I tell you that I’ve seen her face before. Of course I have no proof because she lived in my head.
It was in the first grade when she quietly took up residency. Mrs. Bergstrom was perhaps the first to tie words and art together for me. She joyfully released us downstairs to Mr. Opsahl’s art room. Never unarmed, she sent us off with the discipline of a single file and the mission to create a puppet for a show during our next story time. I see her more clearly now, as this mixture of fairytale and educator. Because didn’t they both give us something to dream of, something to aspire to — and didn’t they both bun their hair, sleek, and tight, I imagined to cut the resistance of all the reality sent to weigh us down.
So this was my puppet. Part princess, part Mrs. Bergstrom, full-on my imagination. With an empty toilet paper roll, a mound of papier mâché, covered in acrylic paint, she came to life. She later sang and recited words from the chalk board, and she was alive.
I haven’t seen her for years, not until yesterday when she appeared in my sketchbook. Did she know she was needed? I think so. Did she arrive right on time to cut through all the weight? Yes.
She reminds me that maybe you need to hear it. Because sometimes you need to hear it from someone who has been there. That nothing is going to be easy, but everything is going to be ok. I smile and know, yes, this is why she came.
I’m sure my grandma had some sort of Tupperware, plastic containers, but I don’t really remember them. Then again, I don’t imagine there were a lot of things left over. Not a big concern on how to keep a batch of cookies fresh. I think the bigger concern was how to keep the large ceramic farmer pig full.
There was a time when I was small enough that I could go in elbow deep, once I removed his cookie jar hat. Fingers spread, I would swish and twirl as if that little farmer pig was holding out on me, hiding one last cookie. With so many kids, so many cousins, it emptied with a voracious speed, unlike most pigs had ever seen. Maybe she could tell by the clank of the cover. The sound of disappointment as the lid was dropped back on his head. Because without turning around, she began a new batch.
The defeat of the cookie jar clank, was soon replaced by the thrill of the mixer. Oh, to be so near! To be connected by swishing apron strings. To be first in line to taste the dough. And we did eat the dough without worry. (Truth be told, I still do.)
There are certain ingredients we don’t have in France. Like brown sugar. But yesterday, being elbow deep in desire for a chocolate chunk cookie, I got to work. I googled and searched. Turns out it’s just sugar and molasses. Then to find molasses. Again I searched. A small bio store carried it. Was it supposed to be this thick? Then I remembered “slow as molasses,” and I shook my head to myself. “Elbow deep” turned to “elbow grease,” as I painstaking stirred, and scraped, and stirred my white sugar brown.
I do have Tupperware, but I think these will go pretty quickly. Scents of sugar and chocolate and grandma waft through the house. My heart’s cookie jar is complete.
If you look it up in the dictionary, it has two meanings. Opposite really. Nervy. It can mean bold, or nervous. Both are probably true. And for me, usually at the same time.
Months ago, in the middle of a situation in Marseille, feeling both, I decided to Wordle for distraction. I know there are certain starter words, almost mathematical, to give yourself the best chance, but I don’t play that way. I usually insert a word that says something about my current state of affairs, a way to insert myself in the game. It’s just more fun for me that way. So I chose the word with two meanings. Bold and nervous, because wouldn’t you have to be, I mean, are you really being bold if you’re not nervous? Is there any bravery without being afraid? I typed it in. N-E-R-V-Y. The letters turned over green. One by one. I beat Wordle. I chose the word in a single guess. It was about me.
I three and four my way through most days. Sometimes two. Not playing the odds, but always playing myself.
Last night, reading a new book, Apples Never Fall, there it was on the page, twice. Nervy. Had I not taken the big chance, the big swing, with my Wordle word, I would have just passed this page without great meaning. But I had taken the chance. I had bolded and nerved my way in, and found myself again, here in the words.
I don’t want to live timidly. I want to be bold in the attempt. When I love, when I live. So when my reflection is offered back to me, I can say proudly, I was nervy.
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
Just outside my dorm room, I came across a red balloon. Nearly deflated after its apparent celebration, it merely hopped in front of me, seemingly hoping for one last hurrah. Who was I to turn away? I gave it a little tap with my foot. Did it blush deeper red as it popped up to my hand? I waved it on ahead. And we danced. It didn’t occur to me that my normal three minute walk to class had now taken upwards of nine. I took on the same blush of red as I walked in late. The professor looked at me and asked why I was late. “Because I grew up on a gravel road,” I said. Always a proponent of the specific, he smiled and let me sit down.
It was true what I had said. I had consumed hours kicking a single rock down the gravel of Van Dyke Road. It’s something, I suppose, to kick a rock on the paved streets of town, but it took special attention to traverse your specific rock in a sea of them. It started out simply, just a little tap by Weiss’s house. Then a quick passing of Alf’s. Once between Muzik’s and Dynda’s, I really gathered steam. Passing Norton’s I was ready to make it all the way to the North End, where all gravel went to rest in giant cliffed piles. Simply acquaintances at the edge of my driveway, we had now become friends. So certainly, as with any friend, I was ready to take it back home with me. Back up the hill. Maybe it was a foretaste of the feast to come, but I was unwilling to settle for any abandoning.
You get over being left, but one has to decide if you are going to be a part of the leaving. I wasn’t. So I kicked that red balloon all the way to my creative writing class, in a story that began on Van Dyke Road.
