We really had no idea the mountains that lay ahead. From the flat playground at Washington Elementary, we were given the gift of believing most things were within reach.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were unfolding the dreaded afternoon napping mat. Reluctantly, lying, waiting… toes curled under to ensure a fast get up and get on with it. Knowing well, that all would be revealed — friendship, love, courage, hope — simply with the release of our hearts into the wild.
When they came to visit me in France, it was the first thing I wanted to show them — my playground. We climbed up the Montaiguet to get the best view of the Sainte Victoire mountain. Once again, the explanations weren’t necessary — all intimacies underfoot were not detailed, but certainly known. And shared. Look how far we had come!
It couldn’t be denied — the view from gratitude is pretty spectacular.
Toes curled, I ready myself into the all of it, the hope, the courage and love of the day. I open the door, and get on with it.
You wouldn’t even know that she needed it. I made the wooden frame for a brace on the back of her panel. No one will see it. But it will be there to support her. Through the bending power of winter’s humid. And it makes me feel special, knowing it all — the truth of what’s behind her. What’s within. And it makes me love her more, because she allowed it, this support. This loving structure.
The thing is, I suppose we think we’re strong only if we can help someone. But the truth is, it takes just as much strength to allow someone in. To accept the help we may need from time to time. It’s not easy. I know. To let someone behind the scenes.
What’s taught is what’s known. My mother and I reversed roles through the years. Front to back. And with each turning, I thought she was more beautiful, and the amazing gift, it made me feel the same.
We can do this, you know. For each other. Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be beautiful?
We went to market yesterday. We bought a few plants and flowers. Bouquet in hand, wearing my mother’s top, they both felt, not like trophies, but certainly signs of my good fortune, as I stepped lightly through the streets of Aix en Provence.
It’s because of her that I held the belief for so long. It wasn’t until last year that I learned (I don’t want to say truth) the alternative meaning to “this little piggy went to market.” From the time she pinched each of my toes with the verse, throughout our days of wandering all of the Dales, it had been about shopping. Never the horrors of the butcher.
Not to say we didn’t live in the truth. Oh, the truth was very apparent and ever near. But it was more of a decision, I suppose, of choosing how to see the day. How to see this life. Choosing my market.
I thought I must be surrounded by the smartest people in the world. Imagine my grandfather, farming, alone. How could he possibly? (And I also had every “W.”) Who tells you what to do? What is that for? Why do you get up so early? When is it finished? To everything he simply answered that he knew. And once I got my arms around the fact that he gathered in all the information, I was still surprised at his discipline. No one told him the hours to keep or to finish that job on that day. I asked him if he let it go until tomorrow, who would know? I would know, he said. I walked in the certainty of his overalls that shadowed a path to an open field.
I asked the same of my grandmother, as she placed the empty bag of toasted marshmallows on the counter to pay at Jerry’s Jack and Jill. Certainly there were no camera’s at Jerry’s. No one even paying attention. Who would know? I asked. I would know, she said. I started to see a pattern.
Without event or occasion, my mother dressed. Put on her make-up. Faced each day with the scrutiny of the unproperly lit bathroom mirror in our basement apartment on Jefferson Street. Even for a driveway toss of the frisbee on a quiet Sunday afternoon. You already know her answer to the question. But no one is going to see us, I said. She smiled behind her lipstick.
It’s an old table. Most would probably say unworthy of the effort. And I just saw the latest influencer praising the inexpensive IKEA table. And it crossed my mind. But it’s the only table I’ve ever had in my studio. So I began filling in the holes. Strengthening the right bottom foot. Sanding. Filling. Resanding. Painting. Sanding. Painting. I love it. Not many will see it. It will be overshadowed by displayed books and paintings. When I move them to do the work, it will be ready. It will feel the weight of wood and canvas. The pinch of clamps and the splattering of unintentional paint. And I will feel special, because I get to know. Not this arrogance of “Oh, I know!” — but it’s what I had been shown, had been living in — the privilege of getting to know, being involved in the truth of the experience. I got to know them… I had the joy, the work, the breathless chasing, the tender tears, the heart in lap resting love of knowing them.
I won’t photograph the table. But I will stand in its certainty.
She stood in front of the original painting. Tracing the movement from the woman’s feet to her hand. “She’s so light,” she said, “it’s like she’s being lifted.” I smiled and replied “That’s actually the name of the piece — Being Lifted.” Her pleasure doubled. It was not only the view, but that she could see it.
And isn’t it always the way. It’s what we bring to the situation. How we want to see things.
Knowing her, I’m aware of the weight she is wanting to release. And the fact that she can see it, right there in front of her, I know that she will.
It’s why I painted her in the first place. This release. This letting go. I suppose I’ve always wanted it. Ever since I swam out to the diving board on Lake Latoka, I have yearned to fly. Since I felt the weightlessness of springing from the board. The wind in my feathers. My momentary wings. They carry me still.
It’s why I stand before her each night, the woman in the painting. Because I see her. And I know, when morning comes, one way or another, I am going to fly.
“I meant no, but it came out yes.” — This was the first card in which my mother appeared. And then she began popping up with great frequency. “There are no operators standing by…” And of course, “I was so tired yesterday, I could hardly think — thank God I was at work.” Certainly the entire poem of “I saw the truth about you…” (because I did). And “Hit by a train…” (because she was). And she wore it like a badge of courage, a badge of grace. My greatest thrill was to watch her at an event, when someone would pick up a card, or print and say, “this is so me!” And she would clutch her imaginary pearls and say, “Well, actually…”
There’s only one way to the canvas or page, and that’s through my heart. Dominique stood in front of the portrait and said, “I feel like I know her…” And I had to smile, because surely he did, somehow. Certainly there are traces of all of his (now our) family, and friends, that pump through my veins. Love cannot unsee. And it can never stop growing, as it picks up the pieces of each other again and again.
