It turns out my mother is currently living under the assumed name of “animal prints” on TikTok. I know this to be true, because yesterday when I posted this video, she was the first to respond saying “I love that striped top. I need to be wearing it.” That is so my mother.
We had a shared language. From ruffles to stripes. One developed through years of shopping malls and our own closets. Playing dress up. Fashion show. The joy flowed like well draped fabric. And I understood completely. For her to say she was “scouring the catalogs for that blouse” after seeing a recent painting, was the best compliment she could give to me.
So how could I doubt that heaven has TikTok?
I suppose believers will always believe. And I do. And if you needed any more evidence, there’s this — while typing today’s post, I checked google to make sure I was spelling “scouring” correctly — here’s the sample definition that appeared — “I scoured the mall for a blue and white shirt, but couldn’t find it anywhere.” Feel free to say hello to my mother on TikTok.
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.
There’s a tradition within the working kitchen — “Yes, Chef!” It acknowledges the task at hand and signifies the willingness to follow through. It’s what I say to the fluttering of my white-hatted heart, daily.
I wasn’t feeling that well yesterday afternoon. But I was mid-paint, (a bird in the hand) and hadn’t I promised the page? Hadn’t I said to the other birds, today we welcome another? Yes. But most importantly, hadn’t I told myself that I could do it?
I have no contract with my daily blog, nor my sketchbook. But I do have a commitment to my very core, to be who I am. To make something of the gift of the day. To wing myself above the obstacle and keep becoming.
So when I say yes to the morning and the song in the trees and the keyboard and the brush, I am saying yes to myself. Yes to the chef, the boss of my being, that I am willing. I am able.
The sun feathers day’s light through the window. My fingers wiggle, wings too, already hearing my heart’s yes.
St. Patrick’s Day will always bring me back to Chicago. A green river flowing. Stumbling Irish of every nationality, fueled with beer of the same color and a hope for Spring, brave the cool March breezes that visitors often mistake for the wind of the “windy city”, kick dirty patches of left over sidewalk snow as if to rush along the promise of the warmth to come. Maybe it was easy to believe in the seasons, in each other, all draped in emerald, as if named from the Wizard of Oz. There was an assurance that we (a we that was all inclusive) would rise up. That the blue and yellow of this almost spring sky made us all one. Green. In the Emerald City.
Somehow the curtain always gets pulled back. The great reveal of the 18th. And everyone goes back to their own colors. But maybe we’re all a bit closer for the moment.
We can choose, you know. To be together. As one. Maybe it’s never been so “windy.” Maybe we’ve never had so much to brave. But couldn’t we? Shouldn’t we? Gather in the green of the day, and just be? Together?
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.
I never thought of gull being slang for gullible. Maybe in not knowing, that’s exactly what it makes me. But I see them, living free by the sea, and if that’s being fooled, it’s a pretty good trick.
We have so many words for it, naive, Pollyanna, but I’m still a believer. And I suppose sometimes, even my own brain thinks of my heart as a white and gray bird near water, and yet it comes along, footprinting in the sand, knowing somewhere in all that belief and misbelief, we will take flight. I guess I don’t know how to live any other way. I have brushed away piles of sand upon sand. And still. I have averted hands swatting in the air. And still. I squawk, when others seem to know the words to the song. And still, I believe.
Because isn’t all that blue, lit by yellow, grounded by sand, isn’t that for everyone? I think so. I still believe. I’ll see you up there.
In my sketchbook, all the pages are almost absent of color. Not flesh, nor butter, it welcomes every image, and rests it gently, softly, without judgement. But for the flaps. The flaps are a vibrant red. Already set in tone, they present a different challenge. We call this an “underpainting.” The red cannot help but affect each color applied. And it can be tempting, this coming in hot. There is a vibrancy, a bit of excitement. And so it is with heart and mind.
Sometimes, seemingly without my knowledge or permission, I find myself in the flaps. But this! And that! And they! Should haves and could haves and supposed tos hovering in all that redness. And that’s ok, for a moment. I try not to add to the heat of the color by beating myself up. But rather create a space, where all are welcome. All.
We are living in a time of red. Perhaps an inhuman time. We’re not the first, nor the last, but It is our job to remain human. To love, to create, to inspire, to preserve the goodness. To be the pages that welcome, with all the gentle might of heart and mind.
I never noticed how much it looked like a little nest, the tuft of hair on top of a cow’s head. I guess the bird knew before I did, and it showed me how to find its way home.
I’ve never lived on a farm, nor even in the country. Yet, I’m trying to count, this morning, the amount of times I have been connected to another human, simply by a cow. Of course, my grandparents. Uncles and overalls and electric fences. I’ve sold four original paintings of cows. Three in Minneapolis and one in France. After finishing this cow yesterday, I sent it to my friend in Minnesota. She told me how her father, the week before his passing, wanted to simply watch and listen to the cows on his farm. He was showing her, how to find his way home.
If a cow can do all that, certainly we could do that for each other, be the nest, or at least the direction of home.
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.
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.
