Had I picked up the bow instead of the painting brush, as Mr. Iverson suggested in my fifth grade music class, I suppose my life could have been different. One of those “Sliding Door” moments? I’m not sure. Maybe. But it seems, even on the most wayward of paths, I have always found a way, a way to me.
Out of the hundreds of decisions I make daily — this turn, that step, saying the thing, not saying it, I can stumble for hours. But before that stumble turns into a complete fumbling of sorts, I gather myself in, and go to the place where my heart can rest and my mind can wander. I guess that’s home. And haven’t I always known? From crayon to canvas, without the words to claim it, I have practiced the self care. Scribbling the Burnt Sienna of my heart, inside and outside the lines in the coloring books my mother gladly purchased from the bottom shelf of Olson’s Super Market. (And how graciously she helped me find my path, while still searching for her own.)
We can go over each decision. Play the what if game. But it’s hard to fool the heart — the core of our being, our earth. Perhaps the bow I didn’t pick up was meant for you. And it’s your music I hear as I wander the heart of my Sienna.
I never would have imagined from the floor of the supermarket, that I would be painting in the south of France. But here I am, a long way from, and always home.
My mother didn’t get paid from Herberger’s, but she often worked there. And it’s hard to call it work, it was simply something she could see. She could see the women in the dressing rooms. She knew what would work for them. What outfits. What colors. And it wasn’t just the clothes. She could guide them through the make-up department, the shoes, the jewelry, accessories. She visualized the final result long before the last earring was attached. She was the intelligence, long before it was artificial.
Visiting the studio, he admired this painting. But also wondered where it could be hung. I made the renderings on my computer. Placing it in the large Italian kitchen. With different frames. Moods. Some will call this quite impressive. And it is something. But it is not something new. Writers, artists, teachers, people of all kinds, have been doing it for centuries. Placing us in the stories. Giving us empathy. Helping us feel less alone. That’s what we do when we see people. We show them how they fit. How they belong.
Technology is useful. Human contact is priceless. I sit at my computer, but I’m never that far from Herbergering.
It means Endless stories — the name of this French vintage store. (And what would be more fitting for me.) We visited it for the first time last week. It won’t surprise you to learn that I bought a canvas to paint over, and an old frame. Both, I suppose, in the attempt to keep the stories alive.
Maybe it was in Miss Green’s fifth grade class that I began the practice. Each week we took a “field trip” simply by writing a story about visiting a new area. To determine the destination, we spun around and placed a tack randomly on the large map. (Our version of discovery was somewhere between Pin the tail on the Donkey and today’s Google.)
We wrote weekly of our adventures. Our stories. I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped.
And even though Washington Elementary is now a collection of condominiums, and Miss Green goes by her married name, these stories for me have no end. I tell you my stories, and you tell me yours. And all the versions in between, including playgrounds and grandparents and main streets and penny candy. Bike ride and softball games. And the names may change, but the spirit of each story lives on. And on. (Sans fin.)
Today’s sun begins handing out the letters and I find myself somewhere between Donkey and Google, ready to write, ready to paint, to frame a new and endless story.
I imagine she can see me from the window as I begin a new painting. It’s a secret we’re keeping until the new canvas comes to life. It’s not her first time, so she knows that to talk about it would suck the magic right from the paints. She simply smiles and waits. Even the bird by her side remains perched.
We often think that we have to do something. Certainly some sort of action must be taken. When something bad happens, retaliation. With tears, the wiping away. With joy, a wild celebration! It was my mother that taught me differently. That often, the best reaction was just the sitting in, with, and along. In the darkest times, we’d lie quietly until the sun returned as promised. Together. When feelings or knees were hurt, a simple sitting on the front steps as quietly as grass growing would lead eventually to the tapping of shoes against cement, to the exhale, to the jumping off, into the green garden. In the happiest of times, after a book signing, a grand event, after the clapping and cheers, we’d marvel, shaking our heads and smiling in the glorious almost misbelief. Beginning sentences of joy and gratitude, never finished, but continued with hearts heaving.
I suppose it’s always the little things. The support of simply. Being. There. I look over my shoulder and see her watching quietly. I look above, and know the same.
I googled it. It turns out you don’t need a certain shape to your lips in order to play the flute. Maybe it was because we didn’t have Google in the fifth grade, or maybe they just needed to fill out the woodwind section, but I was told I didn’t have the proper lip for the flute that I so desired, and that I would be better suited for the clarinet. Upon Mr. Iverson’s authority in the Washington School gymnasium, I signed up to play the clarinet in the band.
Some decisions get made for you.
I learned to love the clarinet. I still have mine. It stands proudly in our library. (No flute could do that on its own.) I haven’t thought about that day in years. Decades even. But as I was painting her small portrait, focusing on the lips, I thought, “She can play the flute if she wants.”
