We never meant it as a compliment, shouting “bird brain” to someone across the playground. I suppose we thought small meant insignificant. Without worth. It was far from the only thing we got wrong.
I have been filling this sketchbook daily now for sixth months. As with anything, that first blank page seemed insurmountable. “Just start…” I would tell myself. Experience has taught me that beginning is always the hardest. Once you’re doing it, you’re doing it, and don’t have time to think of all the what ifs. Almost touching the page, I would pull back. Then forward. Wait. Questioning. “Oh, stop fluttering,” I told myself. And there it was – the answer – right in front of me, where it typically waits. I sketched out the first little bird. Simple. Cute. “Nothing here I can’t rise above,” it seemed to say, so I painted another. And another.
Each day they became more elaborate. People with birds. Birds on books. Almost “Scarlet Letter”-like, I took the problem and made it my art. My creations. My joy.
I remember sitting in the overflow tiny houses behind Jefferson Senior High. Barely insulated from the cold of winter, reading the book for the first time. All that “A” stood for beyond the book. Alexandria, the town I was born, the one I knew I would have to flee to become the Artist that lived in my soul. Had I mentioned it then, aloud, I could have been that “bird brain”…and I have to admit I was afraid of the label. Now I wear it proudly. Now I wear it proudly. I am that bird brain. Fluttering to create with all the fear and joy that still holds. Daily.
The thing is, I, we, get to decide. I pick up my pencil, And I rise.
I brought this painting with me to France. I sold it, and it’s now somewhere in Germany. It makes me smile to think of its travels. It was just a humble image of my nightstand in Hopkins, Minnesota. My cup. The latte I poured inside, purchased from the Caribou I could see from my window. The walk I could take in sunshine, rain, or snow. My clock radio that said good morning. Said just sit here for a minute and be. That guarded my books. Whispered good night. That I painted at a resting 11:11, the sign of all things open. Ever carried in my heart.
I also brought that clock radio to France. I used the adapter to plug it in. It turns out I handled the culture shock much better. It burned itself up immediately. The words have nearly worn from the cup. But you’d be wrong to say I have none of it. I pause and tell you that I have it all.
I suppose it’s the way with everything. With everyone. I painted the image after my grandma’s passing. A small empty building — “What remains, may only be in the heart.” I don’t have that painting either. But oh, I have the night. My mom was with me. My friends. We were at Toast in downtown Minneapolis. The dancer from “So You Think You Can Dance,” came to meet me. Me! Imagine that. Dancing toward the woman standing in front of that painting, my mom told her that it was her favorite. The woman had tears in her eyes, clutching her heart, and said she had to have it. “Oh, no…” my mother replied. She loved when I sold a painting, but hated to say goodbye. It was one magical evening of a lifetime. So think of all that the heart can carry.
Love never dies. It pauses in that tiny place of your heart, and fills it. And remains forever. Typing this in front of my grandfather’s portrait, I can hear him say that he’s heard this before. Not in a way that he doesn’t want to hear it again, but that he’ll be here, listening, tomorrow, and the day after that, paused in love.
To be clear, my mind often wandered and wondered. Maybe that’s why when the clues came, they did so in the brightest of reds to get my attention.
Standing on the wood gymnasium floor, not really feeling the need to disappear, after all, what was to notice? My no brand tennis shoes? My misshapen JCPenney gym uniform? My unsettled hair, still damp from the morning shower? And yet, when I wondered, as I mentioned I often did, whether I was lovable or not, whether the blurred red tailgate of my father’s truck had left forever, whether these boys, these near men in our combined gym class once a week, would imagine my hair blown dry and curled, my heels lifted off the ground, whether they could ask me on a date, and love me with no thought of trucks, or tire tracks or leaving of any kind — red was the answer that came racing for me, in the form of a big Cardinal on his gym sweats, holding a red leather ball to be hurled and smack the wonder out of my soon to be reddened face, with the answer NO.
I don’t know when I took back the color. Gave myself a new answer. But I did. It’s funny how the same place you can be lost, is exactly where you can be found.
Would I have done it, if I hadn’t seen my mother do the same? Place her red badge of courage on rubied lips behind her own YES? Behind the yes of worth and joy and love. I’ll never have to wonder about that.
I put out a little bowl of red candies in front of her Christmas photo. She stands in front of giant red-bowed lion and wrapped gift in front of the Art Institute in Chicago. And in this season, I am reminded the greatest gift of all, may be to simply start with yes.
I don’t know who she’s looking at, but I do know that person is loved.
I used to enjoy going to the airport. That may sound crazy. It was so long ago, I can hardly believe it myself. There was a humanity at the gate. (Days when people could actually meet you at the gate.) Even when they weren’t waiting for me, it was nice to see it – the proof in the welcoming. How the faces changed when they caught the first glimpse of the ones they loved (and you had to love someone to do the airport run, it was still the airport after all.) It was the softest excitement. The pure energy of an embrace. A joyful safety that sounded in the unrung bells of “I’m so happy you’re here.”
We can still do that you know. Not at the airport, but in the car. Across the table. On sidewalks and shopping centers. In the mirror. At all of our gates — gates of joy and sorrow, fear and hope. To welcome each other with a joyful ease. We all want that, don’t we?
