The French have a saying, “entre chien et loup” — between dog and wolf. Most poetically it describes the transitional light of dusk, the time of day when you’re not certain of what you see. Is it a dog or a wolf? A friend or foe? Safe or threatened? Caught somewhere between comfort and fear.
I suppose within all transitions, a choice has to be made. In this, a big one, our first of the year, I’d like to set the tone and choose dog. Choose that this is going to be a great year! We’re all given the same light. We just have to decide how we see it.
You may say that’s Pollyanna, but I say poetic. And wasn’t it in Our Town, when Emily Asked, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” — she was answered, “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.” So I will take that unsure light, that “some”, and try to see it. Minute by minute. How magical this world is. How beautiful. And if I, we see it, really see it, then won’t we be a little more precious with it, with each other, a little less careless? Yes, joyfully, yes, some.
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!
Before Google, my mother had recipe cards with chocolate stains and bits of dough. A Betty Crocker cookbook so tattered, pages dogeared more with hope than actual meals made. She had a Bible with verses underlined in tears and yellow highlighter. Quotes from books stuck to the phone to remind her of what was actually funny now. Cassette tapes cued to the kitchen dance. And a phone book nearly rewritten with vital numbers like the Clinque counter at Macy’s.
And it was tangible, this chain of life. How it moved from heart to page to note to smile. I suppose it is what I’m still trying to do. To create the images. Meld them with thought. (Neither artificial.) So you can touch and feel, and pass them on, with your own notes and heart and smiles. And amid all the tatters and laughter, what we will have is real. So very real.
At first glance, this sketchbook probably doesn’t seem like a surprise. But when I tell you that I bought it in Iowa, suddenly it takes on a whole new meaning, and we’re all smiling.
And that’s the thing isn’t it? Context. I learned it pretty early on. But I have to keep learning it. I suppose we all do.
It was something, the way my mother looked. Shopping with her, I could see the other women wondering what they were missing. It was the same Herberger’s. The same racks. How was she doing it? And didn’t they stand behind her in the same line for the Clinique promotion? But it was even more than all that. What they didn’t see, is for years she did it on no sleep. No money. Eating only Heath ice cream bars to keep the weight on, the weight that slipped with worry. As surprising as a French girl in Iowa. And just as beautiful.
And in watching her story change, evolve, get moisturized and dressed to the nines, it, she, taught me to look for all the stories. All the joyful surprises. To capture them in words and paintings, so everyone could see the beauty in what was far and near, and maybe most importantly, even in themselves. So if you want to give thanks for this, do it by taking a look, in every face, in every mirror. May you ever be joyfully surprised.
Barefoot and bare legged, as a young girl in summer’s Midwest, I can only imagine it was the closest thing we had to being shirtless. We didn’t give it a lot of thought then. Our roles were silently firm, and burning pink the outline of a tank top on our core was about as far as we went. But I don’t recall ever feeling trapped. No, it was perhaps as free as I’ve ever been. It all felt like a release. From school. From buses. Alarm clocks and timed lunches. Pony tails let loose in bicycle winds. Striped gym uniforms forgotten in lockers, replaced with mismatched shorts and our cleanest dirty shirts. Even daylight said take your time, wander. And we did. I did. Until we got the call.
It was all around the same time. Varied by a parent’s return from work. A dinner that stoved a little too long. A delayed brother or sister, feeling out their teens. A mother who just needed an extra minute for herself, at the edge of her bed, without heels or pantyhose. But eventually from each porch or front door came the call to come inside. You knew whose house was beckoning by the groans emitted.
We all knew the sound of our call from home. We didn’t talk about it, but I know I wasn’t alone. I know I wasn’t the only one who was giving thanks behind the groan, that there was a light waiting for me. A cream for my pink shoulders. A table for my day’s story. A pillow to carry me to tomorrow’s.
We toss around the word freedom, as if we didn’t have it. We’ve always had it. Blessed to run between the comfort of constraint and the flight of feral. Our shirtless souls free to wander, and be welcomed once again.
The days are getting longer. (Another click of gratitude.) What will we do with the time, but dare the sun, and stretch the wander… and giggle beyond the groan.
You had to want to see them — and we did. We were even told where to look, and yet, for a split second, it was hard to distinguish them from the rocks of every other beach. And they weren’t beautiful, until I realized that they were seals. When I imagined these lumps up from their naps, barking and flopping, when I watched the slow up and down of their jiggly breaths, they became alive, real, fascinating even! The longer I looked, stories were revealed. One pup headed back from the water (I guess even seal children struggle to take a nap.) Two snuggled a little closer to each other. They weren’t all the same. These seemingly lifeless rocks at first glance had a story to tell.