Starting the new painting yesterday, I had to stop and smile, because I could see who was coming.
So if from time to time you see yourself here, then know that you too have been seen. You may clutch your pearls and say, “Well, actually… I have been loved.”
I’m not living in the country where I was born. Nor the “old country” that my grandparents frequently referenced. Of course they never called it by name, so I can’t be certain. Maybe farm tables knew. Or those that sat around them. (They absorbed so much.) And my young ears were eager to do the same. So I pressed my open face against all those tabled thoughts. Those directions. That knowledge of what was and what could be.
The wood whispered Uncle Wally’s stutter. Aunt Ellen’s worry. And captured some of my own thoughts, like why I didn’t call them “Great.” (I simply clumped them all into aunts and uncles.) Perhaps I was as unassuming as that table, soaking it all in too.
Like cracked wood I held on deeply. Suzan’s dream of becoming a movie star, or at least cleaning their pools. Cousin Chris wanting to be a Viking. The asthmatic breaths of Shawn and Pat. And would the weight of Aunt Kay’s husbands collapse the legs that I sturdied between my feet and beneath my head? And could I make it out the screen door, down the gravel driveway, past the fields, onto highways, into skies, all while the same?
Have they all become my “old country?” I wipe the lavender honey from our French breakfast table, being sure not to knock away the whispers.
At first glance, you may have thought her superpowers came from her clothes. But I was witness “after the phone booth.”
I stared at the gravel road, waiting for her to come home from work. First came the puffs of gravel from Van Dyke Road. Then I could see her car. The blinker. And every schoolyard worry exhaled from my elementary body, as she pulled into the driveway. Her skirt and blouse were wrinkle free, just as she had left at 7am that morning. Not a scuff on her shoes as she sat on the side of her bed and placed them back in the box. She took off her run-free pantyhose. Washed them in the sink. Hung her clothes back in the closet. Sweeping down one last time, not to dewrinkle, but more I thought, in thanks of a day well served.
Donned now in her house clothes, her posture never changed. Shoulders back. Head high. Her size 10’s seem to glide across the kitchen floor. “You could be a dancer on the Lawrence Welk show,” I praised. She leaned into her smile and started dinner.
In my newest painting, I’m trying to convey the elegance. You might wonder when you see the curve of her hand, or the strength of her neck, how she could be in a simple house dress. But I know where she came from. I have witnessed the puff of smoke she rose through and above. The canvas is big. I have to stand. To reach. And I know it is the praise she deserves. I raise my chin. I raise my brush. And continue.
I recently started a large canvas. The difference between this and a small one? Patience. There are no quick scrolls to the details. The juicy parts. The larger work must be complete. But isn’t that what I also love? Sure. I have to remind myself, but it is true. I liken it to reading an excellent book. You know the kind. Where the characters are living in your soul. Words that keep you fighting through nightime’s blinking eyes, and doing the dance between the urgency of your brain that wants to see how it ends and your heart that never wants it to…. It is the glorious and deliciously painful anticipation of falling in love with the canvas. Why would I ever want to rush that? So, patience…
Certainly we are given lesson upon lesson. I don’t imagine it was my first, but it was early on. Waiting for my grandma in constant conversation in the aisles of Jerry’s Jack and Jill. Cart by cart, she spoke to everyone. We’d just finish one exchange, and I’d think, hope, that we’d make it around to the next aisle, but then there, by the beef, or the boxed cereal, it would begin, “Oh, Elsie…” and we’d be locked in for another five to ten minutes. I’d like to think I was patient at first. Even accommodating. But I’m not sure it was very long before my shoulders started to droop. Before my head tilted backwards, as if my neck were no longer able to support it. My hand hanging on to the silver chariot, willing me to drag along.
And I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t say why. Wasn’t the point to just be with her? I see it now. Caught up now in the whirl and twirl and scroll of it all, I simply want to slow it down. To love slowly. With attention and intent. To maneuver the days at the pace of Jerry’s Jack and Jill.
I don’t always get it right. So I lesson myself again. I stand in front of the large canvas. I pick up my slow paintbrush, and hear the words, “Oh, Elsie…”
It seems when I know you, really know, you become a verb.
To make my favorite cookies, I have to Grandma Elsie my way through the recipe. We don’t have brown sugar here in France, so I make it by adding an undisclosed (even to myself) amount of molasses. If it seems like a lot, I add more flour, or adjust the butter, all by heart and eye, just like she did. Never measuring anything with hand, only taste.
It was my mother who verbed her first. If I fell asleep in a chair, she would say I was “Pulling an Elsie.” And the comparison brought only delight.
It’s funny how we are adjective driven. (And who doesn’t want to be pretty?) But I think the real admiration, the love, comes in finding the acts of the person. Because love is active. In constant motion. And to get pulled into the verb of it all, well that’s a dance!
My friend Loie is a dancer. My Grandma Elsie baked. When I saw the two paintings together, their worlds collided. Nothing similar but the love. So today, when I “Loie” myself around the studio, or “Grandma Elsie” my way through the kitchen, I will know that I am returning the love that I have been so joyfully given.
