Everyone is a different palette. I love painting flesh tones. It takes some time to get past the underpainting. The skin tone. The shadowing. The real joy for me comes when I’m blushing the cheeks. The ears. The flow of blood that gives life. Emotion. Heart. And I can feel my own cheeks warm in the connection as I put yesterday’s portrait in one of my mom’s blouses, and her golden hoops.
Quinn is graduating from high school. Her race is just beginning. I’m walking now instead of running. We are perhaps as different as the countries we live in. As different as these portraits. But I’d like to think we are all still connected in the blush. This pulsing pinkened hope that keep us moving forward. Still blended with what brought us here. An Ivy blush.
I don’t know if it was a conscious decision, or just the body’s way of coping. I didn’t have the words for it then, nor the thought to question it. But within a week of moving her family from Minnesota to Texas, my Aunt Sandy adopted the southern accent. And just as easily I suppose, I changed the northern pronunciation of aunt to “ant”. And that’s how she remains.
Maybe everything is just a choice. Right down to how the day is going to be.
Each surface that I paint on accepts the substance so differently. How it holds, smooths. I can say, well, that’s not how you did it yesterday in the sketchbook. And it doesn’t care. This is how it is, it says. And so I make the adjustments. And I don’t fight the rough surface of the hand crafted paper, but it embrace it. Doesn’t it add to the character? Not imperfections, but details. And they are beautiful.
Singing along to the Spotify station in the car yesterday on a French highway, how easily I Tanya Tuckered into Delta Dawn, and I thought of her, my Aunt (Ant) Sandy. We’re all characters, rough and hand crafted, and isn’t it beautiful?!
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.
It’s not like I forget that I’m in France, but sometimes, I’m more reminded than others. Yesterday, sitting in on Dominique’s appointment, for a good five to ten minutes, I listened to him and his doctor talk about their extraordinary love of cheese. It was quite obvious I was no longer in Minnesota.
I suppose it was at that moment that the bird in my brain took flight.
If we’re lucky, we’re told quite often in our younger years that “you could be anything.” But maybe not so much with the “anywhere.” Perhaps that stems from the human fear of “others.” But I’ve never been sure why that’s so frightening. Because it’s only in the labeling of them being other that we in fact become one.
And as my bird fluttered above all things cheese, I thought, I really like butter. I wondered if they could hear the laughter in my head above the flapping.
Looking for a free page in my sketchbook, I came across the bird in flight that I had sketched in pencil. It could have been anyone’s dream, but it was hers. I don’t have to know her story, to celebrate the fact that she has a story. Be it butter or cheese, I just had to see her. See the hope disguised as the glint of light that reflects from the used-to-be tear. See the dream of flight not long perched on her beautiful head, soon to be mid-flap. And know that we belong. We. All.
“And if you did, see not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…”
Spring arrived not only on the side of the hill, but also in my step. I can buy it at the grocery store. In fact I did just a few days before. And it was delicious. But it can’t match the thrill of finding asparagus, petite stalk by stalk, just off the pathway.
And when I say hill, mountain would be closer to my leg’s truth. It is quite steep. And can be challenging. But while searching for the wild asparagus, I noticed on my second trip up, I hadn’t heard a thing from my thighs. Now, I’m sure they didn’t feel any different from the day before, but I think they knew the task. I think they knew they were as much a part of the hunt as my eyes that scanned, my back that bent, and my hands that grasped. I think to complain would have set them apart, so they marched silently up the hill, and joined in the victory when the asparagus omelette was made just hours later.
It was my grandfather who always told me whenever I was in deep struggle, (often self imposed), to focus on someone else. And I’m sure I struggled with that as well, screaming like an angry ascending quad, but he was right. He was always right. It’s a lesson I keep learning. Sometimes more quickly than others. But I still celebrate in the victory. He would like that — because in doing so, I am also thinking of him.
He comes the day. I’m about to join in. I climb. I hope. I reach. I pray. I curse. I kick. I laugh. I rest. I climb. I hope.
I still go to the mall with my mother. I don’t suppose we ever stop living with the ones we love. It’s only a matter of opening my closet door. Passing my hand along the draping of sleeves — each allowed the space to breathe as she taught me. We exchange silent ensemble ideas. I settle on the one where she clutches her imaginary pearls with more than approval. Pure excitement! And I am complete.
