In the “Age of Innocence,” (if there were ever a time), they used to say, “I didn’t think they’d try it on,” meaning, I didn’t think they’d have the guts to do it. Some may have said that about my mother, but not me.
I’m not sure she ever really knew how brave she was. I know she wanted to be. I guess I knew first, because my grandfather told me. Standing in the kitchen, opposite the sink – grandma in elbow deep – in front of the window that framed the stripped and hanging cow from the tree, he told me I could turn in, or turn out. That I could armored like my Aunt Kay, or be open like my mother. He didn’t mark either as good or bad, both would be difficult, it was just a choice. My mother returned from the other room. Broken, she had the guts to still be ruffled in white. I had already made my choice. To be wounded, but still believe in love, I would ever be “trying it on.”
It was years later, I relayed his message to her. She hadn’t known that he saw her. It wasn’t the way. I suppose it was thought, “Well, it goes without saying…” but mostly I think that means it simply goes unsaid. I can’t let it be one of those times. Ever ruffled in ruffles, I come to the page, to the canvas, to you, wide open, daily. And on those days when you think you don’t have the strength, the courage, the will, you will think of these words, these images, see my mother’s face and heart, and you will find yourself “trying it on.”
The noise was constant. Children and pans. Even the overalls and coats that hung by the furnace seemed to hum. So it was something to hear it — how the upstairs bedroom closets whispered. I could crawl all the way inside and shut the door. Armed with only admiration, curiosity, and my grandfather’s flashlight, I opened the boxes. It wasn’t forbidden — mostly out of lack of time, I suppose. My grandmother had too many things to do. How could she keep track of every child and all those eager thumbs, thumbing through her past.
It wasn’t a lot, when you think of the years that had passed. A few coats and hats. A fox stole. I had to imagine her once this small — before her belly had grandma-ed behind the aprons. To rub the fur was to awaken the genie, and I could see her, clutching her imaginary pearls, blushing at a boy behind the Alexandria hotel.
And I thought how she must have loved us, the pure thought of us, to trade in all those whispers for the never ending noise. I closed up everything with the admiration it deserved and creaked my way down the steps to the kitchen. I got face deep in her softened belly and hugged her. “What’s that now?” She asked. I curled my pointer finger in motion, asking her to bend her ear to my mouth. It seemed too pedestrian to shout it over the din. She wiped her hands on her thighs and bent down. I whispered in her ear, “Thanks for loving me.” She smiled. Kissed the top of my head. And the spoons clanked on.
When they asked Muhammad Ali to give them a poem, he offered up two words. “Me. We.” Just two simple words. But oh, how much they said. ‘Me We’ is a poem about one man’s transition from one to the many, singularity to plurality, and selfishness to altruism.
It’s a reminder to me, how little it actually takes. To make someone’s day. To let them know they are not alone. To give them hope. A smile. It’s a small space from me to we, easily traveled, if we simply remember to take the step.
When I think of my best moments. They’ve always been with someone. It makes me wonder, does anything really happen unless we share it? I’m not sure. I’m not willing to take the chance.
I remember early on, speaking to a group of young school children. I was humbled that they knew the answers to their own questions. After a reading, one student asked why I didn’t use any names, just he, she, they… Without missing a beat a little girl raised her hand and said, “Because it could be anyone.” I’m still smiling. The answer remains the same, this movement from singularity to plurality. We can all do it, take the path, from Me to We.
There is a little patch of pink flowers near the entrance of my studio. When I enter in the morning, or early afternoon. They welcome me, wide open. I don’t have a clock beside me. I paint with the light. When it becomes too hard to see, I wash my brushes, and call it a day. I gently walk past the sleeping patch of pink.
Such is the nature of all things, I suppose. I’ve always done my best thinking in the daylight. My grandma told me it would be true. My mother too. As I buried my face under quilts and covers, “Things will seem better in the light,” they said, and they were right.
I’m reminded daily. Even the flowers know when to shut it down. So I try to do the same. When it becomes too dark — as those creeping winter thoughts can become — I petal myself in, and think of how the pink remains, it’s just time for a little rest.
The morning arrives with all its promise, just as promised, and I reach high into the light.
I’m sure my grandma had some sort of Tupperware, plastic containers, but I don’t really remember them. Then again, I don’t imagine there were a lot of things left over. Not a big concern on how to keep a batch of cookies fresh. I think the bigger concern was how to keep the large ceramic farmer pig full.
There was a time when I was small enough that I could go in elbow deep, once I removed his cookie jar hat. Fingers spread, I would swish and twirl as if that little farmer pig was holding out on me, hiding one last cookie. With so many kids, so many cousins, it emptied with a voracious speed, unlike most pigs had ever seen. Maybe she could tell by the clank of the cover. The sound of disappointment as the lid was dropped back on his head. Because without turning around, she began a new batch.
The defeat of the cookie jar clank, was soon replaced by the thrill of the mixer. Oh, to be so near! To be connected by swishing apron strings. To be first in line to taste the dough. And we did eat the dough without worry. (Truth be told, I still do.)
