They aren’t always so clear. So when I get an obvious sign, I like to celebrate it.
I was thinking the exact same thing when he said, “I like to see the open waters.” I smiled and agreed. What was cold and white, frozen, just a couple of months ago, now rippled and danced blue under a changing sky.
I don’t know if nature is as silly as we humans. Suffering and fighting the cracks. Or does it simply release? They say we have to be cracked open, that’s where the love gets in. But each time it happens, I have a tendency to forget. Put up a struggle. And it’s not like my heart hasn’t been through the “winter months” before…found its way to spring…so why do I, we, fight it? I guess as with everything, we have to be in it to know. So for now, I will simply enjoy the water’s release into the new season. I will flow with the promise of spring and try to keep it in my memory — this nature of things.
Oh, to be open! To it all! Come spring! Cracks and all! I feel buoyant already!
Maybe it was easier then, but we always wanted to keep playing. It didn’t matter the score. We never thought about the 10 run rule. It was something about if your team was 10 runs behind by the 3rd or 4th inning, the umpire could just call it. I suppose we all knew at heart we wouldn’t win, that the game was going to end, but that wasn’t the point. The sun was still shining. Our legs were fresh and our visions were short. We could only see this beautiful day and we wanted to keep having fun!
I have to remind myself of it often. I can get too far ahead. I see the ending of our vacation and I can put myself at the airport. Give myself jet lag before even taking off. It is so silly, I know it. So I fight it. I look at the sun coming through the hotel windows and I think, “It’s going to be a lovely day! I want to keep playing!” I don’t want to miss today worrying about tomorrow. My legs are fresh. My heart is here, right now. Let’s go have some fun!
Maybe you could call it satisfying, but I think that there is a real romance to the act of making something, fixing something. It’s no secret that I like to create, but I also like to be around others that do.
I can’t say it was as often as the coffee shop, but I used to frequent a hardware store in Hopkins, Minnesota. Even when I didn’t know exactly what I needed, they had it. In an unmarked bin. In the back. Pointed out by the man in a red smock, who received additional advice from the two we passed sipping coffee and eating popcorn from a paper sack. I was thrilled to get the right bit, or the thing to hang my mirror…and they seemed to feel the same. The transactions felt clean, accomplished. Parked right in front of the store, I left with a slight hover of popcorn, and a wave, and everything I needed. Nothing I didn’t.
I think we often get glamour confused with romance. With elegance. I am not one to “gild,” but I want to make the things that I touch feel special. Perhaps with simplicity. Ease. A found piece of wood, sanded again and again, so smooth you could brush a cheek, made into a frame that coddles, not overpowers, the delicate painting within. A painting with a story. A palette. A life. Pure romance.
It’s still out there, you know. We can sit around complaining about artificial intelligence. What was made overseas. Or, we could do something. Create something. Anything. Cookies. We could patch those jeans. Tighten that bolt. Clean that bathroom. Not begrudgingly, but joyfully. Satisfied, we could stand with hands on hips to brace the smiles, and wouldn’t it be something? It may just be romantic!
I suppose we could have been called anything, and I would have loved it, but we were Cardinals, so the moment I put on the red uniform, for volleyball, basketball, track, band, whatever, whenever, I, we, represented Independent School District #206, and proudly became those beautiful red birds.
We shortened everything. Perhaps we were in such a hurry to grow up. The name of the town, Alexandria, became Alex, and then simply Alek. Cardinals became Cards, always led with a “Go!” I see the urgency now. To get somewhere. To win. And now, it all seems like a fluttering, a blur of red and black wings.
The Alexandria Boys’ Basketball team won the state championship this weekend. I don’t live there anymore. Not even in the country. The high school that I went to has been torn down. I can’t name a player on this year’s team. But somehow, magically, in that winning flutter, I am part of the we — the “We did it!”
Perhaps more than any team, I think the same when remembering my mother. With each victory big or small. Selling a painting, surviving a hard situation, conquering a fear, just being happy for no reason on a Monday morning — I look to the heavens and joyfully say, “We did it!”