When it’s time to paint, I return the clothes to their rightful spaces and put on my splattered hoodie and pants, as if it were Sunday morning after sitting in my six year old’s white dress on a folding chair near the kitchen at Bethesda Lutheran. Smoothing out the drape with gloved hands long before and after Easter. Feeling to my very core the meaning of “good clothes.”
I read recently that memories are the handrail of the stairs we continue to navigate. So it’s no surprise as I made my ascent in yesterday’s sketchbook, that the ruffles appeared on the woman’s portrait. White ruffles. My mother’s favorite. And didn’t they suit her. So. I hear her saying, “Ooh, I need to find that blouse.” And I smile. Heart strong, I grab the rail and climb. Forever making ruffles.
One of my first times driving in Marseille I experienced the wrath of an individual whose only damage was enduring the audacity of my wanting to make a left turn. It being summer, my window was open. She was near enough, as I waited at the light, that I could feel the spray of certain consonants, like p’s and t’s. And had I chosen to raise the window, it would have hit her nose. The oncoming traffic continued, so I waited. She, on foot, could have simply kept walking. My route had no contingency to her plans. Yet her fury escalated into a language that I’m not sure was even French, or European, but simply rage. But I learned something quite powerful in this moment. It didn’t hurt me. (It was almost a little comical.) She wasn’t hurting me. Because I didn’t understand the words, I couldn’t give them any meaning. And more importantly, I couldn’t give them any power. I suppose I had heard it a million times before, in a million ways, that people can’t hurt you unless you let them, but here was direct proof coming right through my open window.
I mention it only because I have to keep learning it. To not give the power away. When the language thrown in my direction is all too familiar — to stop “understanding” so much, when really I, we, understand so little. And control even less. And even more so on the days when my own brain yells at the open window of my heart..
To remind myself, I painted her portrait. An embodiment of this feeling. Under the gentle gaze of this woman, I make the morning breakfast. She reflects the look I want to give to heart and mirror. She is the breeze of spring. The grace that lifts. The beat within that keeps driving me. And I am saved.
It’s not that I assumed the garage doors had the sense of the birds, but it is made evident whenever the wind blows. (I suppose that’s when the truth of us is revealed.) And, oh, they’re built solid, these blocks of wood and iron, but never a match against the wind. Every time – it’s BANG! BANG! They beat against the garage, thrown from side to side. Always fighting it. Always losing. But then the birds, in that same wind, barely more than air themselves, they seem to dance. Each wing flaps with lessons learned, and risen above.
I’m not proud of it, but I have done my share of banging. Trying to fight off the new storm with all of my wooden might. But I’m learning. And learning again. What used to blow through me, now gives me wings.
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.
I was still riding my banana seat one speed when Lynn Norton graduated to her adult size bike. I could hear the gears click into place as she passed me going up the hill by Lord’s house, on the way to Van Dyke Road. Between huffs I marveled at her speed. I stood up on the pedals, fighting with all of my might, all of my heart. She was barely breathing hard. “Wait up,” I panted and hoped she not only heard, but somehow could pull me along if I stayed within reach. She stopped at the right hand gravel turn and waited. Her look back was the incentive I needed and I made it. “How did you go so fast?” I asked. “I know how to shift.” I suppose it was right then that I made it part of my life’s plan.
Being right handed, I have recently finished all the right hand pages of my very large sketch book. There was a choice to be made. Forget half the book, or shift. I purchased the vellum sheets to protect the completed work. Are they a guarantee? No. Of course there is risk. And part of my brain says that something bad could happen, but the loudest voice in the room, my pumping heart, says to go on. What if something great happens! What if on these left handed pages, you create a masterpiece?!!!!
Two summers after Lynn beat me up the hill, I too had an adult size bike. Three gears! Mastering those, I graduated to 10 speeds. Then twelve. It took all those gears and more for me to go to college. To take chances. To become an artist. To write books. To fall in love. To move to another country. To face today. I am not afraid. With the confidence of the oldest Norton girl, I look in the mirror and claim, “I know how to shift!”
