Perhaps I’m more careful now of where I lay my expectations, knowing that often the people who rise up to the occasion aren’t the most expected. Like a gift without pressure of holiday they gloriously appear, and lift you higher than you could have ever imagined.
When I was a young girl, I found so much help in the school system. Teachers offered aid and solace. Encouragement and discipline. It was a structure that I depended on. Solid. When I first arrived in France, I had to attend a mandatory French school. Around the table, desperations were as vast as the countries we came from. Of course I looked to the teacher as I had always done. It didn’t take long for me to learn of my mistake. She would not save me. Nor any of us. She made fun of each nationality, as if she had an offensive handbook. And when the insults weren’t understood with language, she used gestures that could not be ignored.
After three months, without common language or permission, we began to stumble into something close to humanity. We found out more about each other. After learning that I paint and write, it was our teacher who asked me to be the teacher. To bring in art, books, and give a demonstration, in French on my final day of school. I agreed. For if she taught me anything, it was where to place all my expectations — within. As I struggled with art and easels from the car to the classroom, it was the newest addition to our class, the man from Cambodia, who spoke neither English nor French, who picked up the heaviest of what I had, and walked beside me. I smiled, knowing that without my knowledge or expectation, I had been lifted. I had been saved.
It wasn’t long after I realized that everyone didn’t have them, these Tech-ers in the basement, that they were gone. It’s clear now that we needed the money more than the space. We went through at least three cycles of young men from the law enforcement class. I only remember one’s name – Terry Eilers. Maybe because he was also our bus driver, but mostly I think because he was nice to me. And wasn’t that everything? —when there was just one unlocked door at the bottom of the stairs that separated them from our laundry.
Before lessons were learned, I race from upstairs to downstairs without a glance. It was one of the men from the first group of three. (Everyone over 17 seems like a man when you are six.) He was building a canoe in the driveway to our basement. Fascinated by anything being built, I was probably annoying. Watchful. Eager to know the bend of wood. And what was that green stuff? What was he putting on the shell? Certainly he must have my best interests at heart, I thought, he lived with us after all. He was going to enforce the law. He told me to touch the canoe. I poked one hesitant finger out of my sleeve and touched it as if it were a hot pan on the stove. No, really get in there, he said. Rub your arm across it. I don’t why I did. Just like the heat from a hot pan, it took a minute for the tiny shards of glass, the insulation, to reach my brain. And it took longer, I suppose, wondering not why the pain, but more, why did he want to inflict it?
I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. I ran up the browning hill of fall grass. Through the garage door. Down the stairs to the laundry room in the basement. Took off the painful sweater and placed it in a basket. It was the first time I noticed there was no lock on that door. It was the first time I needed one.
I stayed upstairs for the rest of their time. The next group came. They called one “Buzz” I think because of his hair, but I remained at a distance.
When Terry Eilers came the next year, slightly overweight in his tan shirt and brown pants, the new uniform of the students, he smiled at me from behind the big bus wheel. I don’t know how many rides it took before I trusted him, but I did.
It’s no longer a technical school, but a college. They have their own housing now, I guess. Call it whatever you want, I hope we’ve all learned along the way. Kindness is memorable.
Some will try to take it away. Innocence. Curiosity. Joy. Others still will pick you up when you need it most. It only takes one Terry.
It’s one of my favorites in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay. Maybe because it feels most like me.
It didn’t start out as a museum. At one point it was a train station,
even a parking lot, long before it housed the most beautiful impressionists in the world. I suppose I’ve always known it — that I would have to become, and keep becoming.
When I was a kid, I thought I would just figure stuff out, you know, and be something, and that would be it…that would be my life. Because didn’t they always ask, “What are you going to be?” And especially at this time of year, as we prepared to dress up and go from door to door asking for our treat behind the question, “What are you supposed to be?”
At first I was a cowboy, (was this my train station?). Then I was a hobo, (my parking lot?) It took a long time to become an artist. This was me. Who I was supposed to be.
