I suppose we set ourselves up for it, the scrutiny, wearing berets and earth shoes in the high school band in Minnesota. I mean, I’m sure we would have heard the snickers just for being in the band alone, but somehow, we found ourselves immune to the mockery. Maybe we were off balance in those backwards leaning shoes, but we embraced it. Even the complicated unmemorized sheet music was no match for our confidence. When all else failed, clarinet in hand, I would simply trill (the rapid alteration between two notes). The music sang from my feet through my beret. And I guess it came from our leader, Christy, (no mister needed). After all, he said, it was music, it was supposed to be fun!
I never dreamed then, in the stale smell of gymnasium sweat, feet sticking to bleacher floor, that I would one day find myself living in France. And, just like then, I suppose, I set myself up daily for the scrutiny, simply by opening my mouth. Some days are harder than others, but I lean back into my shoes and feel the music. You can make fun of my accent, or my height, or my country of origin, but I won’t hear you over the trill!
I’ve started a new project. Each time I do, there are always things to be learned. Computer programs change so quickly. The paths to incorporate my artwork from page to printer are constantly changing course. And armed with my mother’s sense of direction, (she who thought the map at the mall should be on the ground so you could just step into it), I can’t say that I find my way quickly, but joyfully, I always find my way. I suppose it’s because I’m never traveling alone.
My first step was to get photos of all the new images. I was stumbling about. Turning pages. Checking lighting. It all felt so clunky. And then I got the tap on my brain’s shoulder that said, “get the sticky notes.” It was my friend Deb who gave me the little notebook of multi-colored tabs. We first used them to mark our favorite outfits in the Sundance catalog, sipping lattes, and reading the cover letter from Robert Redford, as if he had addressed it to us personally. We had colors to mark “maybe,” “yes,” and “why am I not wearing it right now.” Hours of entertainment with just a stick of a color.
Smiling, I used those notes to mark the pages of my artwork. It all began to make sense. I found my direction. Even using the new programs on my computer became easier.
I keep moving forward, but not without those who got me here.
There’s an expression that people use when someone dies that I’ve never liked — “She’s no longer with us.” It couldn’t be further from the truth. While the Sundance store has closed, my friend Deb sits right beside me. And I am saved.
I suppose the closest thing we had to an “influencer” when I was in college was the purchasing of a used book highlighted in bright yellow. Being on a tight budget, I was often subjected to what the previous student deemed important. Perhaps it was defiance, or simply making my own path, but armed with my own highlighter, pink, orange, anything other than yellow, I colored over and in my deepest connections to the word. By the time the next student, spending their last dime to earn an education, opened the textbook, it would have been completely highlighted. Just as it should be, I thought, because wasn’t it all important! Every word a path lit fluorescent.
And I think that’s our real responsibility, not to push or “influence,” but offer a light.
I’m reading a new book, This is Happiness, by Niall Williams. I’ve only just begun, but I am deep in the journey. This author demands that each word be walked carefully, like Hugo’s precious field behind our house on Van Dyke Road. No trampling through. Respectful of all that the ground had to yield, before and yet to come. With each paragraph, the golden crop brushes against my chubby thighs, leaving the safety of house toward the excitement of town. Tiptoeing out of youth, with its remains gathering in my shoes.
I suppose I am a highlighter of word, and memory, and heart. Because isn’t it all important? Isn’t it all important!! I walk the new morning. The gravel in my shoes answers a bright and glorious YES!
When I first understood that my Grandma had a name other than Grandma, I thought it was O’Elsie. Because that’s what I always heard. From my Grandpa’s mouth, the ladies at the kitchen table, or the faceless voices on the party line. What I came to learn was that they were all saying, “Oh, Elsie…” And always as a term of endearment. When she would make them laugh out loud. When she touched them with her kindness. When she surprised them (especially my grandpa) with a rootbeer float or a basement full of chinchillas. And it came to be my measurement for living, this need combine with the heart’s emission of simply – Oh!
I don’t want to live timidly. And I’m not talking about shock. To shock is simple. To wow is devine. Oh, and wasn’t she so! My Grandma Elsie.
I hear the birds singing from the morning window and I think, “Oh, it’s going to be a lovely day.” And my heart smiles.
It’s not that I assumed the garage doors had the sense of the birds, but it is made evident whenever the wind blows. (I suppose that’s when the truth of us is revealed.) And, oh, they’re built solid, these blocks of wood and iron, but never a match against the wind. Every time – it’s BANG! BANG! They beat against the garage, thrown from side to side. Always fighting it. Always losing. But then the birds, in that same wind, barely more than air themselves, they seem to dance. Each wing flaps with lessons learned, and risen above.
I’m not proud of it, but I have done my share of banging. Trying to fight off the new storm with all of my wooden might. But I’m learning. And learning again. What used to blow through me, now gives me wings.
I’m not sure where heaven begins. How high up it actually is… but when I saw the mannequins on the fifth floor of this New York walk up in the fashion district, I thought perhaps, for my mother, it starts right here.
