I was a teenager having surgery in Minneapolis. It was not yet spring, but for my mother. She was dressed in yellow, head to toe. From my wheelchair, I could see her slacks, not break at the knee, but simply curve like a note in a Harry Belafonte song. The elevator door opened and the doctor smiled at her — said she looked as “beautiful as a jonquil.” I didn’t even know what that meant, but it was the most elegant compliment I had ever heard. Back at my room, no iPad or telephone, certainly no dictionary, we could only imagine how beautiful that flower looked.
It has been decades, and I’m still lifted by yellow. I’m still lifted that my mother dressed to lift, herself and me. I’m still lifted by jonquils standing tall in a breeze that they shouldn’t survive, as my mother bent, but never broke.
As the elevator door opened to 2026, I gave the woman in my sketchbook a yellow sweater. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Lift each other.
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.
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.
Of course I was going to get in. Everything I had done up until this moment was about taking the chance, saying yes. So when she pulled her car up next to me and stopped, I walked up to the open window. She said the French equivalent of “get in” twice. And it’s surprising how quickly the brain can weigh all the options in a splintering of a second. I opened the door and sat down, and said “OK…” We both let out a nervous laugh, neither quite sure of what we were agreeing to.
It was her husband and son-in-law I had painted. The two men on my daily path. She had stopped me once before and applauded me in my paint splattered shorts from behind the car wheel. We were connected by nothing but sharing the same path. (And isn’t that everything?)
My mind tried to leave the proverbial bread crumbs as she wound us down the gated path. Through the sea of olive trees. Past the pool. She apologized that it was becoming green. She opened the shutters and we walked into her home. She unlocked the armoire and pulled out the most beautiful bottle of olive oil. This was their art — their exchange for the painted portrait. I held the weight of it close to my heart and thanked her in both languages.
I asked about her husband. I don’t see him anymore on my daily walk. The Alzheimer’s no longer allows his trip. A small tear, hers or mine, said he still makes the journey each day on the canvas.
I walked home knowing we always have the tools to connect, if we share the best of us. If we dare the best of us, ourselves.
It’s only a painting. It’s only olive oil. But it’s everything.
There is a real difference between paper, canvas and panel. Each one takes the paint in its own way. Likes a different brush stroke, even a different brush. And I don’t like one more or less for it. I’m trying to do the same with people.
I’m not saying it’s easy. But I think just being aware, it helps me fight it less. Sure I still come with all of my seemingly best skills, but they don’t work for everyone. And sometimes I get through my whole wheelhouse — are you paper, canvas, panel? Now what? Then you look at me with all of that leather or lace, that ceramic or stone, and I know I have to try again. I used to think, well, why do I have to change? And the answer is I don’t. None of us do. But if we want to include the people in our lives that provide a challenge, (and I say provide here, because they are giving us an opportunity to grow), if we do want to include them, we may have to thin out the paint a little, and try again. Not giving up on our skills, but enhancing them. Because most likely, they are doing the same, and with any luck, we find a colorful way to be together.
Someone said yesterday, it sounds like a prayer. And maybe it is. I write, not because I have the answers, but because I’m trying to learn them. Day by day. Bit by bit. I have always believed, even when I, we, fail, there is love in the attempt. And if we can see that, we can do anything.
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.
Having long hair, I would often come home after a tumultuous day navigating the Washington Elementary School playground with a bit of, what my mother called, a bird’s nest. Often tangled in hood or cap. Sometimes even zipped in the collar of my coat. Falling out of one ribbon and retied into another. Bungied, bungled and bouncing around my face. But I was never worried. She took her time. Untangling with care. Strand by strand. Story by story, of the birds that could live there. Until my blonde locks lay gently upon my shoulders.
I suppose I took it for granted. I did until the day that my friend Lisa said her mother really worked her rat’s nest hard the night before. What’s a rat’s nest, I asked. My hair, she replied, it was all snarled, you know, messed up. A rat’s nest — I was silently horrified. Is that what they called it? Not my mother. Never. She would never give me a rat. Always a bird.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, it takes strength to be gentle and kind. But how do we know, unless we are given the example, to first be gentle with ourselves?