We are only as strong as our connections. They don’t have to be cardinals, but they should lift you, help you reach things you never even imagined. They should be the ones you look to, recognize, call you by name, ever tell you, “one way or another, we are going to fly!”
You had to want to see them — and we did. We were even told where to look, and yet, for a split second, it was hard to distinguish them from the rocks of every other beach. And they weren’t beautiful, until I realized that they were seals. When I imagined these lumps up from their naps, barking and flopping, when I watched the slow up and down of their jiggly breaths, they became alive, real, fascinating even! The longer I looked, stories were revealed. One pup headed back from the water (I guess even seal children struggle to take a nap.) Two snuggled a little closer to each other. They weren’t all the same. These seemingly lifeless rocks at first glance had a story to tell.
I worry about how much we miss. How much we pass by. How many humans we just write off. What if we took the time to really see? I suppose it’s impossible to know everyone’s story, but what if we just acknowledged that everyone has one, that everyone is on a journey. What if we allowed each other to explore? To dare the sea? What if we allowed each other to rest? All in our own time. From ship to shore. Wouldn’t it all, wouldn’t we all, seem a little more beautiful?
She was the first to notice, the waitress in Stillwater, Minnesota. I have worn these earrings every day for a couple of years — the outline of the Sainte Victoire mountain. She brought the check to the table and asked, “What mountain is that?” I beamed, for me of course, but for her as well — being curious, paying attention. “It’s the Sainte Victoire,” I replied, “in Aix en Provence where we live.” And the conversation began, all because she was alive, awake!
These earrings represent home. Heart. Courage. Strength. They are the mountains I have, can, and will continue to climb daily. What made her, of all people, notice? Even in France, no one has asked about them. But she did. Maybe she was climbing her own mountain. Maybe she was asking her legs to carry what her heart just couldn’t bear at the moment. Or maybe she just liked them. And that’s enough too. The thing is, she asked the question. A specific question.
We get lazy I think. Uninterested. We settle on the “how are you?”s and think we did enough. But is it? Is it enough? Is it enough to just pass through each other’s lives? Without learning? Without caring?
Two years of climbing were wiped away in just a few brief seconds, and I was happy! It really takes so little. So I tell myself, I tell you, be curious, pay attention, — it’s not too much to ask.
Having long hair, I would often come home after a tumultuous day navigating the Washington Elementary School playground with a bit of, what my mother called, a bird’s nest. Often tangled in hood or cap. Sometimes even zipped in the collar of my coat. Falling out of one ribbon and retied into another. Bungied, bungled and bouncing around my face. But I was never worried. She took her time. Untangling with care. Strand by strand. Story by story, of the birds that could live there. Until my blonde locks lay gently upon my shoulders.
I suppose I took it for granted. I did until the day that my friend Lisa said her mother really worked her rat’s nest hard the night before. What’s a rat’s nest, I asked. My hair, she replied, it was all snarled, you know, messed up. A rat’s nest — I was silently horrified. Is that what they called it? Not my mother. Never. She would never give me a rat. Always a bird.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, it takes strength to be gentle and kind. But how do we know, unless we are given the example, to first be gentle with ourselves?
I cried when we crossed the border into Minnesota yesterday. I did not fight the handlful of silent tears. I let myself long for the nest that wasn’t there, then cradled myself in the nest that is always with me. My mother gave me that. I will have it ever. Nesting. Gently.
I thought it was the biggest hill possible. Actually I didn’t give much thought to other ones, this was the one in our yard on Van Dyke Road. By the time I finished bundling — snow pants, extra socks to fit into hand me down boots, hat, mittens, scarf, hooded jacket — I could barely remember where I was headed, let alone get there. A slight push from my mother’s hand, and I was out the door. Walking past the picture window, I looked inside for assurance, and waddled my way to the side of the house, dragging my red plastic sled behind me. It was a quick slope that led to the renter’s door of the basement. If it had been possible to run in this outfit, I would have, but I could merely let myself fall into the aligned plastic rocket. The ride was quick, but spectacular. Worth every bundle. I rolled myself out of the sled and dragged it back up the hill again. And again. Until my socks had worked themselves into a bundle at my toes, my breath had frozen into my woolen scarf, and I could no longer feel my fingers. Returning to the warmth and safety behind the glass window.