I worry about how much we miss. How much we pass by. How many humans we just write off. What if we took the time to really see? I suppose it’s impossible to know everyone’s story, but what if we just acknowledged that everyone has one, that everyone is on a journey. What if we allowed each other to explore? To dare the sea? What if we allowed each other to rest? All in our own time. From ship to shore. Wouldn’t it all, wouldn’t we all, seem a little more beautiful?
It probably wasn’t obvious, given the size and gender — and the Hvezda boys, these strapping sons of Rueben, these born of the earth, farm raised young men, quite probably held their own in the country school just up the road — but I would have to say that it was my mother on more than one occasion who proved to be strongest.
And she was tired. She, being the second of nine, and the oldest girl, worked side by side her mother. Washing the continuous dishes. Changing the diapers. Retrieving the dolls thrown up apple trees by brothers endlessly tormenting sisters. Her arms weary from rocking and cradling babies she didn’t choose, but took in, one by one.
But those arms, that dangled long and heavy by her side, weighted by work, and books, and a metal lunchbox, found the strength to defend her brother Tom, from the endless teasing of Arne Zavadil. He never saw her coming, as he pushed and taunted this young boy struggling with words. He never expected this quiet, arm-weary sister to rise up from the ditch in front of the white school house and swing that metal lunch box with all of might, and flatten him to the ground. She wiped the blood from the lunch box on the grass and walked home to help her mother.
I don’t imagine Tom thanked her. He still found a way to tease his sisters. But strength untouted is still strength. Without the need for boast or gratification, those who do the work, the endless work, and still show up, these are the strongest of us. The most brave.
Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, I can wonder if it all matters. Heart and arm weary I wonder if the words on page make a difference. If the paint on canvas is wasted. But then I feel her, walking to school, step by step, and I am stronger. Ready to swing with all of my might. To defend what’s right. To rise up from the ditch and protect the ones I love, even the ones who just hours before “left my favorite doll out in the rain.” I am ready to defend. To rock and cradle. To swing if necessary. To love with a strength undenied.
I suppose we always want what we can’t have. So when she asked me if she could bring me anything from the US, I said red licorice. We don’t have it in France. Nor jelly beans. This shouldn’t be a surprise when you know that Hershey chocolate bars are in the exotic aisle of the grocery store, along with the peanut butter.
I kind of forgot about it. They had been here for hours, my American friends, before she brought out the gift bag. As she placed it in front of me, I saw the tip of red sticking out. Twizzlers! A two pound bag! I said, “If there are jelly beans in there as well, I might just pass out.” There were, and I didn’t. And then he said, “I brought some too. It’s my go-to travel candy.” He went to his suitcase and brought out at least another pound. “The bag is resealable,” he said, both thinking that seems highly unnecessary, and I knew I was with my tribe.
If we remembered the countless things that connect us, maybe our country, our countries, wouldn’t feel so divided.
My mother loved jelly beans. Red were her favorite (mine as well). Then yellow. Orange. Green sometimes. White in desperation. Purple, never. She gave purple to the birds and sometimes her mother in the back seat on long car journeys. Driving, I would never have to wonder or even ask what color she passed back to my grandma, be it jelly bean or Tootsie pop. Before her hand even reached over the seat, we would begin to laugh. It’s not like she didn’t know. Even Helen Keller would have seen the lack of randomness in candy choice. It didn’t take many miles for her to join in. Cupping her hands around the sugared treat, she said, “You know I like purple.” I’m still laughing.
What a thing it is to know someone. Without labels. Only by experience. To know my mother needed narrow shoes. My grandma, wide. Yet, their hands were surprisingly similar. Maybe no one “needs” three pounds of Twizzlers, but as the weight dwindles day by day, I am reminded where I come from. My joyful red heart beats wide open, never to be resealed.
If you made a line of every bike ride. Every walk on gravel. Every stroke in one of 10,000 lakes. And if you swept that line through golden fields, and trudged it through snow that spilled into boots. Then climbed it through grades and classrooms. Danced in through gymnasiums. Drove it through the DMV. Set it into the sky and released it to an open door. That line would form the shape of Minnesota.
I learned pretty early on, what could be taken away, and what couldn’t. There is no physical home for me to go to in my birthplace. No scratches of growth marked on a wall. No cedar chests. Gravel driveways have been paved. Empty lots over-filled. Schools torn down. But I am not sad. Everything that has given me form remains. My heart will ever know the way.
My friend from the first grade, and friend still, gave me a Minnesota cookie cutter for Christmas. Yesterday, here in France, with the spring of a schoolgirl, I rolled the sweet dough and cut out the shape of my heart.
I am part of the roads that lead to and from here,
