When I think about the countless times I have sung exuberantly into my own fist, (reaching those certainly standing in the back row), it’s not really a stretch that I would put a bird into a French outfit and give him a microphone.
Who is to say what is your Grammy, what is your Louvre? The other day a young woman recognized my painting of her grandpa out of a sea of Tik Tok photos, and I was hung beside the greatest in Paris. These lives we’re creating are limitless.
When I first met our neighbor she asked if I was a singer. Without hesitation I said yes. Don’t I sing all the time? It never occurred to me that she meant professionally. (Whatever that means.) After getting to know each other, it became clear to her that I wasn’t a “singer,” but someone who sang. I shrugged and held up my fisted microphone for her to join in. Now she is a singer too.
When asked what they would like their super power to be, most people will say they would love to fly. The closest I’ve found is to let myself become —become a baker, a poet, a singer, a lover, a painter. While I sit in front of the canvas, fueled by homemade bread and the song that is playing, the bird appears and I am all of these, and I begin to fly.
It was almost a relief after the first scratch. Oh, the pressure of white tennies from Iverson’s shoes. I tiptoed from bus to class to preserve. And then maybe one day, guard down, laughing over a passed note from the back seat, leaning over a nothing that could be funnier, blocking the aisle of the bus, someone less interested in the joke and more concerned about getting off, stepped through the glee onto my new shoe and marked it with a rub of black urgency. Once the shock wore off, so did the pressure, and the outside rain no longer seemed a challenge.
When I hopped from the final step onto Van Dyke Road, I could see them — all the puddles that gravel will allow. Grownups complained, why wasn’t it paved already. But in this land of 10,000 lakes, our sweet dirt road added more than a few extra. And didn’t the name itself sound like an invitation — puddle…. And so I did, I puddled my way up the drive.
Not to be outdone, my socks were as wet as my shoes as I stripped my feet in the garage entry. There was a small line strung from the ceiling to hang the well traveled. I walked from the outlines of my damp bubble toes on the cement, and went victorious into the house.
I’m reading Gertrude Stein. She writes, “ You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle. ” I know I was brave on Van Dyke Road. I must be braver still. We all must be. This current murk that we find ourselves in, more than a puddle for sure, we must brave our way through. Daily. The moral compass is strong. It calls to the heart well traveled, “Come.”
It wasn’t until university that I studied the Renaissance. And to be more accurate, we studied the Renaissance Man. I cringe at that now. Not only because we only studied men, but because we didn’t question it. I didn’t question it. And this being my first year at a liberal arts college, in the midst of fulfilling the requirements, taking science and math and English and art history, wasn’t I actually living it? And not having come from a generation of “you can be anything you want,” it might be surprising to think that somehow I still saw the possibilities. I still believed in them.
I didn’t have the words for it then, but I hear them now. Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us, “Most humans who could ever exist, never will. And so the fact you exist at all, is against stupefying odds of who gets born and who does not. Realizing this, you are you. I am me. We are alive. We get to die. And to get to die means you get to live. Any moment you spend squandering those moments you are alive, does disrespect to all those who will never even be born.”
I suppose it’s within this respect that I eat the bread that I made for breakfast. I play fashion show in the garden. I put together the weed wacker in the garage. I paint a bird in my studio while listening to music. I write a story. I read a book. This won’t get me studied in Ivy League universities. (But if you know me, you know the “Ivy League I admire most anyway.) I’m not even sure that it makes me interesting, but it does keep me interested, and that’s the most important thing. I am interested in still learning. In becoming. In not disrespecting all of those that got me here. In not “squandering” my moments. I am here. We are here! We get to be alive. I still see all the possibilities.
I brought her outside to varnish her. The light was spectacular. She took on the warmth of all her surroundings. (Is that what love can do?) Even having given her those colors by my own hand, I felt like I was seeing them for the first time. This morning, when I opened my computer, it was the first photo that came up. As all of technology does now, it gave the location, but not by city or address, it simply said “Home.”
Because that is the truth. It’s never really about the street or city, it is the feeling. This place where my heart can rest and my mind can wander — both in this glorious light, this truth of being who I am. This place that is no longer about getting there, but becoming in… daily. That is a warmth that only home can bring. (And maybe that’s just love by another name.) I don’t need my computer to tell me that, I’ve already taken on the light.
Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.
Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.
People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.
It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.
The French have an expression when someone passes away — “casser sa pipe” (to break your pipe). I only learned of this two days ago at a funeral. But somehow, my heart, not driven by language, already knew. The two portraits I painted of my pipe-smoking grandfather both have his pockets full — his pipe always in reach.
That’s the question I guess, is “how do we keep our loved ones alive?” And the answer lies directly in the question itself — love. I speak to my grandfather daily. My grandma. My mom. Nothing is broken. The love remains, so the heart’s conversation continues.
When you know someone, really know them with all of your heart, you can keep them present tense, keep their pockets filled with the love that you still have to give — a love always within reach.
