I don’t know how many times I got lost in the North End of Van Dyke Road. It was my Grandma Elsie who told me not to count things like that. Returning from ice skating at Noonan’s Park with my two cousins, she asked how it went. “I fell six times,” I said. “Why would you count that?” She shook her head with tight lips, handed me a variety pack size of Kellogg’s cereal, and I knew not to do it again.
Wandering once again down the hill into the untamed North End, I found myself disoriented. When it happened, the only thing to do was to look up. Up was familiar. Up carried the sound of garage doors opening, bicycles popping wheels in the gravel. Up was familiar. Comforting. Home.
I suppose we always have a need to get to higher ground. I hope we do anyway. And we can’t get there by counting our failures, but striving to do better. It’s always up. “Things are looking up. Get your hopes up. Spirits are running high.”
It took a couple of hours to finish her — the woman in the sketchbook. Two hours of her looking up, telling me to keep looking up. I count on my sketchbook, my hands, my heart, for such things. I’m pretty sure Grandma Elsie would be ok with that.
When the world gets this overwhelming, I have to narrow the picture. From planet to country. Still too big. From city, to neighborhood. I can’t make sense of it all. Down to house. To room. To kitchen. To my own hands. I pull it out of the oven. And rest in the place of, “This bread is good.”
And maybe that’s all we can do. Be responsible for our own hand in it. Each day. Each minute. Forget the but they did this, they think that, how could they???? In order to breathe, I have to let go of “they,” in exchange for the reach of my own hands.
At the breakfast table, it’s hard not to go over the latest news. Of course we have to be informed. We must learn and grow and be aware. I can’t change what’s going on in my old neighborhood. And it would be easy to say it doesn’t make a difference at all. But I can’t believe that. And so I humbly paint and write. And connect with the random. We will never be rewarded with certainty. But we have to try. Who would we be if we didn’t even try?
So I rise from the morning table, knowing only two things for sure, this bread is delicious, and all we have to do is be good to each other.
A robin is never just a robin. Nor a wren a wren. I can sit in front of my sketchbook for hours daily, and never paint the same thing twice. It’s always a different flight. A different branch. An old man with a new bird. A woman making another choice.
Heraclitus said, “No one ever steps into the same river twice.” For the river is not the same river and the person is not the same person. Isn’t it the same with love and friendship and simply living. And it shouldn’t be frightening. What a thing! — to be given a new river daily. A new chance to do the right thing. It’s what the poets hope for, the singers wish for, and what all of us waking to this new day simply get, joyfully receive, by opening our eyes. But will we see it? — how extraordinary it is to be given another chance. To come to the river, with fresh eyes and hearts and hands, and make a difference.Knee deep I tell myself, I tell you, this is not yesterday’s river. Nor yesterday’s wren. We can do better. We must do better. Good morning.
I don’t suppose one pear imagines another as weak. As being particularly thin skinned, or easily bruised. I think they see the familiar. The comfort. And there is strength in that. Which allows them to lean in, and to lean on.
Couldn’t we do the same for each other? I think we often worry, well I wouldn’t know what to say, or what to do? When all that’s really necessary is just to be ourselves, to be there, beside…pearing…pairing.
I leaned on you today. I’m not sure if you even knew, but I wanted to thank you. I felt you holding my heart. It made me happy. And I was strong. I hope I can do that for you…If so, we can do anything.
It’s usually only after I’m finished that I see it – everything (everyone) who made the journey from my heart, through my arms, into my hand that held the brush, that moved the paint onto the page. Most of them have made the journey so many times, I have to laugh at them packing up, saying “here we go” as they jump on the painted trail.
Yesterday my mother arrived in her ruffled white blouse and red lipstick. My friend Ken brought his hat from the Easter parade (or let’s be honest, a simple Sunday brunch). And they became coupled again — from a Good Life gallery opening — while the nested bird sets upon the life upcoming, singing that love lives on, ever.
Maybe it’s harder to see while we’re in the midst of it — all this becoming. I think that’s why it’s so important to stop and take a look at the daily page. Give thanks for all those who bring the ruffles, who bring the nested hats — those ready and willing to meet you at the day you’re in, no matter the circumstance, and leap from your heart with a “Here we go!”
