Maybe nature knows, how the gifts are only borrowed. From nest to song, how it’s all impermanent. We’re given everything we need between sky and tree, but it has always been for the sharing. We were meant to live in the birdsong.
I think all creative ideas (and I’m including love here, perhaps topping the list) are like dandelion seeds floating on a summer breeze, with the bravest of barefoot children chasing them, stretching to pluck them from the blue, knowing if they don’t, there are countless chubby legs running behind and beside, willing to make the journey. And just as the summer child borrows the fleeting day, I gather the words and the paint, into the shape of love, and hope and try and pray it makes it to the next season.
Painting in a new room yesterday, brush in hand, I sang along with each stroke, the Christmas songs so generously lent to me, to us, each year. Within the music, somewhere on the canvas, I am suspended in time, in the gift of the moment. No doors of advent are opening. No rushing toward the next. I’m catch myself in the song of the bird, in a moment of happiness, and I find myself in the most wonderous gift of all. I know I won’t keep the painting. It must be shared. Chubby summer legs will be waiting.
In the “Age of Innocence,” (if there were ever a time), they used to say, “I didn’t think they’d try it on,” meaning, I didn’t think they’d have the guts to do it. Some may have said that about my mother, but not me.
I’m not sure she ever really knew how brave she was. I know she wanted to be. I guess I knew first, because my grandfather told me. Standing in the kitchen, opposite the sink – grandma in elbow deep – in front of the window that framed the stripped and hanging cow from the tree, he told me I could turn in, or turn out. That I could armored like my Aunt Kay, or be open like my mother. He didn’t mark either as good or bad, both would be difficult, it was just a choice. My mother returned from the other room. Broken, she had the guts to still be ruffled in white. I had already made my choice. To be wounded, but still believe in love, I would ever be “trying it on.”
It was years later, I relayed his message to her. She hadn’t known that he saw her. It wasn’t the way. I suppose it was thought, “Well, it goes without saying…” but mostly I think that means it simply goes unsaid. I can’t let it be one of those times. Ever ruffled in ruffles, I come to the page, to the canvas, to you, wide open, daily. And on those days when you think you don’t have the strength, the courage, the will, you will think of these words, these images, see my mother’s face and heart, and you will find yourself “trying it on.”
II don’t get them often, but I found a cure that works for me when I have the hiccups. It is simply to relax every part of my body. Exhaling from head to toe. Whatever it is that’s causing the jolt seems to disappear in the softening.
It makes sense though. For me. Most of my worries, my so-called hiccups in life, are released the same way. Not with the violence of breath holding, or other extravagant scare tactics, but simply releasing. Letting go. It always takes me a minute to get there. Oh, I can let myself be jolted around like everyone else. But I find my way. Softly. Relaxing my face, I feel it fall, the fear, tumbling down my shoulders, stumbling over elbows and knees and finally wiggled from toes. Free.
Then there is room to just be. It’s the calm, I suppose, that welcomes in the comfort. Even comfort doesn’t want to enter a house a chaos. It comes in the softening.
I painted her as a reminder. I see her and I drop my cheeks, my shoulders, exhale from head to toe. And begin again. Softly.
It’s so easy to tell when I’m painting — when it’s time for help. I know when my brushes have given all they can. When the tiny hairs wander, grasping for anything. It doesn’t take long to notice. And I don’t make them or myself struggle. I get the assistance of new brushes.
I welcome them with a brush across my face, the palm of my opposite hand. And it certainly doesn’t make me feel weak. Quite the opposite. Empowered. With their assistance, who knows what I, we, can accomplish! What I, we, can become!
Oh, that I would be so open to this help in my daily life. I’m trying to get better. To ask for help when I need it. Asking for help isn’t giving up, it’s refusing to give up. I wouldn’t abandon my canvas. Neither will I abandon my heart or body.
Brush in hand and grace in heart, please let me be open to it all.
Perhaps if you were to call it an eggplant, you wouldn’t give it such a frame. But l’aubergine, yes, an aubergine could hold its own, and perhaps even more, be the one not supported by, but wearing the frame.
