When I turn the pages of my sketchbook, I have to laugh at the sizing. The weight I can give a sparrow!. And that’s wonderful, if directed toward joy. But I have to be careful that I don’t do the same with problems — make them bigger than ever possible. And that’s easy to do. But it’s also easy to shift.
When the weight of a random day is too much to carry, I try to paint it away. And once I begin, to squeeze out a little paint on my saturated palette (I’ve done this before), wet my brush to lip, begin to color the page, what felt so heavy on heart, is so much lighter on wing. It’s funny how that works. I suppose it’s not really even magic, more likely, it wasn’t that heavy after all. I mean, if the sparrow can carry it away… And so I keep painting, lighter, once again learning, hope will never weigh you down.
The morning sky is bright. It seems like it might be a good day to fly! I’ll see you up there.
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.
There were no influencers at the time. No YouTube. The only thing social, (sans the media) could be found at the Clinque counter in the center of Herberger’s Department store. And so my mother followed her own guts, her own grace, and decided upon the royal blue purse.
I suppose it was the way she carried it, carried herself, but people began to notice. To comment favorably. She was the woman with the blue purse. And I would watch them, watching her — looking away from the three way mirrors to get her reaction. Smiling. Then making their way to the purse section.
What some are calling guts these days is really just shock, pure laziness of spirit. Without the addition of grace, it is simply blather. Most have forgotten the need to carry, and simply shove.
I think about the choices I make. I don’t always get it right. But there is love in the attempt. And I think, I hope, with that alone, I can stand in the shadow of her blue purse, in the glow of guts, in the warmth of grace.
It was my mother who listened to me with the patience of paper. I could tell her anything. No dream was too big. No concern too frivolous. No wonder dismissed. I could cursive my feelings throughout the house, and she would gather them in softly, gently, filling heart reams daily.
I didn’t read Anne Frank until junior high. I had already been writing for years. On scraps of paper. Wood-burning notes into panels. Poems on birthday cards. Hopes onto sticky pads. But I didn’t have a diary. And it wasn’t until reading Anne Frank’s that I knew why. It was because I had my mother. Anne wrote in her diary, thinking she had “no such real friend” to confide in. My mother was that “friend.”
Through the years, as I made my living selling the words and images, I was constantly approached by my sales reps and store owners with “What’s new?” A feverish flurry to get to the next thing. An urgency to keep the writing short – “no one will take the time to read all that.” I would smile and think that Anne Frank was right, “Paper is more patient than people.”
I’ve tried to stay true to my slow and looping cursive heart. Giving it the space and time it needs. Giving it the care my mother showed me it was worth.
I hope you have that friend. That confidante. If not, let it be me. Take your time. I’m in no hurry.