I think that I, we, just have to keep becoming. We change and grow. We are molded by love and trips around the sun. It takes a long time to build a soul. We get older, maybe wiser, (even better, we gain a little grace) but we don’t finish – we don’t have to – we begin, and be, and begin again. I think that’s the gift of living…the joy of being alive!
We knew nothing of love or roses, but that didn’t stop us from singing along with Donny Osmond on the counter of our fifth grade classroom. It was Miss Green who provided us with the 45 and the record player, solidifying that she was indeed not one of the elderly teachers that came before us, but she was one of us, still tethered to the longings of youth…and so she hummed along to Paper Roses. We moved the needle back again and again, allowing our hearts to spin as many times as they could before the first bell brought it all to a stop.
It always came as a surprise — that morning bell. It seemed as if we had just stepped from the bus into the school, and it was over. Maybe we should have taken it as a warning, this fleeting time…and I didn’t. Not for years. Maybe no one does. But I’m trying to now. Not out of fear or desperation, but gratitude and respect. These gifts that we are given from moment to moment. Spectacular!
Yesterday on my morning walk — the place where I hover between bus and bell — I saw this pink flower. I took a photo. I got down to really look at it. The pink petals were so lovely. “They look like paper, silk paper,” I thought. It’s funny how something so weightless can lift you. Transport you. I hummed the notes that formed a youthful string, a string that tethers me still. My heart sings as if no lessons have been learned. And I give thanks for the time.
For most things, an outfit for example, my mother’s decisions were slow and methodical, including several trips to the store, three-way mirrors, test runs with the right shoes, the accenting jewelry, the perfect shade of make-up applied in the proper lighting. Such gentle care she took to reach her destination. So it was surprising to me, on any given road trip, how quickly she could decide whether a city was the right stop for her. It wasn’t often, but it was swift and sure when it happened. Pulling off the exit, as I opened my car door, her decision would be made. “Nope,” she would say, and I knew she wouldn’t be getting out of the car. “I hate it,” she said. And just in case her point wasn’t clear, she added, “with a passion.” The echo of my laughter rang in the rear view mirror as we pulled out of town.
But that’s how we did all things I suppose, with a passion. The cds turned along with the wheels beneath us and we sang! We sang as if each lyric was happening to us at that very moment. It was, we were, wild and free! So many things in this life are out of our control. And maybe that’s why she did it — say no. It feels so good. So freeing. To decide what’s right for you. Not out of spite or anger, but pure passion, passion for your own life, your own living.
We pulled into the city yesterday (I won’t say which one – we all have our own right to decide.) I had to use the restroom. Dominique kept one hand on the car door. The words were French, and not exactly identical, but I knew we weren’t staying. I laughed as we sang ourselves down the road…with a passion.
It was around 4am that I rolled over, secure in the knowledge that I would remember the opening line for today’s blog. Did it come in a dream? Or just a dozy thought… It seemed beautiful though, this line, this moment.
I used to be so certain of so many things. That summers would last forever. And the friendships made within. School day friends seemed easier. We were thrown together daily. Delivered five days a week by bus. Guarded through the crossings. Marched into classrooms. Plopped side by side. Row by row. Friend by friend. But summer, you had to make an effort. To see your summer friends, you had to get on bikes, run through fields, skip, sweat and swim. You had to make telephone calls from kitchen mounted phones, and wait through busy signals and unanswered rings. Sone of us even wrote letters, making promises of BFFs, signing with hearts in our names, never thinking that the new school year would separate us by room and teacher.
As quickly as the summers went, the years seem to go by even faster. People and summers pass, like moments in the dawn. But still I smile, because I believe in the forever of it all — that summers don’t really die — they live on in a place that we can only reach in dozy, passing thoughts… Where my mother still plays like a little girl.
Wide-eyed awake, I see 2024 pulling up like a big orange bus, flinging open its door and welcoming us to the new year. Chubby-legged and ever hopeful, I pull myself aboard! Let’s ride!
