Working between two screens, sometimes my cursor gets stuck in the opposite one that I want. (Like my brain doesn’t do that all the time.)
It’s so easy to think, “Well, I always did it this way…” Whether I’m talking about different countries, different languages, loves, relationships, even my hairdresser. And I catch myself swiping madly on the wrong screen.
Change is never easy. Neither growth. But both are so necessary. And it doesn’t mean you have to give up everything in the letting go, the moving on…You keep the lightest of things, like joy and hope and love — none of these will ever weigh you down.
Too often I’m unaware. It’s barely more than air, the little birdie that tells me things. But when I’m paying attention, really paying attention, all the truths that move between who I am and who I want to be, chirp seamlessly between my heart and my brain, and I am saved.
I did end up breaking my arm, and my heart countless times, but never my neck. And oh! didn’t they warn us, scold us, over and over. Anything we did slightly out of the norm, teachers, parents, neighbors, all gave the warning, “You’re gonna break your neck!” From the monkey bars to the top of our desks, in trees and on clotheslines, it seemed we were all willing to take that risk.
There was a lot to learn. And I suppose a lot to warn us about, so maybe they just grouped it all under the “neck.” Because it was vital, wasn’t it. In order to survive, you had to stick your neck out from time to time. Hold your head up high, they said. And sometimes, even when you were up to your neck, you still had to save someone’s neck, (sometimes your own). Somehow, we got by, perhaps merely by the scruff of our necks.
I suppose I’m doing it each day, with these stories, this artwork, sticking my neck out. But just as my five year old self told me to grab hold of the neighbor’s swinging clothesline, it feels so necessary in order to be alive! To expose yourself, to take the risk, to love!
In the fifth grade, at our Valentine’s Day party on the frozen pond of Noonan’s park, I raced on my skates to grab the human “whip” that would not only be cracked, but also break my arm. Still fully casted in plaster by our next field trip to the Chanhassen Dinner theatre, I sat in the audience and listened to the Impossible Dream. “To run,” they sang, “where the brave dare not go!” We cheered and clapped and I waved my plastered arm in the air.
Who knows what the day will bring. I’m stilling willing to take the risk.
“Let’s say the things we never said. Let’s forgive the things we never could. Let’s love like no lessons have already been learned. Let’s dream like we have the chance, and live like we have no other.“
There were rare occasions when I saw adults cry. Gathered snuggly around my grandparent’s kitchen table. Perhaps to confine the news that came in the letter. Or the heartache of a loved one lost. To give it open space was to let it catch up to us in the summers of our youth. But sometimes, with the need for a Sugar Daddy, or a Slowpoke, I would sneak through the screen door and see it, them, dampened eyes and heads down, and my heart would sink. The ground seemed to shake beneath my bumper tennis shoes. I backed out the door.
It was my grandfather who caught up to me. Dazed and darkened under the largest tree near the road. He could see I didn’t want to be dazzled by false comfort. And he was never one to do it. “It’s like the Magpie,” he said. He was never much for small talk. He got right to the point. “What is?” I said. “The color. So black that it’s blue.” “I don’t get it.” He told me to get up. He led me back to the kitchen. Dishes had already begun clanking. There was the scent of coffee in the air. Chairs being pushed aside. Knees unbending. Even a few laughters of relief. Life. He looked down at me. “Blue,” he said. I smiled and nodded.
I have carried it for years. This knowledge, even when things are so black, they are also blue. You have to get up. You have to want to see it. But it’s always there.
I look out the morning window. He’s still right. I smile into the blue.
I realized quickly that there was no need to wait for the random field trip. At Washington Elementary, once a week, we were marched down the terrazzoed hall, past the drinking fountain, the boys’ and girls’ lavatories, and up the stairs to the library. With no need for a signed permission slip from my mother, no bus fumes, no pleather stuck to the back of my thighs, I was allowed (just imagine!) to pick anything, any book I wanted. And take it. Just take it for a week. Go on the journey! Be the girl with the pesky little sister, or the big dog. Be the cowgirl, or even the horse. Live on the prairie in a little house. Fall with the boy down the well. Or be the mother of them all. It was better than any trip I had ever imagined. (And I had (have) a big one.)