I suppose there is no bigger hill than the one you are on. Driving through the Rocky Mountains yesterday, I had no need for bundling, not the outer kind anyway. It was warm in the car. My fingers would not freeze upon the wheel. But I did gather myself in. Collected myself in what I have already climbed. My mother kept a yellow sticky note by her phone that read, “What haven’t you gotten through?”
Reaching Denver, I smiled. The sun shone as brightly as a yellow note that held. We had once again made it through, and it was spectacular!
It was either in yesterday’s Phoenix coffee shop or sometime in my Junior year of high school on the gymnasium floor…I can’t be sure, because the feelings were exactly the same, but I knew this woman, coach then, friend now, (the roles could be easily reversed), I knew that she was someone special.
She was young and looked like Janet Fonda, and we, in our teenage years, were eager to tell her both. Eager, and yet we made sure she knew how much we loved her predecessor. We had just begun to learn about love and trust and leaving, so all our cards in the colors of red and black, our team colors, were laid out on the table.
Of course I didn’t think about it then, how hard it must have been to join us. We, who had been friends since five years old. Moved from playground to gym. Knew the language of dropping the x in Alex (our beloved hometown) and replacing it with a k. And here she was, with her new ways and new shoes and I, we, stared through the glass of her office door.
Of course mine didn’t match our volleyball uniforms. My shoes were a light blue. Not Nike, but an off-brand, half-swoosh, that fooled no one, but the only ones we could afford. But I don’t remember ever feeling bad. Not even envious. We were friends, with no where else to go after school, playing in a gym. And I do mean play. Oh, of course we cried when it was all over, but mostly we just laughed. We laughed at the songs sung wrong on the bus, the girl who “mooned” out the back window, and the way none of us really knew how to do the flamboyant flop as we to took the floor before the match. (And we had the floor burns to prove it.)
I don’t mention the games, or our record. I barely remember. What was important is that she became friends with my mother. And sitting with her yesterday, in a coffee shop in Phoenix, she said, “…that’s exactly what your mom would have said…” and I was home. We talked of how those same volleyball girls recently visited me in France. We spoke of my mother, both of us eager to share our love and longing. We gave our compliments freely, and all cards, of every color, were once again laid upon the table.
She smiled when she said, “You were just friends, playing…” I smiled, because that was true about my friends in the gym, and my mother who worked just down the hall in the superintendent’s office.
Of course we cried when we had to say goodbye. But mostly, we laughed…
I wasn’t sure that I could go back there — the last place that I saw my mother. I hadn’t even been on the road since she had passed. But I had made a promise to Phyllis Norton. Phyllis Norton, the anchor of our childhood home on Van Dyke Road. The road I write so often of now. But the same road I couldn’t revisit for more than 20 years. Because gravel has a memory, I suppose. And it releases into you when you travel upon it. Pebble by pebble. But what took me twenty years to learn the first time – that the heart has a filter – only took two, and I found myself on the way to Windmill Ponds to visit Phyllis Norton.
It was only moments in…when her smile was too big to even turn up at the corners, that I forgot the place, and I only remembered her. It could have easily been Van Dyke Road. And I could have been five. Kneeling next to her with a skinned knee. Hovering secure between these mothers of our Van Dyke Road. These women that kept me safe, whether on top of the hill or at the bottom.
The roads that we travel are not always easy. But always worth the journey. The heart knows this. My heart knows this. Disregarding pebbles. Knocking them off one by one. Eager to get to the joy. To get to the love. Always more willing, and ever telling my feet to go, to get there.
Nortons always had the good band-aids. The pink baby aspirin that tasted like candy. A smiling Phyllis to distribute both. Any hurt was always diminished, overtaken by safety, surpassed by joy. Kneeling beside her yesterday, it was the same.