There are certain ingredients we don’t have in France. Like brown sugar. But yesterday, being elbow deep in desire for a chocolate chunk cookie, I got to work. I googled and searched. Turns out it’s just sugar and molasses. Then to find molasses. Again I searched. A small bio store carried it. Was it supposed to be this thick? Then I remembered “slow as molasses,” and I shook my head to myself. “Elbow deep” turned to “elbow grease,” as I painstaking stirred, and scraped, and stirred my white sugar brown.
I do have Tupperware, but I think these will go pretty quickly. Scents of sugar and chocolate and grandma waft through the house. My heart’s cookie jar is complete.
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
I’m always asking for it. Yet, when it’s given freely once a year in the fall, this gift of time, I could easily complain about it. How to fill the extra hour. How it throws off my delicate schedule. (Insert eye roll here.) So yesterday afternoon, a bit disoriented in this extra hour, walking past the knowing eyes of Grandma Elsie’s portrait, I decided to make cookies.
A delicious use of my time for sure, but really, in the grand scheme of things, it was, as I so often heard on the farm, “the least I could do.” I heard it from my grandma as she baked for her neighbors. From my grandpa, getting in the car to go to the funeral. The uncles coming to help with the fields. My mother, elbow deep washing dishes for the entire Hvezda crew. How easily they all stepped in to offer their gifts of time.
I worry for the world, how far away we’ve moved from “the least we could do.” Maybe it’s the anonymity of our connections, but how did we become so cold? So ungiving? So unwilling to do even the least?
It’s a slippery slope. But oh, how it levels when we do the work. When I release my grip from the angled path to simply put my hands in the dough, I am grounded. Peaceful in all that butter and sugar. I should have learned it long ago. There was never an empty dish in my grandma’s kitchen. The china pig that held the cookies was always full. When I lifted the hat of that pig and saw the handmade treats, I smiled at her, she smiled back, shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s the least I could do.” And I knew I was loved.
I suppose the lesson was, don’t get too attached. Somehow it didn’t take.
But I felt a responsibility. I “accidentally” knocked down the real estate sign each night before bed, out of loyalty I suppose. Because hadn’t I picked out the carpeting. The bedspread. All in bright yellow in my basement bedroom. And I wanted no evidence of the sign through my window after my night time prayers. And hadn’t I lined books on shelves and housed stuffed dolls and animals within that same promise of rising yellow on this sturdy gravel of Van Dyke Road? The truth was, I loved being attached. I loved hopping from the school bus, or off of my bicycle, just past the mailbox that claimed our spot, into the driveway that claimed my heart.
They said it was just things. How easily they threw the metal sign into the back of the car, handed over the papers and sent us on our way. I didn’t have the words for it then, but how ironic it was that to stop all these abandonings, I would have to continue loving with pure abandon.
Everything can be taken away, I guess. But we give away only what we want to. I keep it all. It’s in the story, the painting. The words and books and flag, and photos.
I painted someone’s house. I imagined the story. At some point there was love, I thought, because didn’t they take the time to board the window to keep it all in? And maybe someone told them, don’t get too attached, as they hammered the last nail. And maybe in the painting they will always be.
And don’t I run my fingers across the gathering of all the love that remains and grows? Yes. I am attached. Ever.
It always comes as a surprise — the morning dark. It is delightful though, that I still believe summer will never end. That the morning light will sprinkle me awake and pull me into the promise of ever. And I make those same promises back. I always have.
From the moment I stepped off the last school bus ride of the year. I’d drop what was left of the documentation of another year at Washington Elementary, and I’d pull off my bumper tennis shoes without taking the time to untie, and I’d wiggle my feet in the yet unmown grass, and to each blade of green that snuck through the spaces of winter toes, I would promise to enjoy every moment of sun lit wonder.
And oh, how I filled my pockets with light. Wagons pulled. Balls hit. Bikes ridden. Each one a bright spot to carry me through the winter I would never see coming.
I suppose it’s the same with love. All that light and promise. Even in the darkness, it never goes away. It wiggles through toes and dances in hearts, and keeps its promises. Ever.
I smile at the morning dark. I am not afraid. Everything is still possible. And I am surely loved.
We could have been aproned from her apron, but still we dove right in. I imagine the brunt of what she wiped from bowl to hand to apron ended up on the front of my shirt and the side of my face. This tug to be near defied all things sticky. I just wanted to be a part of it. Of what she was doing. Baking. Creating. Becoming. And she allowed it, because wouldn’t it all get washed, not in the laundry, but in my attempt to help with the dishes.
With the scent wafting through the oven’s heat, she filled the double sink. Extra bubbles. She asked if I wanted a stool. I shook my head no. The cupboard below was already scuffed from my tennis shoes as I placed my hands on the side of the cupboard and hoisted myself up on the edge of the sink. Belly balanced. Feet dangling. Completely wet. I danced my hands through the water. A temperature far less than what she could handle, I crawl stroked my way through the pile. Did she rewash them? I don’t think so, at least never in front of me.
When I could no longer breathe from the weight of balancing, I jumped down. Wiped my hands, my face, my neck and belly, all on her apron. And we were connected. A tug that still calls to me.
When I need the strength of “it’s good enough for joy,” I wrap myself in my Minnesota apron, bake the bread and wash the dishes in a temperature I never imagined I could handle, and I am home.