Hearing my name called now, it comes with a French accent, an English one, even German…so isn’t it funny that I always hear my mother’s voice. The familiar long o, so long it sometimes didn’t even have room for the i at the end, it simply wrapped itself around and ended with the d. Framing my heart, not just with love, but with a responsibility. In that drawn out o, I knew I was to keep becoming.
I try every day. Offering up the words and the art. Would she find it worthy of how she framed me? The light in which she wanted me to be seen. My mother. I hope so. I think so. I keep trying. Because didn’t she bat away the ordinary? Try to clear the path? Shrug off and roll her eyes at purple? Yes, yes, yes…Joyfully, I was led to believe that I was aubergine.
People polished shoes then, back when my mom bought my first pair. I thought they were so beautiful. The white against the black. Crisp and clean. I looked up at the salesman from Iverson’s Shoes. He could see that I wanted them to stay that way. Scared even to take my right foot down from the angled bench to touch the floor. Worried that his hands were clean as he checked the space for my big toe. Did I want to know how to keep them just like this, he asked. Yes, yes, of course, I shook my head. He stood from his bench and walked to the stand by the register. He pulled out a black polish and a white polish. I knew the shoes were already over our budget, but oh how I wanted that polish. I looked up at my mother, she waved the polish in. I let out a sigh of relief. What care I would take of these beautiful shoes!
I stepped gingerly onto the bus that next day of school. Raised my knees so only the tips of my toes touched that tainted bus floor. I crossed my legs in each classroom. Watching the white and black dangle, almost dance beneath my knee. I placed them gently in my locker for gym class. Kept two steps behind anyone in the halls. Three days they lasted. Three glorious days of the certainty of black and white. It was on the busride home when I got distracted. Sitting behind me, she asked if I had the homework from social studies. I did. I turned in my seat to hand it to her. Leaving my left foot exposed, when Steve Brolin trampled down the aisle onto my whitest of white, leaving a brown skid mark from toe to saddle.
I don’t remember breathing on the rest of that bus ride home. All I wanted was my mom. I wanted to apologize. I should have paid attention. I wanted her to fix it. Couldn’t she fix it? We could fix it. I sat by the back door of the house. Pleading for her to come home from work. Pleading for time to pass. Inching closer to the door, as if to make it happen.
I had never polished shoes before. I held the Iverson’s bag in one hand and the shoe in my other. My “Please mom…” had changed to just “please…” The second hand of the kitchen clock finally cooperated and I heard the garage door rise.
Somehow she deciphered through the tears and hiccups what needed to be done. She put newspaper on the kitchen table. Wiped my face with a tissue. Together we read the instructions. The first swipe didn’t cover it. I breathed in worry. Swiped again. I don’t know how many times we polished that shoe during the evening, she during the night. But I do know that when I woke up, her left hand was in my shoe, her right hand buffing with a brush. She smiled as she held them out. Brand new, she said. Brand new, I agreed.
I haven’t thought of them in years. Then I saw them on the cover of the Paris Review. It sits on my desk as a reminder. Just beside the picture of my mom. Scuffed and weary from yesterday’s challenge, I smile and greet the day, I’m brand new! I’m brand new.
I brought this painting with me to France. I sold it, and it’s now somewhere in Germany. It makes me smile to think of its travels. It was just a humble image of my nightstand in Hopkins, Minnesota. My cup. The latte I poured inside, purchased from the Caribou I could see from my window. The walk I could take in sunshine, rain, or snow. My clock radio that said good morning. Said just sit here for a minute and be. That guarded my books. Whispered good night. That I painted at a resting 11:11, the sign of all things open. Ever carried in my heart.
I also brought that clock radio to France. I used the adapter to plug it in. It turns out I handled the culture shock much better. It burned itself up immediately. The words have nearly worn from the cup. But you’d be wrong to say I have none of it. I pause and tell you that I have it all.