So I ask myself, is this what I want written across my face? Is this the first thing I want people to see of me? Each moment is a choice. A new gate. Let me greet it with care. The sun is coming up. I smile to the world…and myself…and say, “you’re here.”
There wasn’t a hard edge on her. Not fingers, nor elbows, nor knees. She was built to make a lap, cup the small of a back, wipe a tear, widen a smile. She held. She gave. She touched. This was my grandma Elsie.
Sometimes I have to apologize to her, and myself, for carrying my shoulders just a little too high. What am I braced for that couldn’t more easily roll off and on by, if I only relaxed them down. It feels so good when I do. My neck wanders freely, softening my face, releasing my cheeks that smile and say, “what a relief!”
As I work in my sketchbook, I remind myself. The blending of rouge and flesh. Whites, yellows and greens. No hard edges. Wondering to myself, “Does that man appearing know that I am Elsie-ing his face?” I lay the brush down, along with my shoulders, and know, she is gently and ever teaching me. Thank you, Grandma.
Knowing who he is and what he lives for, (this man of fashion, design, and all things elegant in a high top hat), it was more than “giving me the shirt off his back” when my friend unwrapped the scarf from his neck and put it around mine simply because I said it was lovely. I put it around my neck once again, and continued cleaning out my closet.
I don’t know how things become so untidy. How all of my scarves and gloves run around the closet to form an unrecognizable pile, but they do. And I am someone who loves the cleanliness of pulling out a desired look with just a sleight of hand, so I do the work, again. Oh sure, I roll my eyes at the task, but I’m always given the gift of people and places. Remembering him, remembering why she gifted the gloves to me, what coat my mother once wore these with… and none of it is a chore, but a blessing.
Off-season items, or things I just don’t wear anymore, I put in the back. I’m trying to do the same with my time and energy. It’s easy to carry around negative things, something someone has said or done, hurt from years ago, bad dreams and memories, but I don’t want to wear it anymore. Don’t I look better draped in love? I smile, and place all the joy in front.
When you love something, you want to share it. In my youth, I used to think that meant that the other person not only had to love it, but love it for the same reasons. Childish, I know, but I’d like to think I’ve gotten better, more secure. It is more than enough to simply love.
I enjoy making Christmas cookies. Thanks to a childhood friend, I have one cutter in the shape of Minnesota. Of course no one here in France knows what it is, but the shape of my home state is just as delicious as the Christmas tree, or the star, and they enjoy it. Sometimes I watch. I smile when I think, oh, my husband just took a bite of Duluth, and that same shape that rests in my heart, without his knowledge or permission, is colored in the morning blue of a fresh snow, and is silently full.
Is that what love has always been? If so, what a relief to know it is in the giving that we become filled. Oh, the stress of waiting and wanting to receive… So I offer my love, in all the shapes and colors I know, and find myself with more than I ever could have asked for. And I am saved.
In my excitement to do the daily work in my sketchbook, I can’t overlook what I have already completed. There is a luxury to the right hand page. A free flowing of gorgeous oil paints. It’s easy to get lost in it, without worry or care. But it’s only when they are dry, that I am able to add to the left.
In my eagerness to create, I have remain aware of the other page. There are still many options — pencils, pens, fast drying acrylics — all will allow me the joy of art making, without hurting previous work. I look at the completed pages. Birds and humans. Those that have become. Aware of this, I know I must never be careless. I hope I’m doing the same in real life. With real life.
They make doctors take an oath, “first do no harm.” (Perhaps we should all have to.) Oh, I understand, we get excited in all of our progress and movement. And it is so simple to move ahead without regard. But I, we, could take more care. Just being aware of the other page, the other human. We can keep moving forward and still enjoy, still create, without doing damage. Without doing harm. I remind myself daily, signing it on the page, taking the oath in my heart.
I suppose I had it wrong. Maybe we all do. I thought it was such a clever game, jumping in and out of my mother’s shadow. Racing into the length I thought I would never achieve.
It was Proust who wrote, “In the shadow of young girls in flower.” And as that young girl, so blinded by the light of youth’s bloom, I just kept skipping unaware. Not ever noticing that it was my grandma in my mother’s shadow, and both of them in mine.
I can see it now. In Margaux. How all the light bounces off her shiny hair. So much to flower. She reaches out on the balconies of Marseille. And aren’t we all just a little bit warmer, in the shadows of her bloom.
Shopping Michigan Avenue, my mom and I wanted it to never end. We went in every store. Up and down. Miles and miles of Chicago’s “magnificent.”
We weren’t big Nike fans, but the store itself was gorgeous. We feigned affection. Running our fingers against t-shirts and track suits (long before leisure wear, that’s what we called them.) I don’t know who stopped first, but we stood in front of the poster and read. Words could always hold our attention. There was a woman running on a country road with these words, “There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.” We both smiled, and ran along beside her.
The places we traveled in that truth! I still do.
I’m still sometimes thrown by Mondays in France. Nothing is open. Yesterday morning, I told Dominique that we were out of treats. Before he finished asking, “Where would you like…” we both realized the Mondayness of the situation. By mid afternoon, I was able to travel to Chicago in order to find that my French kitchen was always open. Monday didn’t stand a chance against my molasses. I made the cookies, and may I say, they are magnificent.
I pride myself in finding a way. My mother saw to that. She’s still guiding me through Monday. Tuesday is here. Wide open! Let’s run!