Maybe it’s words like belief or faith that frighten people. There seems to be an implication of certainty that can be elusive, or even exclusive. (I say that as someone who is certain of all that I don’t know.) Maybe that’s why I am drawn to the front page quote of my sketchbook — “La vie est semée de c’est miracles que peuvent toujours espérer les qui aiment.” (Life is full of miracles that people who love can always hope for.) I find myself here, among the people who love, daily. And didn’t I learn it so many years ago in my grandfather’s shadow?
Of course I didn’t have the words for it then. Neither English, nor French. I didn’t question the miracles that had to occur each year just to get from seed to harvest. The luck, the timing, the weather, the work, the radio reports on grandma’s noontime transistor, all went unnoticed by me. What I felt was the love my grandpa had for his family. This was a truth I could understand, see first hand, as he rose from kitchen table to field. Love — that’s where all the hope was, I thought, all the miracles.
When I saw the quote in my empty sketchbook, it became so easy for me to begin. I didn’t have to create the answers, only the love. This I knew how to do. I painted my first bird, warmed and secure in my grandfather’s shadow. Each little miracle free to fly to wherever needed.
I imagine she thought she was introducing us to something new when Ms. McCarty assigned us the book Lord of the Flies. She had underestimated the previous hour we had spent with the senior boys in the gymnasium, playing (barely surviving) a game of dodge ball. Still, it was nice to be seen, to have some affirmation as I sat dazed in the front row, with the word Voigt tattooed across my forehead.
I suppose I’ve always been looking. In the books. Not only to see myself in the situation of the characters, but the authors. Right from the start, I was Beezus. I was Ramona the Pest. I was Beverly Cleary. I was the dancing of words on the page. Because if the simple arrangement of words could change the story, why couldn’t I do that in real life — simply move the words around.
Books made everything possible. All that randomness of words on the page. Of lives being lived. Anything could happen at any time, pain, happiness, confusion, even love.
Oh, I’m still often dazed, but for much better reasons. As I Hemingway the streets of Paris, or when we connect with the words beneath my fingers — when our stories gather us in, on today’s new page.
They differed in so many ways. Grandma Elsie would have laughed at the thought—harder than she’d laugh when beating us at a card game whose rules went unexplained — “iron my dish towels?????” I’m not sure a towel was dry long enough in her house for it to be ironed. A constant rotation from laundry to sink. From hot pan, to table wipe, to sticky face. Tucked inside her waist, then back to the laundry. I know for sure that after ironing mine, and hanging them just so on the rack, that’s all my mother.
But too, as I stand aproned and covered in flour, baking the bread that could easily be bought at the nearest boulangerie, I am my grandma.
Margaux, 14, will only know them by what I share. She loves the bread. She may not call it by name, but as she Elsies her way back for another slice, I think she knows. Excited for her shopping trip, I tell her to wear a button down, for speed in the dressing room, and to save on her hair and make-up. She smiles, and Ivies her way to Paris.
One day, will she Jodi her dish towels? I can’t be sure. But while I am here, she will feel us all, and know she is home.
My mother took in ironing. Just being born, of course I didn’t have the words for it, or any words at all, but I think I knew. I could feel it, the warmth. Not the heat from the iron, nor the steam, but the balm of service done with grace.
It wasn’t humility. She wasn’t lowering herself. She loved clothes. She needed the money. She tested the quality of the fabric between thumb and forefinger. She knew how it would behave. How to make the collar and cuffs respond, not with rigidity, but a wantful desire to frame a face, release a hand. When finished, she didn’t just exchange it for cash, she showed them how to wear it — not as a mannequin, but a woman with style unpurchased. And they knew it. That’s why they came back. They could have gone to the local dry cleaner on Broadway, but they returned to my mother, in the white house, near the end of Van Dyke Road.
I watched her years later, doing it for herself, and I could still feel the hands that cupped the back of my head, marveling at the warmth against my resting spine. My mother took in ironing, and ever returned it with grace.
It was no small feat to gather the animals and dolls each summer morning to go for my walk in Hugo’s field. I had just enough to fill my brother’s hand-me-down red wagon. But I didn’t place them directly inside, the bottom was too rusty. In my brother’s defense, he didn’t care for “babies,” but hauled tools to build his own scooter in the shed. He was not concerned with the orange residue that could easily ruin a baby’s dress or an animal’s fur coat. To protect their delicate nature, I placed my best blankets from Ben Franklin underneath them. And to protect the blankets, underneath I put sheets from last week’s Alexandria Echo Press.
When everything and everyone was situated, out of rust’s way, off we would go into Hugo’s field. I imagined they were afraid, (only imagining because I felt it myself), so I would sing to them, sing to me. And the music always cleared the path. Even in the overgrown wheat, we walked on, lifted by each note, careful only to clear the way, and not damage the growth (Hugo reminded me of this, and rarely in song.)
Yesterday, for the first time, I heard a choir singing my words. A poem I had written was made into a song. As they sang, I felt the tears of tenderness drop gently on my legs’ goosebumps. With the choral field, I was clear, out of rust’s way.
I don’t know how to save the world, I’m not sure anyone does. But maybe along the way, we could make the journey a little lighter. Chase away the daily fear, with blankets and a song. Never to damage, but continue the path. In my youthful optimism, I can hear the choir sing.
