The three of us were best of friends in first second and third grade. Maybe it started with something as simple as the jump rope. Jan and I needed a third, otherwise we were just spinning. Shari jumped in from off the monkey bars, and that was all it took. We were friends. Every recess we took turns. We sang the rhymes to each swing of the rope. We laughed off the trips and twirled again. Something was said in the summer of our third year. Standing in Shari’s driveway, I could hear them arguing. Half the rope raised in my hand, I somehow knew. I looked at the opposite handle lying in the dirt and thought, “but we weren’t finished.”
We didn’t gather again until we all began playing the clarinet. It was only in band, but we still spoke. After graduation, we all went our separate ways. I read on Facebook that Jan died. I saw a picture of Shari for the first time just the other day. Typing today, I can still feel my hand on the jump rope.
I don’t know why people worry about being forgotten. The first image I see when I wake up is the portrait of my grandfather. Not only has my love for him not diminished, it’s quite possible it grows stronger each day. I suppose that’s the way with love.
Half way through, I stopped to take a picture of her. I think she’s beautiful — being unfinished. Would that we could allow that for each other, for ourselves. Because it is beautiful, isn’t it! These lives and loves we’re giving, they never really end.
I have things to do today. We all do. What a pleasure it is to be unfinished. Beautiful!
You can’t tell me that they’re always trying to get somewhere. Most of the time, it looks like they’re playing in the wind. Dancing even. These birds so elegantly bouncing and bounding above. And why wouldn’t they dance, they already have the song.
She never wore a tutu, nor spandex dresses, but oh how my mother could dance. She would teach me on the carpet of the living room floor. It was slower. But when I had mastered the steps, she’d lead me to the kitchen floor, and I barely felt my stockinged feet touch the linoleum. She’d sing along to the boombox, pull me in and spin me out and I knew I was flying. I asked her if she had dance instructors? No, she said. In school? I asked. No. Did grandma teach you. She laughed (sure it was a bit of a dance maneuvering through all those people in the farm kitchen), but no. Then how did you know you could dance? I asked. I could always hear the song, she said, and pulled me in once again.
And wasn’t that belief? Wasn’t that the true art of living? Just listening for the music. Trusting your feet would follow. Believing, one way or another, you were going to fly!
It took a long time for me to grow into my mother’s face. The first time someone said it, you look just like your mother, it was as if I found my way home. Amid all the impermanence of driveways and houses. Of streets and cities and doors opening and closing, I had the permanence of knowing where I came from. And with that, the knowledge that I could go anywhere, be anyone.
And if my mother looked like her father, then how could I not find comfort in my grandfather’s portrait?
Yesterday, I was showing new friends of the family some of my paintings. This is my grandfather, I said in a new language. In a different country. And still, when they saw him, this man who looked like my mother, who looked like me, I felt they saw a little bit more of my heart. And I was a part of the palette. I was home.
In a large gathering, I couldn’t really tell the difference between a Hvezda and a farming neighbor. Looking up from the height of their waist, I could see that we were all pretty much the same as I weaved through pant-legs and nylon stockings.
I can’t tell you the moment it changed. Maybe it was in small spurts, like my growth. One day though, I remember thinking nobody could possibly understand. Because surely I was the only one to feel this way. And the irony, I suppose, was that in all those differences, everyone else seemed to be having that very same thought.
It’s funny that it takes so long to see them, the thoughts nesting atop our heads, but once we start talking, sharing our experiences, we find that we’re really not that different after all. “Family” or not, we are all related.
On runways and red carpets, they like to play, “Who wore it best?” — pointing out how the same dress curves around the different women. And unfortunately, we seem to do the same with feelings. Judging who grieves better. Who recovers more quickly. Who wins (or loses) with the most grace. And I’m guilty of it too, and then I feel it, the flutter of those nesting thoughts…and I think maybe, just maybe, we’re not that different after all.
I didn’t correct her when she thought it was a hat — the bird atop the woman’s head. While it wasn’t a fascinator, it was fascinating, so when she said she would wear it too, I smiled and agreed.
For what was to be gained if I said, “But it’s a real bird…” While in my imagination it was, it was still just a painting. There for all to imagine. And in her mind, it was a hat. So I let it be a hat.
My cousin Dawn used to make up songs in the bathroom when she was a little girl. Neither self conscious of her singing, nor… well, her bathroom routine. One went, “And pony, and pony…” Only those two words, but over and over. It’s surprising how easily they stuck in my head. Annoyed, I told her to stop. Again and Again. It was my grandfather who told me, not her, to stop. “But it’s not even a real song,” I pleaded. “It is to her,” he said. And the argument was finished, but not the song. I suppose that’s why I still sing it today.
We have a real need to be right all the time. I’m just as guilty as the next person. I’m trying to get better. We can all enjoy things in our own way. Sometimes, you just have to let it be a hat.
There is a myth that claims upon returning to their usual spot, (not knowing that the lake had been paved over) a flock of geese, thinking it was water, came crashing into the pavement and died.
How do we know if nobody tells us?
