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.
I could print it here for you, a poem that I’ve recently discovered, but that wouldn’t be the same. I know this, because I grew up walking to the library, not holding it in my hand. And what a glorious lesson this was — having my whole body in search of the information. Feet trudging to get hands winging through card catalogs. Eyes searching. Arms carrying loads. Books spread on tables. Thumbs thumbing. Pencils scratching notes. Reading again. Scratching again. Re-reading. Hoping. Willing the information from toe to head.
And when the test came, (they always come), what a thrill it was to walk the answer through each step and write it down on the challenge of blank paper. Every inch of your being smiling with delight, knowing “I helped.”
As you wander today through “the ruthless furnace of this world,” I encourage you to be “stubborn” enough to “delight” in the search of this marvelous poem. Read it. Trace it with your fingertips and feel the wonder.
I know it’s just a googling of the quoted lines, but still, when it pops on your screen, when your hands type and your eyes wander, maybe you’ll feel the joy, the delight, of a library trudged, knowledge gained, and a heart expanded.
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.
Before Herberger’s anchored the mall, it reigned supreme on Broadway. A perfect Saturday was riding shotgun in the Chevy Impala with my mother. I twirled the quarter in my sweaty palm. (No time would be wasted loading the parking meter.) Through the double glass doors, even the gumball machines were not a distraction. I walked, almost skipping, looking back to hurry her along. I reached the grand staircase first. She nodded me to go ahead. I waved, passing the women at the office on the left, then turned to go up the second flight. The fluorescent lights shown brightly over the racks at my height. I was lured to the girls’ dresses along the wall. I can’t explain why, but the clothing in my size even smelled sweeter.
I can’t say how long it lasted, but there was a time when I thought the reward was not to own the dress, but simply to try it on. To play fashion show behind the curtains, in front of the three-way mirrors, was what I longed for while desked at school on a Wednesday.
Holding the painting in my hand, creating the young girl who dreams of wearing the yellow dress, I am in France, but also on Broadway.
What happens next, may be hard to believe, but it is true. I was nearly finished with the painting. I could sense movement from my iPad that sat on the easel keeping time. I stopped and watched the photo app open, flashing through several pictures, then stopping on my mother. My heart caught in mid smile. Some magic is real. Somehow, some way, she had made it up the stairs before me, waiting in the sweet smell of just what I needed, of just my size. And I was saved.
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.
This was not my grandfather’s field. Hugo didn’t wear the assurance of overalls. We weren’t supposed to cut across his field to get to our house, even though it would save a good five to ten minutes. And coming from the fairgrounds, it was a straight shot. Still dizzy from the last spin on the tilt-a-whirl, and a little bit of sick on my t-shirt, I hadn’t the strength nor the will to go around. I stepped into the stalks. With tassels reaching over my pony tail, I relied on my feet and not my eyes. Less sure and more hot with each step, I began to slow down and question each decision made that day. Experience had taught me not to go on the rides, but with only a series of “c’mon”s I boarded. As I stomped through the dirt, it was this that bothered me the most. Even more than throwing up in public, I hadn’t the strength to say no. Which led me here, in the middle of a field that I promised the last time not to cut through, and yet, when my heart asked my feet to go the long way, they refused. And now here we were again. Sick.
I don’t know how long I stood. It was most confusing, I suppose, because there seemed to only be one answer. Not the normal conflict of good and evil argued between shoulders. No. Not good and evil. Only two farmers speaking in my ears. Hugo and my grandfather. Both telling me to go back. Go around. Oh, my feet had a few things to say, but still I turned. When I got to the road near the cemetery in front of the fairgrounds, I saw her. Cindy. Not my best Cindy, but the third one I knew from our school. Had she been one of the c’mons? I wasn’t sure. She waved and ran towards me. Reached out her hand. “You dropped this,” she said. The plastic wagon wheel key chain that I had won at the ring toss, just before I tossed my belly on the tilt-a-whirl. It was worth maybe pennies. But the fact that she walked in the heated summer sun to find me, being not even my best Cindy, this was priceless. She asked if I was ok, never mentioning my shirt. We hugged like the schoolgirls we were. I joyfully walked around.
It was such a contrast. My grandma’s kitchen table had legs that stuck out beyond the range of feet passing. Having only one other kitchen table so far in my short life, it’s funny how quickly I adapted to the thought that all would be the same — an easy pass. Clinging to the assumption, I repeatedly tripped on her table.
It didn’t seem to bother her, nor my grandpa. I had yet to learn of “the grand scheme” of things, as they often said, explaining away how simple table legs didn’t really matter. At first I scowled. Then I marveled. And I wanted to do the same. I wanted to get past the table legs to the joys of the kitchen. To the Kellogg’s cereal variety packs. To the Lazy Susan filled with Sugar Babies, Daddies and Black Cows. Did I still trip? Sometimes. Sometimes not. I suppose I began to let it go. And as I let it go, I imagined the struggle releasing as puffs of cartoon smoke, floating above my head, and finally disappearing into what I could only explain as the grand scheme.
To display one of my newer paintings, I had to put up an old easel. Not my favorite. Its spindly legs need to extend out quite far in order to balance. (Some days I resemble that more than others.) Tripping on it, as I often do, I simply adjust the painting that has been slightly rattled, smile, and release my “cartoon puff” and go back to painting.
I found it next to the trash bins on my walk yesterday. A small shelf made out of wooden slats — perfect for making a framing brace behind a painted panel. I walked it home. Took out the screws.. Pulled out the nails. Sanded each piece. And made my first frame for an existing panel.
Maybe it’s silly, but I feel like the wood is alive. Even after being cut. Even after supporting shoes in a French closet. Even after being discarded. Even after sitting by the bins, thinking there was still a chance to be of use. Didn’t it say, just take me home. Knowing that wasn’t back to the closet, or even the forest, but just somewhere to be valued. To be loved.
There has been a world of places where I’ve felt it. A variety of hands and hearts that have reached out, and taken me to places that I’ve never been, but walked me home all the same, with the gift of purpose, the familiar of heart.
We can do this for each other. Let go the forest, and be the pathway home.
She waited a long time to be framed. It wasn’t until I removed the existing panel to paint on the opposite side, that she had her opening. I did have to trim her ever so slightly, but she was more than willing. And now it’s her time. She’s not more important to me, I loved her from the first paint stroke, but now others perhaps can see her, for all that she is, ruffled and strong, worthy of framing.
It’s something to be given first hand sight. To watch the becoming of another. I was given that gift with my mother. Of course I loved her from coddled elbow, to grabbing at ankles. From two stepping in her elongated stride. To catching scattered tears in chubby palms. Dancing under the umbrella of her smile. I never imagined that others couldn’t see it.
She took her cuts and trimmings with a grace that I knew would one day be framed. And I watched her grow into that knowledge herself. I watched the fragile ruffles grow in strength every day. Simply. Beautiful.
When she first saw this painting, she said, “Oh, I want that blouse.” And in that statement I could hear the confidence of the wearing. She knew she could hold up every curve, with an earned and glorious grace. It was her time. My heart will ever frame.
