I sent my friend the picture of this newest bird. Still fresh from my hands, she traveled across the globe to gather in the best compliment. Her reply was, “She’s a fancy bird. Very Ivy-like.” And my heart is still beaming.
I had promised my grandmother that on my best of days, my very best, they would see her, and they would see her daughter. And I don’t always get it right — even in my “best” attempts, but I keep trying. And when you call it out by name, call them out by name, it is all the love that shines.
And isn’t that the best we can do, wear the pearls that we were given? The pearls of wisdom and strength. Of laughter and joy. Of survival and grace and courage. When we give it all a name, we have a responsibility, to witness and uphold. To generate and pass along. And with that, those very pearls are given wings. And I feel the fancy flutter about and I think, I know, how very Ivy-like indeed.
It’s not like I forget that I’m in France, but sometimes, I’m more reminded than others. Yesterday, sitting in on Dominique’s appointment, for a good five to ten minutes, I listened to him and his doctor talk about their extraordinary love of cheese. It was quite obvious I was no longer in Minnesota.
I suppose it was at that moment that the bird in my brain took flight.
If we’re lucky, we’re told quite often in our younger years that “you could be anything.” But maybe not so much with the “anywhere.” Perhaps that stems from the human fear of “others.” But I’ve never been sure why that’s so frightening. Because it’s only in the labeling of them being other that we in fact become one.
And as my bird fluttered above all things cheese, I thought, I really like butter. I wondered if they could hear the laughter in my head above the flapping.
Looking for a free page in my sketchbook, I came across the bird in flight that I had sketched in pencil. It could have been anyone’s dream, but it was hers. I don’t have to know her story, to celebrate the fact that she has a story. Be it butter or cheese, I just had to see her. See the hope disguised as the glint of light that reflects from the used-to-be tear. See the dream of flight not long perched on her beautiful head, soon to be mid-flap. And know that we belong. We. All.
“And if you did, see not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…”
We took out our tri-fold mats and were told to lie down. Most of us were tired from the morning at Washington Elementary, but there was always someone who wouldn’t go down without a fight. He began testing Mrs. Strand by beating his hands against the mat. I turned my head away. Then he began with his feet. I sighed heavily. Mrs. Strand turned from the chalkboard to give him the raised eyebrows look. Still he kept on. I suppose I was too tired, but my eyes were always the first to betray me. I wasn’t sad, yet the tears began to flow. She walked atop our sea of mats like a holy person, first picking up the boy by his t-shirt and then placing him in the corner, smirked face first. She tapped me on my dampened shoulder asking why the tears. “It’s just all too loud,” I said between breaths. She tapped me on my heart and said, this must always be the loudest voice in the room.
Chaos can still throw me, and I have to remind myself. I have the skills now. The self care. To quiet all the noises around us, I know I can paint. I can write. I can go for a walk. Read a book. Bake a batch of cookies. Play fashion show. Listen to my heart. Of all the things I learned in kindergarten, this has proven to be the most useful.
It was my mother who listened to me with the patience of paper. I could tell her anything. No dream was too big. No concern too frivolous. No wonder dismissed. I could cursive my feelings throughout the house, and she would gather them in softly, gently, filling heart reams daily.
I didn’t read Anne Frank until junior high. I had already been writing for years. On scraps of paper. Wood-burning notes into panels. Poems on birthday cards. Hopes onto sticky pads. But I didn’t have a diary. And it wasn’t until reading Anne Frank’s that I knew why. It was because I had my mother. Anne wrote in her diary, thinking she had “no such real friend” to confide in. My mother was that “friend.”
Through the years, as I made my living selling the words and images, I was constantly approached by my sales reps and store owners with “What’s new?” A feverish flurry to get to the next thing. An urgency to keep the writing short – “no one will take the time to read all that.” I would smile and think that Anne Frank was right, “Paper is more patient than people.”
I’ve tried to stay true to my slow and looping cursive heart. Giving it the space and time it needs. Giving it the care my mother showed me it was worth.
I hope you have that friend. That confidante. If not, let it be me. Take your time. I’m in no hurry.
