When I was five I began drawing. Six, writing. Every paper in my tiny bedroom was filled. I sat on my twin bed and poured out my heart to the Raggedy Ann and Andy sheets. Emboldened with their always smiling and gentle approval, I held the paper in my plattered, chubby hands, and presented it to my mother. She knew the gift that it was, and welcomed it with a caring so safe, so loving, that I knew I could do it again and again.
I did it daily. When my mother passed, it was that little girl that looked directly at me, that looks at me every day, hands and heart extended, she asks me where she is to go. And she’s so small. And I don’t want to hurt her. She’s still so filled with ideas and belief, and I can’t turn her away. When she comes to me, with all that raggedy trust, I smile, and do the best that I can with what she is offering. I tell her what she has made, what we have made, is something special, and I clutch it to my beating chest before setting it free.
If you’re reading this, I, we, stand before you, so small, but still believing it matters. And I will do it, again, and again.
I remember the look. I never wanted to see it again. I picked one green apple from my grandmother’s tree, took a bite, through it to the cows, then picked another. It could have stopped time, that gaze. I looked around. Apples everywhere. On the trees. On the ground. In her basket. I shrugged my shoulders. She raised her eyebrows. With no words, I knew, simply having did not give me permission to waste it.
With some things it’s easy to remember. Like my paint. Using a glass palette, I can see what I’m using. Less gets abandoned in the clutter. It’s not as easy with everything. And I often have to remind myself. Like with the days for example. With the minutes of each hour. When I think of the time I’ve wasted in worry, or complaint, I can see myself standing in a sea of green, and I race to bushel all the wasted moments. What a gift it is to have another day. Promises of youth remain. I am filled with possibilities.
I suppose we’ve all done it, judged the water’s temperature by the color. Without so much as a toe dipped in, we can be lured by the gentle turquoise blue of a sunlit sea, or just as easily stepped back by the darkened grays of wave rocked waters. Maybe it’s experience, or maybe the heart was and is the only thing capable of forgetting all the grays of lessons learned, and still able to feel the true temperature of our surroundings.
Seeing him draped in the colors that only the south of France can produce — the colors that poets and painters alike have tried to capture — it was easy to see the warmth. Easy to fall in love. But to see these colors still, colors that neither time nor Midwestern winters could dull — this, I suppose is the real measure.
Maybe it’s true for all things, once you see it with your heart. The yellow-green of sun lit trees that I recently painted in two portraits — I can’t unsee it as I walk along the path – it is everywhere. And I smile in the face of all that green, as familiar as the neighbor who walks his beagle twice a day, the two men who only stroll on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or the biker in his NY baseball cap. They are all yellow-green.
And then I return to the true-blue love of the one I married. Only and always, even on the cloudiest of days, in this most open of blues. My eyes grin at the color my hands try to recreate on the canvas. My heart nods, knowing only its connecting beat could produce such a color. Such is the temperature of a welcoming home.
It let out a small scream when I opened the door. I guess even a microwave knows when it’s over. My grandma let out the same sound when she scooped up the dice after I lost my turn in the game she said I would one day understand. I picked up a few rules in between squeals, but I’m not sure I really ever understood — until maybe yesterday.
I thought it was the first gift of any substance that I gave to my Grandma Elsie. I moved several times after college. Microwave and large books on Shakespeare in tow. The third apartment had a built-in microwave. It was my mother who told me the timing was perfect — that grandma’s had just died. Of course she could have this one. I was so happy that I finally had something to give.
It was back when things used to last. Maybe she still had it when she passed away. I never really checked. What she did have was a piece of bark with straw flowers glued into the ridges that stood on her nightstand. An art project I had made in the fifth grade. It turns out I was wrong — I had given her something, long before the microwave, with a much greater value.
Today we will go buy a new microwave. We will have to dispose of this one. I asked Dominique how much it weighs this morning at the breakfast table. He said it was a two hand operation. I smiled, thinking that it could be picked up in one Elsie swoosh. It’s just a microwave. I think I understand the game a little more each day.
We stood among the empty boxes in our first apartment. A mere quarter of our possessions from the house on Van Dyke Road easily filled the space. Standing silent, exhausted, knee deep in abandoned cardboard, it seemed as if the moment was calling us to either laugh or cry. I looked up to catch my mother’s eye, to find her lead. Packing tape still stuck to one elbow, she Vanna White-ed her arms across the brown mess and said, “One day, this will all be yours…” We burst into laughter.