I suppose it’s the way with everything. With everyone. I painted the image after my grandma’s passing. A small empty building — “What remains, may only be in the heart.” I don’t have that painting either. But oh, I have the night. My mom was with me. My friends. We were at Toast in downtown Minneapolis. The dancer from “So You Think You Can Dance,” came to meet me. Me! Imagine that. Dancing toward the woman standing in front of that painting, my mom told her that it was her favorite. The woman had tears in her eyes, clutching her heart, and said she had to have it. “Oh, no…” my mother replied. She loved when I sold a painting, but hated to say goodbye. It was one magical evening of a lifetime. So think of all that the heart can carry.
Love never dies. It pauses in that tiny place of your heart, and fills it. And remains forever. Typing this in front of my grandfather’s portrait, I can hear him say that he’s heard this before. Not in a way that he doesn’t want to hear it again, but that he’ll be here, listening, tomorrow, and the day after that, paused in love.
To be clear, my mind often wandered and wondered. Maybe that’s why when the clues came, they did so in the brightest of reds to get my attention.
Standing on the wood gymnasium floor, not really feeling the need to disappear, after all, what was to notice? My no brand tennis shoes? My misshapen JCPenney gym uniform? My unsettled hair, still damp from the morning shower? And yet, when I wondered, as I mentioned I often did, whether I was lovable or not, whether the blurred red tailgate of my father’s truck had left forever, whether these boys, these near men in our combined gym class once a week, would imagine my hair blown dry and curled, my heels lifted off the ground, whether they could ask me on a date, and love me with no thought of trucks, or tire tracks or leaving of any kind — red was the answer that came racing for me, in the form of a big Cardinal on his gym sweats, holding a red leather ball to be hurled and smack the wonder out of my soon to be reddened face, with the answer NO.
I don’t know when I took back the color. Gave myself a new answer. But I did. It’s funny how the same place you can be lost, is exactly where you can be found.
Would I have done it, if I hadn’t seen my mother do the same? Place her red badge of courage on rubied lips behind her own YES? Behind the yes of worth and joy and love. I’ll never have to wonder about that.
I put out a little bowl of red candies in front of her Christmas photo. She stands in front of giant red-bowed lion and wrapped gift in front of the Art Institute in Chicago. And in this season, I am reminded the greatest gift of all, may be to simply start with yes.
I don’t know who she’s looking at, but I do know that person is loved.
I used to enjoy going to the airport. That may sound crazy. It was so long ago, I can hardly believe it myself. There was a humanity at the gate. (Days when people could actually meet you at the gate.) Even when they weren’t waiting for me, it was nice to see it – the proof in the welcoming. How the faces changed when they caught the first glimpse of the ones they loved (and you had to love someone to do the airport run, it was still the airport after all.) It was the softest excitement. The pure energy of an embrace. A joyful safety that sounded in the unrung bells of “I’m so happy you’re here.”
We can still do that you know. Not at the airport, but in the car. Across the table. On sidewalks and shopping centers. In the mirror. At all of our gates — gates of joy and sorrow, fear and hope. To welcome each other with a joyful ease. We all want that, don’t we?
So I ask myself, is this what I want written across my face? Is this the first thing I want people to see of me? Each moment is a choice. A new gate. Let me greet it with care. The sun is coming up. I smile to the world…and myself…and say, “you’re here.”
When you love something, you want to share it. In my youth, I used to think that meant that the other person not only had to love it, but love it for the same reasons. Childish, I know, but I’d like to think I’ve gotten better, more secure. It is more than enough to simply love.
I enjoy making Christmas cookies. Thanks to a childhood friend, I have one cutter in the shape of Minnesota. Of course no one here in France knows what it is, but the shape of my home state is just as delicious as the Christmas tree, or the star, and they enjoy it. Sometimes I watch. I smile when I think, oh, my husband just took a bite of Duluth, and that same shape that rests in my heart, without his knowledge or permission, is colored in the morning blue of a fresh snow, and is silently full.
Is that what love has always been? If so, what a relief to know it is in the giving that we become filled. Oh, the stress of waiting and wanting to receive… So I offer my love, in all the shapes and colors I know, and find myself with more than I ever could have asked for. And I am saved.