I don’t know how many times I sang the song, “I wish I had a river…” Joni Mitchell was a staple in our house, so when it was “coming on Christmas,” she was on repeat. How many wishes did I make for that river, a river so long that I could skate away on, before I even knew what it would mean?
It wasn’t a river where I learned to skate. In fact it was a pond. Noonan’s Pond. And by “learned” I mean, fell and broke my arm. (Maybe that’s where all lessons are learned, in the falling.) All of my summers were spent attempting to fly. From diving boards to bicycle wheels, I was certain that my feet could leave the ground. It was no different with the change in weather. When the lakes ponds and froze over, I was certain, it was simply another way to take flight.
I wore my full plastered arm, like a badge of courage. Every fifth grader celebrated the attempt. All knowing, valuing, what that breeze felt like underfoot.
The needles are already falling from our tree on this sacred eve. But it’s ok. I learned it long ago on the ice. I learn it daily, simply loving. All the rivers to cross. There will be so many stumbles and falls, and letting ins and letting gos…all breezes under our hearts, under our feet, this love teaches us daily, how to fly.
I’m currently reading Theo of Golden. It wasn’t long in when I realized I had seen the main character before — the elderly man with the gray hair, kind eyes, and green flat cap. I opened my sketchbook. There he was. Now with every word of the book, I can see his face. That’s the magic of not just reading, but living in the word.
I suppose we’d call that empathy. Maybe that’s what books are for. To give us the practice for real life. Oh, it comes so easily with the turning of the pages. How we can immerse ourselves into their lives. Really see them. Experience the journey. And if it’s a pleasure to do by the book, shouldn’t it be so face to face. Certainly everyone in literature is an other, ones that we can fascinate. Why do we fear them in real life? I wonder if we imagined their stories, gave them faces, what our world would, could become.
I think it’s worth the practice. So I dive in deeply. Gently. Amid the stories. Amid my own. And maybe we see each other a little more clearly. And we become…
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.”
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.
I could play a semi-recognizable version of “Michael Row The Boat Ashore”, when my guitar lessons were cut short by an arm breaking crack-the-whip incident at the fifth grade Washington Elementary ice skating party. With my plastered arm, I could no longer hold the guitar. Band lessons were about to begin in our gymnasium. I could somehow still hold the clarinet. I joyfully honked once a week under the direction of Mr. Iverson. When they sawed off my cast, I suppose I could have returned to the guitar, but I stayed with the one who saw me through.
My “instruments” have continued to change throughout my life. By choice and chance, I have had to let in, and I have had to let go. But I’ve always had my voice. How freeing it is to know. Some things can never be taken away.
I don’t keep that clarinet in my French home because I still play, I keep it as a reminder. A lesson of change. Of adapting. Of finding joy when the whip has been cracked.
Perhaps it’s why I speak of the bird song so often. Maybe it’s a bit more refined now, but it all began with a honk, a glorious and joyful honk.
I saw my first Mona Lisa, (some might say only), at the Louvre in Paris. It was not my second, nor even third siting yesterday, but there she was, at a restaurant in Stillwater, Minnesota. She made me smile, returning hers, coyly, knowingly, which may be the whole point after all.
We’re very quick to evaluate each other’s experiences. I am not proud of it, but I’ve certainly done the same. Thinking how my travels are more real. My pain more devastating. My love deeper. And it’s just not true. I’m trying to get better. Not to judge, but simply acknowledge. There is no need to keep score.
I was certain that no one could have loved their mother more. No one could feel the loss more deeply than I did. Than I do. But I saw her there. Entering the party. I gave her my smile, my slight turn of lip, my knowing what she was going through, and her return, drenched in tears, told me the truth. The loss of her mother — “her easeled Mona Lisa” was no less real than mine.
The thing is, we think we know. We don’t know. The best we can do is to care. Keep caring.
I will go walking soon. Wearing my Mona Lisa sweatshirt from the Louvre. Not to tell you that “I’ve been THERE,” but more to say, “I’ve been there…”
