It isn’t that I have to make the bread…I get to. It’s just a simple change of one word. A rich exchange that stripes my shirt and hands over the flour. That gives me wings, not to leave the ground (that will all come when the work has been done) but to roll the pin. The turning of drudgery into joy.
Who would I be without the work? Without the baking of bread? The gathering of words and paint. The constant craving of input and output. This exchange we’re making, with the world of AI, I fear, is not a rich one.
Every story of my grandparents is covered in dirt and flour. A marching out to field. An apron dusted. A coat hung with the weight of earth and earthly demand. Each shoe tracking the same. And if the living lies in the work, then so to the loving — the richest exchange of all.
Easy has never meant full. I remind myself on the hard days. Tuck the rolling pin beneath my wing. Flight will come soon enough. Merci.
There was no turkey, nor stuffing. Certainly nothing pumpkin, but I was thankful. My friends brought napkins from Minnesota on their most recent visit. They didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me at all that they would go perfectly with my French plates. These little pieces of paper, barely more than air, had, have, the gravity to tumble into my heart, and fill it.
Before we were allowed to stir, or guard a heated pan, we were expected to set the table. I suppose it was years of practice, of placing knives and forks (silverware that wasn’t silver) and glasses (that weren’t really glass at all, but colored metal), before I realized that bringing some things to the table, was actually, what “I brought to the table.” Grandma Elsie knew that being a part of something was to participate. Gifts, however small, were gifts.
When my stepdaughter came to dinner, she, being in need of nothing but the magic of time spent together, was welcomed with a Minnesota napkin on our French table. (A Minnesota nice.) A gift of love passed from home to home to home.
In a world of so much “haves”, I often wonder what I have to bring to the table. Then I paint a portrait. Offer the love that I have been given since my arms had to reach over my head to set a plate. A waft of Elsie smiling from a far away kitchen kisses my cheek. And I am 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.
I suppose it’s the recapturing of youth. The fear of anything sharp in the grass was far outweighed by the release of winter toes into the cool dew of spring. Socked and booted for months, to be set free in this sea of potential green was an exhilaration that could only be described as the combination of hope and joy — (either alone are fantastic, but laid out together, as a welcome mat, was beyond our wildest dreams.)
I can’t blame winter anymore, it’s often just my own fear that keeps my heart socked and booted. And it’s not Dorothy’s red shoes that I dream of, but the carefree nature of barefooting. To dare all that lies ahead with hope and joy, with a wiggling and release that says, I still believe.
So I bring them to life on canvas. And match them, toe for toe, hope for hope, joy for joy. And one way or another, I am not going to simply wiggle, I am going to fly.
Standing in front of the bird in the hand, he asked me what was the English word for perspective. Perspective, I said. He smiled, not having to learn another word. I smiled because not only was he speaking in my mother tongue, we were talking about art — my love language.
We are meant to connect. I believe it.
So many things can divide us. Learning a new language, I suppose, is like opening yourself up to a whole new perspective. You can focus on all the differences, but the weight of that can be unbearable. Nothing is lighter than joy. And landing on a word, a phrase, focusing on the common, the similar, the connection — this, weighing almost nothing at all, can lift us, higher than we ever imagined alone.
Sometimes the “bird in the hand” (the gift) is simply the fact that we’re reaching out at all. Just a thought from this bird brain.
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.
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 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?
Some days it took as little as wearing an LBD to feel like a superhero. While some may write this off as shallow, I say it is the brilliant understanding of your own power. Finding it wherever you can.
It’s no mistake that my mother found it in her lipstick. I continued her evangelism in a book and on my face. Going to the Sephora here in France yesterday, I asked for assistance, and while she helped me in French, we both knew we were speaking the same language — The mother tongue. And it being one of those days, many applications were required.
In full make-up and my apron (a nod, I suppose, to both my mother and grandmother), I went to the studio to paint. Completing this study in oils, the last thing was to give her clothing. I had already supplied her with the rouge, but just to be sure, I painted a little black dress. And in saving her, I more than saved myself.
It’s ironic, I suppose, that in my daily efforts to absorb the French culture, I can often appear (although you wouldn’t know it to look at me) somewhat German. They have a saying, “nah am Wasser gebaut sein,” which literally means “to be built close to the water.” It describes someone who cries easily, gets teary-eyed quickly, or is very sensitive. Even with all of my grandmother’s “Swede,” I, being born in the land of 10,000 lakes of Minnesota, clearly resemble that remark, both literally and figuratively. I like having the words for it now, even in German.
I was never afraid of the water, neither wave nor tear. My mother saw to that. She drove me to swimming lessons in the dead of winter at the community indoor pool. And she dried my long blonde hair afterwards, somewhat frozen waiting only briefly for her in the parking lot. And just as important, she taught me the strength of being able to show my emotions. Tears of tenderness she called them. Never weakness. So much strength. Even joy. She saw me through the winters of all living.
I’m proud of where I “was built.” No matter where I am, it is where I will be, close to the tender water.
