we’ve moved from “the least we could do.” Maybe it’s the anonymity of our connections, but how did we become so cold? So ungiving? So unwilling to do even the least?
It’s a slippery slope. But oh, how it levels when we do the work. When I release my grip from the angled path to simply put my hands in the dough, I am grounded. Peaceful in all that butter and sugar. I should have learned it long ago. There was never an empty dish in my grandma’s kitchen. The china pig that held the cookies was always full. When I lifted the hat of that pig and saw the handmade treats, I smiled at her, she smiled back, shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s the least I could do.” And I knew I was loved.
We could blame algorithms, AI, all the usual suspects, but really it comes down to us. I don’t know that much about TikTok. I make little videos of painting progression. Clips from my sketchbook. I don’t pay that much attention to the views, or how they tag the videos. To me it seems pretty obvious of what they contain. But I was really surprised how my obvious was interpreted.
I painted a study of a woman from old portraiture. It was in practice of being loose, and allowing the woman to come to life. A gentle attempt at survival, comfort, in the act of trying to simply be. I was so shocked when I saw the tag that AI had generated for this image — “Women who want to lose weight.” What???? That was not the point at all. Not hashtag sketch, or sketchbook, or painting, or art, or woman trying to warm herself with blankets, nor woman waiting, not even bird. And I was quick to curl my lip in disgust of AI, but then the hard truth became as clear as the Magpie on her shoulder, that AI is only repeating the information that we’ve been feeding it. So telling of what we see. And I guess it’s a harder truth to understand. A harder task to change the way we see things. But soon our humanity will be hashtagged away and what will we be left with then?
I suppose it’s a good reminder though — to be aware of how we look at things. Is this why our country, our world, is so divided? Perhaps if we stopped telling each other that what we see is wrong, and started simply telling what we see, maybe we could get back to our blanket of humanity. Maybe I’m just a woman waiting, or a simple Magpie, but I’ll take comfort in that, loose and simple comfort.
When I think of my winter images of youth, I was never more than ten feet from the house. Vrooming on the snowmobile that didn’t run next to the remains of the marigolds buried in white. Sledding down the back slope that stopped at our basement entry. Building a snowman, rolling each ball to block the front door steps. Maybe it was to conserve the precious energy already used to bundle, and yet to be used to unbundle, (to be capped, scarved, zipped, and booted was exhausting), but mostly I think it was due to the absence of our screen door.
There was such freedom in summertime. The screen doors that lined the houses of Van Dyke Road were never really closed. They bounced as we ran through, with the promise of return. And even if someone did bother to secure the latch, voices could carry on summer breezes for miles. Mothers could call from kitchens and still be heard in abandoned fields. So we ran. Like feral cats. Up and down the gravel. Secure in the knowledge that we were always in reach — that behind every screen door was someone who could offer a band-aid or a pink baby aspirin after a bike spill. That there would be someone who knew what to do if you ate half the bottle simply because they tasted so good. Stripped of shoes and cares, we could wander and still hear Frank calling Sylvia at the clothes line. Mrs. Mullen calling for Patsy. Mrs. Weiss calling for Bonnie. Phyllis Norton’s constant stream of gathering in the five Norton felines.
I suppose it is because of those bouncing screen doors that I ended up a country away, and still within love’s reach. I can still hear the call, even with winter nipping at my bare heels.
I give thanks each day for all those who kept me safe, kept me wandering.
As we say so long to the last of our Van Dyke Road mothers, I want to gather in close, to hear once again the bouncing promise of love’s return.
I wasn’t allowed to go to the North End until I was seven. “It can wait,” my mother always said, when I pleaded to enter what was thought to be the Bermuda Triangle of Van Dyke Road — this untouched, unspoiled, terrifying (so obviously magical) place. Certainly, I thought, when I received a banana seat bike for my sixth birthday, that this would be my ticket of entry. How could I not be ready? I was without training wheels. Surely a sign I could navigate on my own. With one leg flung over the seat and the other used as a kick stand, I pointed north. But still she said, “It can wait.” How patient is nature, I thought.
I see it now, how brilliant it was to flip the switch. To make me think that I wasn’t the one waiting. It was waiting for me. I had a whole year. An entire sea of gravel to explore before entering the North End. And didn’t it make it all the more special? And didn’t it do the same for me? Imagine, the North End was waiting for me.
I raced down the hill just past Norton’s. I’ll be there soon, I waved in promise, and raced back to Dynda’s to land my bike in the ditch and explore the never ending empty lot that separated their house from mine.
I can still get ahead of myself. Too anxious. Too eager. But when I remember, when I allow myself “the sixth year” to just enjoy, I can let go of what will be, and simply be aware of all that I have.
I recently finished the book, “The River is Waiting,” by Wally Lamb. It was a difficult book to get through. But there was one line that sticks with me — “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.” I read it again. And again. And I am six. Perched on a joyful seat. Pointing north. Happy to not yet be there.
It’s funny that we still say “in broad daylight,” as if any of it should be surprising anymore.
It took only seven minutes to complete the daylight heist of the Louvre in Paris. At 9:30am on October 19th, the brazen thieves walked away with priceless jewels of France.
It was Hemingway who wrote about his years in Paris, “You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind…” And still, we didn’t expect it. I suppose we never do.
Even in the autumn, or the dark mornings before the time change…even after reading day after day of what is done in broad daylight, I’m still surprised. And doesn’t it have to be, surprising, for us to continue this human experience. Amid all the name calling and crimes committed, shouldn’t we still be surprised, shocked at the behaviors all around us. We can’t let this become normal. We simply can’t wash it away as the new light.
For us to maintain any sort of humanity, our most priceless of jewels, we have to be surprised. Surprised enough to call it out. Fight against it. Be better.
And it was Hemingway, too, who told us, “there would always be the spring.” I still believe. The unshuttered light comes through my morning window.
I suppose the lesson was, don’t get too attached. Somehow it didn’t take.
But I felt a responsibility. I “accidentally” knocked down the real estate sign each night before bed, out of loyalty I suppose. Because hadn’t I picked out the carpeting. The bedspread. All in bright yellow in my basement bedroom. And I wanted no evidence of the sign through my window after my night time prayers. And hadn’t I lined books on shelves and housed stuffed dolls and animals within that same promise of rising yellow on this sturdy gravel of Van Dyke Road? The truth was, I loved being attached. I loved hopping from the school bus, or off of my bicycle, just past the mailbox that claimed our spot, into the driveway that claimed my heart.
They said it was just things. How easily they threw the metal sign into the back of the car, handed over the papers and sent us on our way. I didn’t have the words for it then, but how ironic it was that to stop all these abandonings, I would have to continue loving with pure abandon.
Everything can be taken away, I guess. But we give away only what we want to. I keep it all. It’s in the story, the painting. The words and books and flag, and photos.
I painted someone’s house. I imagined the story. At some point there was love, I thought, because didn’t they take the time to board the window to keep it all in? And maybe someone told them, don’t get too attached, as they hammered the last nail. And maybe in the painting they will always be.
And don’t I run my fingers across the gathering of all the love that remains and grows? Yes. I am attached. Ever.
