It won’t make international news, but it was the most hopeful thing I saw online yesterday — A 105 year old woman renews her library card.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to paint. Or even if I wanted to. But I primed the panel. Put on the underpainting. Just sketch it out, I thought. Maybe paint a little bit. A little more. An hour went by. Then two. Wash the brushes. Maybe just a little more. And the time that was promised from youth — the time that said fill me with love and I will not pass — it disappeared within the paint, holding strong, and I couldn’t stop. Unsure of what I loved more, the woman, the bird, the time, my life itself, I knew one thing for certain, I would keep renewing, again and again, and I would be alive!
The things I worried about on a random Wednesday night seem rather ridiculous now, but to my Elementary self, they felt nearly insurmountable. I suppose it’s ironic that the very library feeding my imagination could bring about so much anxiety. Rereading the books that I had checked out for the week, I interrupted myself with a lot of “but what ifs…” I’d ask my mother — But what if they don’t give us enough time to search the shelves? What if the book I want is already checked out? What if they didn’t get in anything new? She always answered the same — “Give them a chance to surprise you.”
I’ve tried to keep that answer close at hand, tucked inside a heart pocket. It’s easy to assume outcomes. To imagine how people are going to act, to respond. To live out the conversations before they even happen. I’m as guilty as the next person. But some of the most joyous moments have come when I have allowed people to surprise me.
She was known in town, almost feared, as a hard person. My mom had worked with her. At an event, when she began thumbing through my cards and books, I held my breath. Braced. Ready to defend the heart on my sleeve. But she began to smile. She laughed in the right places. Teared up in the raw moments. Clutching her imaginary pearls in both. What a welcome surprise!
I hadn’t changed her. Only given her a chance. And I was given a gift that’s still with me today.
The thing is, we think we know. We think we know how everything is going to turn out. With others, even our own life. But how many doors (hearts) close down in all that certainty. I’m trying to get better. To let it all unfold without a manufactured outcome. Because I don’t know. And that’s ok. It’s good even. I open myself up. Hand in heart pocket, I give this life a chance to surprise me!
For years I thought you had to “find” your home. I began with a summer red wagon. Knees not even wagon high, I filled the rusted container with baby dolls and stuffed animals, along with an unopenable can of chicken noodle soup, a glass jar of water, my hardcover copy of Little House in the Big Woods, a blanket (said to be for their comfort, but mostly for mine), Bazooka Joe bubble gum, and the plastic camera that no longer worked that I ordered with those same gum wrappers. I didn’t have a watch, so I can’t tell you how long I was gone. But I’m certain the sun didn’t change positions. I was not allowed beyond the “north end,” and it was too difficult to drag my wagon alongside Hugo’s field, so most likely it took me longer to pack than journey. I returned to the green grass in front of our green house, took everything out of the wagon and placed it neatly back in my bedroom. Grabbed my Big Chief Notebook from under my pillow, palmed my number 2 pencil and wrote of the voyage I imagined I just took. And I was home.
Maybe I’m more of a maker than a seeker. The answers aren’t waiting to be found, but created. I’ve said for years that you have to fall in love with your bathroom. Learn how your oven works. Curate, not decorate. Become and become and become. To be the life in your living room. In every room. I suppose the same is for love.
It’s true I love to travel, but in search of an experience, not the answers. The things I know for sure are nestled in the heart, the little red wagon that I keep filled with all that I love.
People from miles around envied the swings on our playground at Washington Elementary. And by people, I mostly mean the other grade-schoolers up the street at St. Mary’s. Those at LIncoln School had their own, but I imagine they were still impressed. The chains were so long. And the straps of the seats didn’t cut into your thighs. They were perfection. And placed as they were, after pumping for several minutes, and perhaps aided with a slight push from behind from your best friend who dared the thrust of your return, if you stretched your legs at the height of your swing, it appeared as if you were climbing atop the roof of the school. What a thrill to reach that height. And it was that thrill of being lifted that made my stomach jump to my throat, and gave me the courage to face anything the school would offer after the ringing of the recess bell.
Imagine my delight, the first time it happened without the aid of chain links and gravity. I had just cut my finger on the very razor blade in the kitchen bureau that my grandma told me not to touch. It was my heart that sank first. Not because it hurt that badly, but because I was sure she would no longer love me. Still operating under the rudimentary conditions of the playground, where friends were lost and gained in one recess, I started to cry. She wiped her ever dish soaped hands on her apron and knelt before me. Walked me to the bathroom sink and cleaned my minor wound on my finger, but the one on my heart remained. I was still small enough to be shattered, but too big to be carried, so she walked me to grandpa’s recliner. She sat down first, making that happy sound of a cushion expanding. She told me to stand in front. She grabbed the wooden lever on the side, and with that one swoop, she launched the recliner’s leg, and lifted me off of mine into her lap. My belly jumped, along with my heart, and I could only laugh. I knew I could face anything, as long as she loved me.