I think we have a tendency to do this with a lot of things. We smooth things over. Sugar coat them. Sweep them under rugs. Hide them under bushels. And I’m not certain why. I think, if we go through something, we have a responsibility to help others do the same. And this can only be done with the truth. And while you might think the truth is harsh, it’s actually an offering of a safe place to land.
Isn’t it their own fault? Didn’t they “V” their way right into their own demise. Yes. But haven’t we all been led astray from time to time? I know I have. And I have been greeted by the pavement of “I told you so,” and I have been welcomed by the forgiveness of “come in, you and your heart sit down.”
Maybe it’s silly, (I guess I am that silly goose). But what if we did that for each other, simply offered a soft place to land?
I used to think they were so glamorous, the women on the front of the Butterick sewing patterns. My mother’s love for the designs was enough to lure me away from the toy aisle at Woolworth’s and join her in search of the fashion dream. For as much as I enjoyed the newest doll encased in plastic with her pink outfit, it was nothing compared to the palpable life that flowed from the dress patterns into my mother’s hands at the back of the store.
I didn’t have the words for it then, but I somehow knew it was more than glamour, and closer to worth. Not in search of proof that she could be, worthy, but knowing somewhere deep in her heart, that she already was. And so I left the ease and certainty of the lined toys and joined her in the dream.
And didn’t we become. And become again. Without money, or even a well lit path, we started our journey. Our joyful journey. And she sewed and believed. And shopped. Holding clothes under neck in front of the three-way yes (four, including mine!)
The woman arriving in my sketchbook reminded me of how far we have come. A simple nod from the back of Woolworth’s. And I know the magic moved from her hands into mine. So I pass it along to you, hoping, knowing, there is no end. The patterned dream lives on.
Working between two screens, sometimes my cursor gets stuck in the opposite one that I want. (Like my brain doesn’t do that all the time.)
It’s so easy to think, “Well, I always did it this way…” Whether I’m talking about different countries, different languages, loves, relationships, even my hairdresser. And I catch myself swiping madly on the wrong screen.
Change is never easy. Neither growth. But both are so necessary. And it doesn’t mean you have to give up everything in the letting go, the moving on…You keep the lightest of things, like joy and hope and love — none of these will ever weigh you down.
Too often I’m unaware. It’s barely more than air, the little birdie that tells me things. But when I’m paying attention, really paying attention, all the truths that move between who I am and who I want to be, chirp seamlessly between my heart and my brain, and I am saved.
I did end up breaking my arm, and my heart countless times, but never my neck. And oh! didn’t they warn us, scold us, over and over. Anything we did slightly out of the norm, teachers, parents, neighbors, all gave the warning, “You’re gonna break your neck!” From the monkey bars to the top of our desks, in trees and on clotheslines, it seemed we were all willing to take that risk.
There was a lot to learn. And I suppose a lot to warn us about, so maybe they just grouped it all under the “neck.” Because it was vital, wasn’t it. In order to survive, you had to stick your neck out from time to time. Hold your head up high, they said. And sometimes, even when you were up to your neck, you still had to save someone’s neck, (sometimes your own). Somehow, we got by, perhaps merely by the scruff of our necks.
I suppose I’m doing it each day, with these stories, this artwork, sticking my neck out. But just as my five year old self told me to grab hold of the neighbor’s swinging clothesline, it feels so necessary in order to be alive! To expose yourself, to take the risk, to love!
In the fifth grade, at our Valentine’s Day party on the frozen pond of Noonan’s park, I raced on my skates to grab the human “whip” that would not only be cracked, but also break my arm. Still fully casted in plaster by our next field trip to the Chanhassen Dinner theatre, I sat in the audience and listened to the Impossible Dream. “To run,” they sang, “where the brave dare not go!” We cheered and clapped and I waved my plastered arm in the air.
Who knows what the day will bring. I’m stilling willing to take the risk.
“Let’s say the things we never said. Let’s forgive the things we never could. Let’s love like no lessons have already been learned. Let’s dream like we have the chance, and live like we have no other.“
There were rare occasions when I saw adults cry. Gathered snuggly around my grandparent’s kitchen table. Perhaps to confine the news that came in the letter. Or the heartache of a loved one lost. To give it open space was to let it catch up to us in the summers of our youth. But sometimes, with the need for a Sugar Daddy, or a Slowpoke, I would sneak through the screen door and see it, them, dampened eyes and heads down, and my heart would sink. The ground seemed to shake beneath my bumper tennis shoes. I backed out the door.
It was my grandfather who caught up to me. Dazed and darkened under the largest tree near the road. He could see I didn’t want to be dazzled by false comfort. And he was never one to do it. “It’s like the Magpie,” he said. He was never much for small talk. He got right to the point. “What is?” I said. “The color. So black that it’s blue.” “I don’t get it.” He told me to get up. He led me back to the kitchen. Dishes had already begun clanking. There was the scent of coffee in the air. Chairs being pushed aside. Knees unbending. Even a few laughters of relief. Life. He looked down at me. “Blue,” he said. I smiled and nodded.
I have carried it for years. This knowledge, even when things are so black, they are also blue. You have to get up. You have to want to see it. But it’s always there.
I look out the morning window. He’s still right. I smile into the blue.