And it was true! Is true! This ability to find joy in the moment, this knowledge that one way or another, we’re going to have to let it all go, emotionally, physically, spiritually… this is what she gave to me.
It was a special week for me. I sold a painting and I gave one away. Joy requires no measurement. Both were different experiences, but completely filled my heart!
She’s still the first person I want to call, my mom, amid the joy. But somehow I believe she knows. She’s standing by as I pack the painting to be shipped. She’s holding my vulnerable heart as I spin the other for the big reveal. The gift that was given to me so long ago, bubbles to the surface, and all I can do is laugh.
I am loved. My one day is every day. I do have it all.
I don’t remember hearing the exact words, “Do not steal,” but I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know that stealing was wrong. It was at the Ben Franklin on Broadway that I first gave it a thought. Not in the sense that I would have actually done it — no, I was a rule follower at heart. But I entertained the idea as I stood in front of the penny candy bins, having heard the Washington School legends who narrowly escaped justice, racing out the back door with a Laffy Taffy in tow. How would it play out if I snuck just a gold wrapped chocolate coin? Or one sleeve of Sixlets? Would I run, or casually stroll? Who was watching? Were the thoughts inside my head bubbling above me like cartooned evidence? And then I would hear my grandma speaking to the smocked clerk like she was her best friend — because that’s the way Grandma Elsie spoke, in the eternal familiar — and I shook the fantasy from my brain, checking my hands and pockets at the same time to insure they hadn’t betrayed me. Empty of transgression, I would race to my grandma’s side and join in the laughter.
She didn’t have to say the words for me to know that this was not a corporation. This was not big business, nor high finance. These were our friends. If I stole something, it would have been directly from the pocket of the blonde woman who sat in the elevated seat by the back door, the woman my grandma greeted with upreached hands and elevated joy.
Of course my grandma let me pick out some candy. Of course she paid for it. Of course we ate it all before returning to the farm. Of course we threw away the empty sack evidence, laughing when grandpa asked what we were up to.
I used to bring my first book, “I am amazed,” to school districts around the country. I asked students to write down amazing things about their classmates. They “Elsied” it without hesitation. So easily they saw the good in others. Maybe we still could do that. With each other. Daily. We could give, instead of take. We could build, instead of tearing down.
Maybe it was easier then. No one actually saw the content bubbles that were going on inside our heads. But we see them now. So easily we display them right here. Some even proudly, as they mock, hurt and intentionally try to destroy. I guess I’m lucky, as I write each day, I can still see Grandma Elsie at the end of the aisle, and I know exactly what to do.
I’m in the middle stages of a new painting. From time to time I have to stop and take a photo of the work, otherwise it just becomes a series of shapes. If I stay focusing on just these tiny pieces, they become very hard to unsee, and I can lose the whole.
I suppose the danger at large is in real life. It is so easy to grab hold of these tiny pieces. Latch on to one thing and then assume. These small pieces are often the ones with little hooks, maybe even sharp edges, so it’s simple, I’ll give you that. And it’s ironic, these little things that make us so unsure, can give us such certainty. Like, she’s divorced, so she must be… or he’s a democrat, so he has to be… he’s old, she’s blonde, they don’t speak our language, he’s elite, she’s too young, he’s too fat, they’re the wrong religion, the wrong color, they’re just so… oh, the tiny pieces.
If we want to be more, we have to see more. Step back. Stop naming and defining each piece, and instead see the person. When all the tiny pieces are placed together, they’re not so sharp after all. It takes a lot of shapes to make a puzzle. A lot of strokes to make a painting. So it is with people.
“And if we did, see past it all…If you saw that I am not just my face, but all that I have faced…and if I did that for you…
I used to imagine that the front stoop of my grandma’s house was only there for the family of Hollyhock dolls that grew on either side of the cement steps. I was only allowed to pick a few each season. She showed me how to pluck the flower from the stem, flip it upside down and push an unopened bud through the then top to make a head that rested above the pink flowing dress. And for the rest of the afternoon, this small gathering of elegant ladies danced outside the entrance reserved just for them.
I gave them the voices to compliment each other. “How lovely is your pink dress!” “And yours is beautiful!” I danced them together like my mother once did at the Lakeside Ballroom with her cousin Janet. And the music from the transistor radio scratched in and out as I adjusted the antenna in the summer breeze. The lessons of last summer were forgotten. I had no fear of the wilting dresses. I only played. And played, believing that all beauty on Rueben and Elsie’s farm would ever remain.