I didn’t go on to play the clarinet after high school. I never made it past second chair. I’m not sure my life would have turned out much differently had I played the flute.
Playing the clarinet in the band at the basketball games, I sat next to Janie who played the flute. It was her father that would take out my appendix later that year. And after losing weight from said surgery, my mom would take me to Fleet Farm, and buy for me my first pair of painter’s pants. Was it all meant to be? Probably.
There are so many turns and twists and decisions that get us to WHERE we are, but with any luck, I suppose, we remain WHO we are. The music plays in the south of France, and I begin a new portrait. I am what I am.
Charles returned on his first break from university. He showed us pictures of his campus and classrooms. The problems written across the blackboards were nothing short of Good Will Hunting. My eyes rolled at my brain, which was challenged enough from translating English to French. These scribbles and tweeks and solve-fors seemed beyond language. Had this Matt Damon always sat so loosely on our sofa? What a smarty pants, I thought. And then I thought, people who are actually that smart wouldn’t say smarty pants, nor probably know the outline of this film playing in my head. And then I thought, stop thinking and pay attention, not unlike what I said to myself while taking my own classes long ago.
We all have our own currency. It’s foolish to measure against anyone else. It’s foolish not to use everything you have.
I stared at the photos he clicked through on the television. These giant tableaus were no longer “problems”, but works of art. Because this was his art. I could see how excited he was. To show them — these Pollacked masterpieces hanging in his museum of learning. Seeing his passion to solve, I understood. I relaxed into my chair, and finished the tour.
He was never going to stay this size. He was never meant to. But there was a moment, a joyful moment, in this living room, we all sat loosely.
If my easel were a face, each splatter of paint would be, not a wrinkle, but a laugh line. Proof of all the joy it has experienced.
It wasn’t new when I got it, but it was clean. And I don’t mean that as a compliment. It was yearning for a canvas, like a piano for a tune. With each stroke, it seemed to gain strength, beauty. I can’t tell you which was the first painting it held, but I know that it’s still in there, a part of each one that followed, a part of each one to come.
They call it an oeuvre – the complete body of work produced by an artist or creator. Sitting in front of my easel, I stretch my laugh lines thinking, well, isn’t it the same with the heart — the oeuvre of my being. My complete body of work.
I haven’t seen the actual images, but I imagine, if you opened me up, straight down the middle, snuck behind my ribs, you just might find a pulsing, a splattering, of joyful and vibrant color.
I have spent my life daring the blue dress, long before I was ready to dance. I’m not sure I’ve ever really been ready for anything. (Can anyone be?) Mostly I think I’ve just started.
Uncertain, I have eased my head through. Let it drop over nervous shoulders. I have turned on the record player. Let the music travel from ears to fingers, as I slipped into the black hose. And I have braced my nervous heart with arms over ribs that simply couldn’t be trusted. And without my knowledge or permission, the blue begins to blur, and there is no more getting ready — I AM a dancer.
If we waited for the perfect time, we’d never do anything. There is no sure that gets us over the edge. No certainty. And if there were, would there be any reason to continue? This is what I tell myself in the jitters of it all. The nervousness is simply a dance.
And so I begin. I wiggle my shoulders. My toes. And I am move a little easier through the blue.
If my mother resembled my grandfather, it was mostly in the length of their strides. My first memories were three to one, counting mine as I raced behind them. I marveled at their strength and purposeful speed. But it wasn’t an angry pace, I could tell by the loose swinging of arms, feeling that same joy as my own danced around my waist.
It’s a blur of how I went from three to two, to matching their strides completely. I can still feel the thrill of reaching out to that hand that swung back. Did it rest a little longer? Did I reach a littler farther? Didn’t all time stop as I clasped my sweaty palm into the certainty of love followed? Somehow I knew, it was also mine to carry. A joyful duty of continuing love’s long stride.
It’s funny how I had focused so on their feet, when it was their hands all along. The reaching out, the reaching back, the reaching out again. The sun is coming up. My heart tells my arms to swing.
I remember watching America’s Next Top Model (Yes, I did. Don’t judge me.) There was one specific moment that stuck with me all of these years. The host Tyra Banks, became frustrated with this certain model. Of course she was a beautiful woman, but she was coming off “dead” in the photographs. Tyra pleaded with her, “Think of something! Anything!”
While it makes me laugh, there is so much truth behind it. We are at our most beautiful when we show who we are.
The paintings I love the most, that I consider the most successful, are those that evoke a feeling. The story that comes to life when you view it. The story that you then share back to me. This exchange brings life to the painting, but most importantly, to all of us.
I don’t know what the day will bring. It could be something! It could be anything! Isn’t that beautiful?