I don’t know if they know — that they live in Paris — these birds flitting about the Eiffel Tower. How special it is. But then does anyone? I hope so. Mostly because I’m hoping it for myself — this magical recognition of time and place.
The first time I visited the Loring Cafe in downtown Minneapolis, I was amazed that I didn’t need a passport. Was I in another country? Inside a novel? The floor creaked beneath as I meandered through the scents of coffee, bread baking and old furniture. People hovered behind books, leaning back into cushions, further than I had seen anyone relax in public, as if the words were blankets. Between the clank of dish and the changing of the record, the thought occurred to me, for perhaps the first time, the life I wanted could be anywhere, if I only paid attention.
You’d think something as important as all that could never be forgotten, but I have to work at it. I have to give myself the reminders. Like displaying my bathroom cabinet as if it were a counter in the Galeries Lafayette. Plating cookies in front of art. Using my favorite pencil (having a favorite pencil for that matter!). Telling myself, as I busily flutter and flap through this life, to smile, and really look — to take the time to say, “Hey, that’s the Eiffel Tower, isn’t it!”
I can’t say it’s the table. Nor the cupboards. I do like my kitchen, but it’s more correct to say I like who I am in my kitchen. Be it bread or cookies, I like that I’m creating something that wasn’t there before. I like that my Elsie confidence allows me to add flour without measuring, and grin as if I’ve always known. And certainly that’s not the case. I never baked before coming to France. And now my house shoes have a permanent ring of flour in the cracks.
And isn’t it the way with friends:
“I really like who I am with you… I hope that doesn’t sound bad to say… I mean it more as a compliment to you, more of a “thank you” really. You free me to be this person who laughs and cries and feels and enjoys and loves. What a relief to be myself, without performing, or worrying… just being and becoming who I am… That’s some gift… I hope I’m returning it… because you know what, I really like who you are with me.”*
I only saw it last night. Could it have come sooner, or was it right on time? Awakening in the thick sky of wee hours, I had left the shutter open, and saw how it wasn’t simply dark, but so black it was blue, like a Magpie. And if it were a bird, this absence of light, couldn’t it just as easily gather those night weary worries under wing? Couldn’t it say, this is not for you to carry? Not now. Not in this light. This is the color of letting go. This is the color of release.
Some say a Magpie will steal anything. I don’t know if that’s true, but if they did, if they do, I decide to leave my concerns above cover, and let them take it. And I give thanks for the thief of worry. No longer bruised, but released by the black and blue of it all. And I am saved.
Sometimes, when painting a portrait, you can get stuck. The image isn’t exactly right, but you can’t see why. A trick that many artists use is to simply flip the canvas. It breaks the autopilot of the brain and you can actually see the shapes more clearly. You can get the chin just right, or the angle of that brow. It slows you down and you can see everything in a new light.
How I try to remember that lesson for real life — when the universe kicks my feet from underneath and I tumble topsy turvy. It’s hard to see the benefits immediately, but once I gather myself, I have to think, oh, perhaps it was time for a new perspective. I, we, can get so accustomed to “how things are.” To shake us out of the “well, that’s how we do things…” and the “well, that’s how I feel,” and into a new vision, a better way of seeing, living, sometimes it takes our world turning upside down.
I guess it’s all part of this delightful journey. This jungle gym. So if you see me, feet in the air, don’t worry, I’m just getting a better view.
I was a teenager having surgery in Minneapolis. It was not yet spring, but for my mother. She was dressed in yellow, head to toe. From my wheelchair, I could see her slacks, not break at the knee, but simply curve like a note in a Harry Belafonte song. The elevator door opened and the doctor smiled at her — said she looked as “beautiful as a jonquil.” I didn’t even know what that meant, but it was the most elegant compliment I had ever heard. Back at my room, no iPad or telephone, certainly no dictionary, we could only imagine how beautiful that flower looked.
It has been decades, and I’m still lifted by yellow. I’m still lifted that my mother dressed to lift, herself and me. I’m still lifted by jonquils standing tall in a breeze that they shouldn’t survive, as my mother bent, but never broke.
As the elevator door opened to 2026, I gave the woman in my sketchbook a yellow sweater. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Lift each other.