I wasn’t wrong. Yes, the flowered dresses lay almost flat by the end of the day, but decades and countries away, the beauty remains. Yesterday, in the French countryside, she showed me the one Hollyhock flower that somehow grew between the century old crack of the house entrance. I wasn’t surprised. I had enough French words to tell her of how I made the pink ladies on my grandma’s stoop. We both smiled and touched the rhythm of her little pink dress.
I wrote in a poem, “This year… let’s love like no lessons have already been learned…” Of course we have to grow and educate and evolve. But some “lessons,” like those that deal with lost love, disappointment, unreached expectations — to keep our pink ladies dancing, we have to let those go. The heart stoops must remain clear and ever hopeful.
Countless things grew on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. Again and again. And the beauty will ever remain. I wake to this morning sun, and keep on dreaming.
Returning home after the first Friday of my first week in the first grade, I vowed I would never go back to Washington Elementary. This was a week full of firsts, and I’m not sure which one put me over the edge — the school lunch lady that made me eat a pickle, the enforced afternoon nap followed by the milk I refused to drink, the pulling of my long blonde hair by my thought to be friend David Holte, or the introduction of time that seemed impossible to follow.
I felt exposed. Unprotected. I waited by the garage doors for my mom to return from work. When I told her that my future plans did not include school, she didn’t dispute it. This was Friday night — we had the whole weekend ahead of us. Two days for a six year old could seem like a lifetime, so I helped her in with the groceries and my new life began.
Saturday morning I jumped into the Chevy Impala, beside my mom, seatbeltless and carefree. We parked outside the Ben Franklin and walked to Herberger’s basement. I ran through the racks like Dynda’s clothesline, while she picked out some new hand towels. She pulled me out from under and said she had an idea. We walked over to the “new for school” items. Windbreakers. I ran my hands along the sleeve. So sleek and shiny. They could repel anything, she told me. Anything? I asked. Any storm to be faced, she said. Like wind? Yes. Water? Yes. David Holte? Of course. Milk? It would run off your sleeve like a raindrop. I smiled. But what about if I get lonesome? This was the best part, she said, and opened the zipper around the neck. The love compartment. Just open it up and pull it around your head. Tie the strings, and I’ll be with you. I put my arms in the navy blue windbreaker. They slid in so easily. They felt cool and fast. I pulled up the white zipper. Tucked my hair in the hood and made a bow, just like I had learned with my bumper tennis shoes. I felt all of the power contained. She handed the clerk some of her hard earned cash. Exchanged for a receipt, the woman asked if I wanted to wear it home. I may never take it off, I thought.
I wore it straight through Sunday evening. I couldn’t wait to show Cindy and Jan. I got up Monday morning, dressed and ready. My lunch was prepared in a brown paper sack, along with a note to my teacher that said I didn’t have to drink the afternoon milk. Fully zipped and tucked in the protective love of navy, I walked to the bus stop. I waved and smiled as my mom drove down the gravel road. The breeze rolled past my waving arms. I knew I could face anything.
I wake this morning, dressed in a love I will never take off.
Sometimes it’s a flower. Sometimes a branch from our olive tree. I just think the bird in our bathroom deserves an extension.
At first I couldn’t place the smell, these men that came to help my grandpa on the farm. It wasn’t bad, more unfamiliar. Was it heavy? Damp maybe. I wasn’t sure if we were related. Neighbors attended reunions as often as relatives. Lines (or furrows) became rather blurred standing behind a card table filled with Grandma Elsie sandwiches.
Perhaps it showed on my face, this uncertainty. Even in the heat of summer, I suppose I wore my heart where my winter sleeve used to be. “It’s only the earth,” my grandma whispered in my ear. I looked at her with wrinkled brow. “What you’re smelling, it’s the field. It’s work.” I smiled and helped her plate the bread and meat.
“It’s only the earth,” I repeated it in my head over and over that day. I liked the sound of it. I still do. Some days, when I feel the stench of struggle, I repeat it to myself. “It’s only the earth.” We are here to do the work. Whatever it may be. And it changes from day to day. The work of creation. Relationships. Understanding. Community. Love. Life.
Somewhere in the damp and heavy scent of life on Rueben and Elsie’s farm, it was embedded in my heart…”the least of these…” So I give a branch to my bird in the bathroom, as a reminder. Everyone deserves an extension — how hard could it be? — it’s only the earth.