The most beautiful thing of all, we never have to lose our tickets. I take a journey every day. Within the pages of a book that I read. On the pages of my sketchbook that I paint. I don’t need permission to become a poet, or a baker, or a gardener. (Even though my mother would have signed any slip, and still does with a heavenly wink.) For she was the one who loved books first. It was my mother I was following long before the line past the fountain. And when I read a passage today and think, Oh, she would love this, I stop myself and say, She does love this. How could I not believe that she continues to make the trip? Once you’ve made the journey, gone past the gravel road, the railroad tracks, the Viking statue, Olson’s Super Market, beyond the elementary school, the middle, and the high, the college, and the state and the country… you don’t stop. With hearts as open as pages, we keep wondering, we keep wandering — no slips required. Only love.
I can’t tell you how or why I started painting French birds. No more, I suppose, than I can remember the first time my mother said, “Let’s go shopping.” Some things just take on a life of their own. And now I joyfully find myself wing deep in berets and stripes.
Maybe it’s the unlikeliness of it all. We had no money, and not much of a mall. No history passed down from my grandmother. No gps in our car. No google – no computer even. Just the pure desire to dress our way into lives we knew our hearts were already living. So we gassed up the used Malibu and wore a path on I-94. Passing fields and billboards as if winged ourselves. And we found ourselves at the Dales. Ridgedale, Southdale, Brookdale even, when something just needed to be found.
I see it now more clearly. How we fit striped tops over our wings and found our way. Found ourselves.
Here in France, because my mother dared the freeway, I find myself in front of my sketchbook, and I am not lost, but ever wing deep in joy.
It turns out my mother is currently living under the assumed name of “animal prints” on TikTok. I know this to be true, because yesterday when I posted this video, she was the first to respond saying “I love that striped top. I need to be wearing it.” That is so my mother.
We had a shared language. From ruffles to stripes. One developed through years of shopping malls and our own closets. Playing dress up. Fashion show. The joy flowed like well draped fabric. And I understood completely. For her to say she was “scouring the catalogs for that blouse” after seeing a recent painting, was the best compliment she could give to me.
So how could I doubt that heaven has TikTok?
I suppose believers will always believe. And I do. And if you needed any more evidence, there’s this — while typing today’s post, I checked google to make sure I was spelling “scouring” correctly — here’s the sample definition that appeared — “I scoured the mall for a blue and white shirt, but couldn’t find it anywhere.” Feel free to say hello to my mother on TikTok.
There was an undeniable security in knowing there would always be what I needed inside my grandmother’s purse. A Kleenex. Of course. And if you used them all up, there would always be one rolled up in her sleeve. Aspirin — sure. Breath mints. Slowpokes. Sugar daddies and babies. Toasted marshmallows. Roasted peanuts, sometimes sacked, sometimes floating at the bottom. Safety pins. Paper clips. Pencils. Paper. Crayons. Perfume. Change for the meter and the gum ball machine. And all the white gum balls that we didn’t want, begging for just another nickel, sure that the next one would be red or yellow. And I suppose mostly that’s what her purse held, what she held, the promise that things could always work out if you didn’t come empty handed.
Throughout history, people have said it much more eloquently, “Ask not what your country can do for you…” and so on. I’m sure they’ve said it in every time and tongue. But waking in France, I still hear it in the language of my grandmother’s hands — what are you going to bring today? I smile, and begin rifling through my heart’s purse.
When painting a nest, you have to create the base first. All the blacks and browns must cover, then the lighter twigs can be added. It would be impossible to add the structure afterwards. To put in the dark shadows after the tans and whites.
I guess it’s the same in real life. You have to do the work. Put in the time. Do people still do it? The hard things? It’s easy to want to skip ahead. We’re all guilty of that. But I have the reminders. Of all those who nested me. The dirty steps my grandfather took to the field each day. The heeled steps my mother took to the office. Without glory or praise, they built the nest that comforts me still.
Maybe it’s silly, but I put them out for my mother. Jelly beans or a chocolate egg. A small thank you for keeping me safe until I could fly. And still in mid air. The base to my ever changing nest.
So I craft the words each morning. Each a twig. A thank you and a hope. That we all will be saved.
To be so filled with life that it has to flush from your very pores. Cheeks ruddy and ever ready. I suppose we all think it will last forever — sure that our feet will keep the deal that youth has made. But maybe it’s the heart that takes over. (Or maybe it led all along.) Maybe it’s the heart that drags us from spring’s mud into summer’s bliss. Maybe it’s the heart that races through grass’s morning dew again and again, and lifts us up from green knees when we fall, ever promising to keep our cheeks flushed through autumn. Through winter.
Every time I paint a face, I feel the colors in my own, flowing through my hands. And the corners of my mouth rise up, smiling, so happy to be a part of youth’s reddening still.
What will you do today, to remain in the race of summer?