You could say she loved clothes, but that’s not the complete story. She loved fashion. What’s the difference? I would equate it to the comparison of house and home. Fashion is about the design. The putting together. Accessorizing. For her it was not about what she was wearing, but how she wore it.
Certainly no one mistook it for the promised land — the Woolworth’s on Broadway in Alexandria, Minnesota — but when I watched her thumbing through the Butterick patterns, or the McCall’s, on Saturday mornings, when I watched the dream come alive as she swooped her hands from waist to knees, stretched her arms out in the make believe dress, for me I was certain I was in the presence of an angel.
It had always been her dream to be a dress designer. I imagine her now, so easily she bypasses the stairs and floats her way to the upper floor. How joyfully she passes on her heart and knowledge to the young people amid the mannequins awaiting. How she drapes and flows. So elegant. So possible. And they can feel it. Beyond their pin pricked fingers and weary eyes, they are Woolworthed into her sense of magic. And it’s Saturday morning, every day. And they dare to dream because of her. Just like me.
Certainly with nine children, countless grandchildren and a farm, my grandma’s days were filled with purpose. People needed to be fed. Dishes cleaned. Clothes washed. Apples needed to be picked, along with garden weeds. Fruit canned. And the listening was never ending, neighbors, Hortons, party line, Paul Harvey, and the farm report. But somehow, within the din of activity, if you sheepishly whispered that you wanted to place dice, or cards, she wiped her hands briskly on her apron, shoved the Publisher’s Clearing House magazines from the table and sat down to beat you at any requested game with a girlish giggle, because she said, “Some things are just for fun.”
Yesterday was a full day. Two appointments. Two cities. And the usual “Elsie like tasks.” By 5pm, there wasn’t a lot of time to create something of great detail, like a portrait, but there was a little time. Enough time. So I took the decision to take the time, and have a bit of fun. It was only a tiny bird. A tiny French bird. The stripes of its snug t-shirt stretching over an “Elsie” belly made me laugh. Because it’s still supposed to be fun. The noises can be overwhelming, but so can the joy. And it’s usually just a hand wipe away.
Before school started, when days were measured in the shaded pink of shoulders, or the sand in shoes, I was friends with the neighbor boy down the road. Armed with only curiosity and imagination, we could spend the length of our day on a dirt pile. He could climb a tree, and more importantly, wanted to. And ever left a leg hanging low for me to climb like a ladder to the nearest branch. (Still my definition of friendship.)
It was only for a few summers before he moved away. But the percentage of that time was nearly the whole of my life. Maybe summers will always seem that way. I hope so. To live in the season of growth, the season of “I wonder if we could fly from there,” is perhaps what carries all of us through the winter.
Sometimes I feel my age, and then I empty my socks and my shoes of the day’s collective rubble, and I think, I know, my heart’s summer will never end.
I like to light candles when I get up. This morning’s illumination put up a fight. The first two matches burned themselves out so quickly, I had to abandon them to save my fingers. Next the wick broke off. Then again. By the fourth match I had to laugh, remembering this is exactly why I never volunteered to be an acolyte at Bethesda Lutheran, and was always more than relieved when Gail Kiltie raised her hand. What’s ironic, the very thing I feared and tried to avoid — their judgement — would eventually come to pass anyway the minute my mother got divorced and we were not pushed out the door, but conveniently shown where it was while being held open.
I don’t know what they expected the lesson to be (that’s the thing, we get to choose that). My take away — people are going to think what they think, do what they do, without your knowledge or permission. And you can decide whether you are going to blow around in all that wind, or simply fly. (I think the birds on the page, tell you what I did. What I do.)
I haven’t thought about them in years. I have no ill will. For didn’t they give me wings? And my faith is strong. My house and heart are well lit. I release myself into the morning flutter.
There’s not a lot of glory in the underpainting, but without it, there really is nothing. Time must be spent to prepare the canvas or panel. Gessoing. Sanding. Long before you get to the “garden.” And oh, how eager I am to jump to the flowers. But I take my time. I paint the shadow of black (one can’t go back later and expect to paint it in). Then the layering of stems and leaves. Creating depth. Perspective (that so often elusive perspective). Once I have put in the time, only then can I delight in the flowers. And having spent the time, oh what a delight they are!!!!! As if they bloom just for me.
It’s hard to remember this in the daily rush of things. The furious speed to get over, get beyond, to get through. But when I’m lucky, (which simply means when I’m paying attention), it’s my hands that remind my heart that tell my brain, “It’s only underpainting…the flowers are yet to come!”
I know the furious speed at which you are trying to get over and around. I have traveled that wind and hung on for dear life. But the dear life I found came only in the quiet slowing down. The letting go. No longer rushing to get past, but easing my way through. And the peace. Smiled. Knowing it had always been there, as I whirled. Peace, sitting quietly next to joy, and hope, and OK now. There, there.