She said, “I’ll take that in mauve,” as if I had stock of my mother’s birthday present that hung on the wall, and in different colors. I looked at my mom to see if I actually could sell the poem that I wrote for her birthday, the poem that painted her picture in every word, line and phrase. She clapped her hands in front of her smile, and would have been the first to carry it to the woman’s restaurant had it been ready.
We never looked back.
Maybe it was the approval, the validation in the sale. But it seemed more to be the pure joy of stepping into our lives. Finding the doors and walking through. No longer looking for permission, but offering it up to those behind.
The woman who owned the beautiful new coffee/bagel/restaurant in town, covered her walls in my images, right down to the “lipstick woman” in her bathroom. For years my mom would get the random call, “I’m in the bathroom at Time Square.” The first time was alarming, but it brought years of laughter, and even friendships were formed from that image.
I saw people reminiscing about the place yesterday online. The tagline read, “for people on the go.” And weren’t we all…on the go…becoming. I think we still are. Still standing in front of doors, wondering, do we take the chance, (still feeling those that have closed), but pushed forward by the joy of the time we were mauve. The time we dared, and kept daring. And believed. And believed again. This is the time, once again.
Running feral as I did, from sun up to sun down, on the equally untamed gravel of Van Dyke Road, it’s counterintuitive, (and yet true), to believe that I never wanted to get dirty. Of course dust gathered on my once-only-white gym socks, creating a permanent outline of my bumper tennis shoes. This was unavoidable. But I mean really dirty, purposefully dirty, like when the Norton girl added more water to yesterday’s rain soaked garden and scooped the mud by hand into discarded EasyBake oven tins scattered in their back yard. “The horror!” I exclaimed to my mother, “Mud pies!” She, being ever crisp in her white blouses, understood completely, as she tried to rub out the wayward splatters on my shorts and t-shirt.
I still find a way to run wild, mostly on canvas now. I have specific clothes just for that. Yesterday, in the studio, K.D. Lang was singing along with each stroke. It wasn’t lost on me that I noticed the brown oil on my sleeve as she sang, “Wash, wash me clean. Mend my wounded seams.” And isn’t that what love does? Accepts us. Gathers us, in all of our commonalities, all of our discrepancies, washes us clean.Maybe this is what allows me to dare the palette. To navigate this beautiful mess we’re in.
She left them in my care. Her most crisp and white. It’s healing for me. Tending, wearing, my mother’s blouses. It mends my wounded seam, and keeps her near, through wayward splatters.
I had read my way through the Golden Books on the bottom shelf, and was advancing to the next level of Olson’s Super Market book section. No longer crouched on my knees, I immediately felt more grown up as I reached at heart’s height and arm’s length. This selection went beyond the stories of Snow White and leaned into the more complex tales of Rose Red (her less famous sister.) I had to sound out the larger titles. Pan – do – ra’s Box. My mother was filling the cart from the generic sections of the aisles when I tugged at her blouse, trying to get her to explain. She put the book in the safety of the child area of the cart. As I whined for brands like Chef Boyardee, she pointed to the book, and I was more than willing to make the sacrifice.
The man in the store apron carried the bags to the car and placed them in the back seat of our Chevy Impala. My chubby thighs stuck to the seat on the drive home. No seat belt required, I easily grabbed the book from the rear before we reached Van Dyke Road.
“I don’t get it,” I said as my mother came back for the second paper sack in the driveway. “Read it again,” she said. I did, and one more time on the front steps. Still puzzled, I took it in the kitchen. “I thought curiosity was a good thing…” I said. “It is,” she said. What else could she say? Hadn’t we dreamed a life beyond this gravel on countless Sunday afternoons? Hadn’t we continued to dare things like love and hope? I could see her going through the list in her head as she reached opened each cupboard. She could see me outlining my own heart in worry. That box had long been opened. “You go ahead and Pandora all you want,” she said.
Maybe I never did get the meaning. Maybe I jumped too quickly to the second shelf. I still do that. Nothing comes without risk. But the greatest experiences I have ever had have come from taking the chance. Of course problems come along with it, but the rewards… well beyond heart level.
Maya Angelou wrote, “Curiosity wants to behold, to comprehend, maybe even to become.” And isn’t that what I, we, want — to keep becoming. I fling open the morning window and lean into the possibility of maybe even me.
I finished the book Pachinko yesterday. When I went for my walk in the afternoon, I started listening to a podcast about the World Creative Director of Disney. He began the interview by saying that if you have read the book Pachinko, you would understand his history. (Sometimes the universe is quite obvious in letting you know you’re on the right path.) There was no one else around, so I smiled to the birds in the sky, thinking surely they, too, must feel a part of it all.
I don’t know that I really believe in coincidence. I think the more we put ourselves out there, the more vulnerable we are, the more we connect. All of this knowledge, this exposure to others, to books, and art, and music and science and creation — perhaps these are the feathers that lift us. The wings that give us a better view.
It was a joyful walk. It seemed to pass more quickly than usual. I remember smiling, but I don’t recall the ground beneath my feet.
