The Christmas carcass became yesterday’s soup. Aproned and worry-free, I Grandma Elsied my way through the process. Adding everything. Measuring nothing. And it was delicious. Steeped with holiday and attention, it tasted rich and full, but for me, the added pleasure, satisfaction, joy, came with nothing being wasted.
I try to practice it — this making use. A scrap of metal turned into a frame. Discarded wood into panels. Yesterday’s still fresh oil paint into tomorrow’s tableau. And to me it’s all important, but I hope I pay the same attention to living. Using everything I have. Every speck of courage, because we’ll get more tomorrow. Loving with every piece of my heart, knowing it means nothing left inside. And perhaps it’s not as easy as pot to stove, but I was taught to attempt in Elsie’s kitchen. To abandon worry and just create.
She’s smiling over my soup bowls, but more over, my heart. Telling me daily to give it all, and just become.
I had a favorite spoon when I was young. Rounded, I never felt the edge of elongation. It just simply delivered. And I loved it. My mother made sure it was clean for every meal. From Captain Crunch to Campbell’s soup, I had my security, my joy, my spoon.
When my parents divorced and we had to leave our home, everything felt sharp and long. Who were we if not on Van Dyke Road? The last cardboard box packed, I stood at the door and she slipped the spoon in the pocket of my navy windbreaker. Everything would be ok.
Since then, I have never left a situation without a dream in my pocket. Every school, vacation, team, life event, I have taken flight with my pockets filled. Nothing is lighter than joy.
Each time I paint a wing, I smile, because I know what’s beneath. I know what they carry. My mother showed me long ago.
When I first moved to France, the letter arrived in the mail. A little too bulky for just words. Inside was the spoon. The dream. I knew everything would be ok.
I don’t know how many times I sang the song, “I wish I had a river…” Joni Mitchell was a staple in our house, so when it was “coming on Christmas,” she was on repeat. How many wishes did I make for that river, a river so long that I could skate away on, before I even knew what it would mean?
It wasn’t a river where I learned to skate. In fact it was a pond. Noonan’s Pond. And by “learned” I mean, fell and broke my arm. (Maybe that’s where all lessons are learned, in the falling.) All of my summers were spent attempting to fly. From diving boards to bicycle wheels, I was certain that my feet could leave the ground. It was no different with the change in weather. When the lakes ponds and froze over, I was certain, it was simply another way to take flight.
I wore my full plastered arm, like a badge of courage. Every fifth grader celebrated the attempt. All knowing, valuing, what that breeze felt like underfoot.
The needles are already falling from our tree on this sacred eve. But it’s ok. I learned it long ago on the ice. I learn it daily, simply loving. All the rivers to cross. There will be so many stumbles and falls, and letting ins and letting gos…all breezes under our hearts, under our feet, this love teaches us daily, how to fly.
Maybe nature knows, how the gifts are only borrowed. From nest to song, how it’s all impermanent. We’re given everything we need between sky and tree, but it has always been for the sharing. We were meant to live in the birdsong.
I think all creative ideas (and I’m including love here, perhaps topping the list) are like dandelion seeds floating on a summer breeze, with the bravest of barefoot children chasing them, stretching to pluck them from the blue, knowing if they don’t, there are countless chubby legs running behind and beside, willing to make the journey. And just as the summer child borrows the fleeting day, I gather the words and the paint, into the shape of love, and hope and try and pray it makes it to the next season.
Painting in a new room yesterday, brush in hand, I sang along with each stroke, the Christmas songs so generously lent to me, to us, each year. Within the music, somewhere on the canvas, I am suspended in time, in the gift of the moment. No doors of advent are opening. No rushing toward the next. I’m catch myself in the song of the bird, in a moment of happiness, and I find myself in the most wonderous gift of all. I know I won’t keep the painting. It must be shared. Chubby summer legs will be waiting.
If you dip the cookie in the frosting, pick it up slowly, turn it over, sway it a little side to side and front to back, the frosting will level itself out. I don’t know how it knows, but it does. It’s the gift before the giving.
I think we’re all given the tools. Right from the start. Oh, sure, it takes a little turning. A little swaying. But when you know. You know.
I used to go into my room at five years old and color my emotions. I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling, but I had 24 Crayolas that could relay the message. At six, — as Mrs. Bergstrom gave us the spelling, the words — I began to write poems. Thus began this cookie’s life of self leveling. And the real gift is, I now have something to give.
I’m not special. We’re all given the tools. Maybe you garden. Maybe you bake. Or build. Or teach.
Yesterday, after painting in the studio, feeling the magic of this new portrait beginning, I wanted to call my mom. Oh, how she loved magic!! And perhaps frosting even more. So I returned to the kitchen, dipped the cookies that I had made earlier that day, and turned and swayed and leveled myself in all that love, and somehow I knew she knew.
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.
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.
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.