I cried when we crossed the border into Minnesota yesterday. I did not fight the handlful of silent tears. I let myself long for the nest that wasn’t there, then cradled myself in the nest that is always with me. My mother gave me that. I will have it ever. Nesting. Gently.
I don’t know how she knew. There were no influencers. No self help books. And even if there were, she wouldn’t have had time to read them. She would have laughed at the thought of someone telling her to stay “in the now.” “Where else would I be?” She would have said.
It was a Saturday evening. Grandma Elsie’s “now” was filled with some pots brewing, others soaking. She shooed me away from the stove into the wafting of Grandpa’s pipe. I followed it into the living room. I didn’t ask, I simply followed the pinstripe of his overalls onto his lap. He perched the pipe away from the top of my blonde head. “You smell like today, “ I said. He raised his eyebrows. It was a combination of sun, and breeze, and hay and earth, topped with just a hint of tobacco. I squeezed the pouch in his pocket, still wanting to touch the end of his pipe, but remembering the heat from the first and last time I touched it. I pulled at the corners of his pierced lips to form a smile. He was still so new. I wanted to know everything. I didn’t have the words for it then, but he, being already formed, I wondered if I could be a part of it. I sculpted his face and flannel like clay, wanting to be somehow connected. I put a thumb on each of his eyebrows and pulled upward. “That means surprise,” I said. He smiled on his own this time, without my pulling, and I knew that we were connected.
The pans clanked in the kitchen. The coo-coo of the clock stayed silent. It was only a moment, but it was beautiful. And we were in it. I’m sure he had thoughts of tomorrow’s farm, but he didn’t stray. He tapped his pipe in the tray beside the lounger. And we gathered in the scented remains of the day.
It shouldn’t come as a shock. I’ve known it from the time I could peek under my own bed. The imagined monsters were never there. Still I had to repeat it in my head — “all of the danger is pretend.” I’m not too proud to say that these words are often rattling through my head, even today. Head under pillow I repeat them until they offer the great reveal. No actual monsters.
I live by imagination. And that’s a good thing. It moves through my heart and my hands. It helps me create paintings and stories. And used as a proper tool, it has given me all the advantages of an extraordinary life. And I wouldn’t change a thing. I feel more deeply. Love more deeply. But within all that, there is the danger of the runaway thought. That one that sneaks away without my knowledge or permission and not only warns, but creates a danger of its own. And all that power of creativity can work its persuasion, luring me head first and upside down from a youthful twin size bed, scanning for ghosts proven wrong, time and time again.
And I have to laugh, even walking on the path, right side up, all that blood can rush to my head, as I repeat the words louder, “all of the danger is pretend.” Over and over until it drowns out the worry, and only the path remains.
Walking in town yesterday, going to the restaurant, she told me of a struggle. “I’m just trying to find my way,” she said. “We all are,” I replied, both of surprised by the other. I suppose everyone thinks the “others” have it all figured out. As it so often happens, when she said it out loud – her worry – we both heard the words, took them in, and started to laugh. Most of the time, those monsters are pretty silly when you take a good look a them in the light of day.
I know many problems are real. The world is filled with them. But the path becomes so much clearer when we can leave the imagined ones behind. I’m working on that. Daily. Head up. Step by step. Word by word. Smile by smile.
When I was five I began drawing. Six, writing. Every paper in my tiny bedroom was filled. I sat on my twin bed and poured out my heart to the Raggedy Ann and Andy sheets. Emboldened with their always smiling and gentle approval, I held the paper in my plattered, chubby hands, and presented it to my mother. She knew the gift that it was, and welcomed it with a caring so safe, so loving, that I knew I could do it again and again.
I did it daily. When my mother passed, it was that little girl that looked directly at me, that looks at me every day, hands and heart extended, she asks me where she is to go. And she’s so small. And I don’t want to hurt her. She’s still so filled with ideas and belief, and I can’t turn her away. When she comes to me, with all that raggedy trust, I smile, and do the best that I can with what she is offering. I tell her what she has made, what we have made, is something special, and I clutch it to my beating chest before setting it free.
If you’re reading this, I, we, stand before you, so small, but still believing it matters. And I will do it, again, and again.