Even typing this, my belly races to my heart, and I am saved.
It’s easy to misread anyone I suppose. Up until the fifth grade, I was extraordinarily quiet. I wouldn’t have put it that way, but that’s what they wrote on my report cards. My mother, not seeing anything to defend, replied, “When she has something to say, she’ll say it.” I sat beside her, cheeks flushed and smiling, I nodded. The teacher, once again misreading the room, looked at my face and said, “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” My mother knew what the pink in my cheeks meant. “She’s not embarrassed, she’s hopeful.”
We ripen at different stages. I found my voice. I still get nervous. I get angry. I get tired. Sometimes sad. Sometimes so much joy that it’s overwhelming. And it all blushes out my heart and through my face, because through it all I am hopeful. I am hopeful that I will understand. That I will be happy. That I will pass on all that joy for others to carry.
Sometimes he looks at me and says, “Nice colors.” And I know he sees me. Just as she did.
The three of us were best of friends in first second and third grade. Maybe it started with something as simple as the jump rope. Jan and I needed a third, otherwise we were just spinning. Shari jumped in from off the monkey bars, and that was all it took. We were friends. Every recess we took turns. We sang the rhymes to each swing of the rope. We laughed off the trips and twirled again. Something was said in the summer of our third year. Standing in Shari’s driveway, I could hear them arguing. Half the rope raised in my hand, I somehow knew. I looked at the opposite handle lying in the dirt and thought, “but we weren’t finished.”
We didn’t gather again until we all began playing the clarinet. It was only in band, but we still spoke. After graduation, we all went our separate ways. I read on Facebook that Jan died. I saw a picture of Shari for the first time just the other day. Typing today, I can still feel my hand on the jump rope.
I don’t know why people worry about being forgotten. The first image I see when I wake up is the portrait of my grandfather. Not only has my love for him not diminished, it’s quite possible it grows stronger each day. I suppose that’s the way with love.
Half way through, I stopped to take a picture of her. I think she’s beautiful — being unfinished. Would that we could allow that for each other, for ourselves. Because it is beautiful, isn’t it! These lives and loves we’re giving, they never really end.
I have things to do today. We all do. What a pleasure it is to be unfinished. Beautiful!
You can’t tell me that they’re always trying to get somewhere. Most of the time, it looks like they’re playing in the wind. Dancing even. These birds so elegantly bouncing and bounding above. And why wouldn’t they dance, they already have the song.
She never wore a tutu, nor spandex dresses, but oh how my mother could dance. She would teach me on the carpet of the living room floor. It was slower. But when I had mastered the steps, she’d lead me to the kitchen floor, and I barely felt my stockinged feet touch the linoleum. She’d sing along to the boombox, pull me in and spin me out and I knew I was flying. I asked her if she had dance instructors? No, she said. In school? I asked. No. Did grandma teach you. She laughed (sure it was a bit of a dance maneuvering through all those people in the farm kitchen), but no. Then how did you know you could dance? I asked. I could always hear the song, she said, and pulled me in once again.
And wasn’t that belief? Wasn’t that the true art of living? Just listening for the music. Trusting your feet would follow. Believing, one way or another, you were going to fly!
I used to think they were so glamorous, the women on the front of the Butterick sewing patterns. My mother’s love for the designs was enough to lure me away from the toy aisle at Woolworth’s and join her in search of the fashion dream. For as much as I enjoyed the newest doll encased in plastic with her pink outfit, it was nothing compared to the palpable life that flowed from the dress patterns into my mother’s hands at the back of the store.
I didn’t have the words for it then, but I somehow knew it was more than glamour, and closer to worth. Not in search of proof that she could be, worthy, but knowing somewhere deep in her heart, that she already was. And so I left the ease and certainty of the lined toys and joined her in the dream.
And didn’t we become. And become again. Without money, or even a well lit path, we started our journey. Our joyful journey. And she sewed and believed. And shopped. Holding clothes under neck in front of the three-way yes (four, including mine!)
The woman arriving in my sketchbook reminded me of how far we have come. A simple nod from the back of Woolworth’s. And I know the magic moved from her hands into mine. So I pass it along to you, hoping, knowing, there is no end. The patterned dream lives on.
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.“
It was just a line. A handful (but heart full) of words. I wrote it yesterday morning on the back of my sketchbook. I could hear it, her, what she was saying so clearly. And with that one line, the words came pouring out. I wrote for hours.
It’s been said, and I believe that it’s true, that a painting is never finished. Each time you look at it, it takes on your story. You are painting as you listen. I suppose that’s why we are asked to be quiet in museums, so everyone can hear.
If you lean in, she’s telling you something. Her shoulders relaxed into the truth. Her heart unobstructed. Her head lifted to hope’s promise. What is it you need to hear? You already know what it is. Let it come. Let her whisper to you. She’s handing you your story, by the heart full.
