I saw my first Mona Lisa, (some might say only), at the Louvre in Paris. It was not my second, nor even third siting yesterday, but there she was, at a restaurant in Stillwater, Minnesota. She made me smile, returning hers, coyly, knowingly, which may be the whole point after all.
We’re very quick to evaluate each other’s experiences. I am not proud of it, but I’ve certainly done the same. Thinking how my travels are more real. My pain more devastating. My love deeper. And it’s just not true. I’m trying to get better. Not to judge, but simply acknowledge. There is no need to keep score.
I was certain that no one could have loved their mother more. No one could feel the loss more deeply than I did. Than I do. But I saw her there. Entering the party. I gave her my smile, my slight turn of lip, my knowing what she was going through, and her return, drenched in tears, told me the truth. The loss of her mother — “her easeled Mona Lisa” was no less real than mine.
The thing is, we think we know. We don’t know. The best we can do is to care. Keep caring.
I will go walking soon. Wearing my Mona Lisa sweatshirt from the Louvre. Not to tell you that “I’ve been THERE,” but more to say, “I’ve been there…”
Looking out the window this morning, I see the tops of two green leafed trees turning red. I had to look it up because I didn’t know, even after so many years of living through the changing seasons, if all trees change their colors from top to bottom. And the answer is no. It varies by species and environmental factors. Some do change from top to bottom, others from the interior, others still from the bottom to the top. And the thing is, none of them are wrong.
We don’t judge the trees for how they change. Could we do the same with humans?
I suppose I’ve always been an “inner.” All my changes have come from within the heart. That is my natural way. But that’s not for everyone. The intellectuals will rouge their way from the top of the brain. Thinking their way into all the new colors. Others still will need to feel it. Seeking proof from foot’s bottom.
And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we just celebrated the colors? Not worrying about how you got there, but that you arrived.
I hope with all my inners that I can do that for you, and even myself. And gather in all that beauty of change to survive the next season. And the next. We are built for change. For rest. For growth. For greening. And starting once again. Bravo, I say, to all that make it though, the changing seasons.
I wish I could tell you what “way” I was trying to stay out of. I don’t remember being told so much as just feeling it. Looking back, was it self imposed? Were there looks? Possibly. Was the sound of my backing out distracting? Probably. Now, I think maybe it was more about finding my own way, than staying out the way of my home town.
I suppose as with any rear view, “things may be larger than they appear.” Still maybe not big, but ever a big deal. These gravel roads and endless lakes. How they moved me, move me still.
I’ll go back home today. (I’ve always been one to do what they say can’t be done.) And thrust myself into the way of it all. Perhaps I still won’t blend, but I will belong.
They’re probably not excited about it anymore. This buying of paper for school. Oh, how I loved it. I think I still do. I guess it’s why I keep buying sketchbooks. Notebooks. We have an endless way to describe them now. Journals. Diaries. Planners. Maybe it’s all just a way to get our lives on paper. Make tangible. These feelings. Hopes. Worries. Dreams. To give the heart a pencil is validating. Not just internal rumblings. It all becomes real, right there on the paper.
Of course I use my iPad every day. It’s a wonderful tool. But I’ll always need the paper. And I don’t think I’m alone. I have to smile when I see products like film to put over your screen, to give the feel of paper. That’s the actual selling point — “feels just like paper.” And you know what else feels just like paper — paper.
Of course our technology has built-in memory. But it has to be directed to “save” something. Paper, all on its own, just like the heart, has a memory. If you fold it, it remains. The tracings, even erased, have created a pattern. Maybe that’s most like us. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the fold. My heart remembers, remembers who was there to help me learn. To study. To free me. To unburden me from a thought that simply had to passed during class.
I get a little jimbly, this time of year, this back to school. I won’t be getting on the bus, but I will keep learning. I want to always keep learning. So once again, I give my heart a pencil.
I don’t remember anyone telling me it was beautiful (and I remember everything), but somehow I knew. It’s everywhere. Just grass and trees. Leaves and bushes and lawns. Flowers left to scatter wild on lengthy stems. (I suppose that’s where they get me, because I think I’m one of them.)
My mother had long legs. And better yet, the longest strides. I thought it was her superpower. For years I ran behind, trying to hang on to her cape. Which day was it that I caught up? No longer in the wave of that cape, the wave of her superpowers, but side by side. There was nothing we couldn’t do. Nowhere we couldn’t go. Stride for stride.
I love to walk still. Though it feels more like flying. I see people in groups in every country. Some wonder, even ask, “Why do you walk alone?” I only smile, because the truth is, I never am. Never will be. I wave and whoosh along the pash.
“I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
I had been living in the poem, long before I had even heard of Robert Frost. I had never been one to blend. Even the love of poetry itself seemed somewhere off the beaten path. But all the treasures I have found have never been by pushing my way through a crowd.
Yesterday, as folks made their way to lake and fair, we went to the museum. I started my grin when we parked with ease. Then a full blown smile as we walked through the entrance. The halls were empty. We talked about paintings in our normal voices without struggle. Walked right up to our favorites. Took photos without obstruction. I could only giggle, as it seemed to be open just for us.
I can’t waste time worrying that it probably will never happen again, because it did happen. And that’s more than enough.
I bought a pencil in the gift shop. Gift shop pencils always seem to work better for me. I think the wood absorbs all the creations of what was and flows into my creations of what will be. I suppose the same is true for love and life. The halls of the day are wide open. I can only giggle.
We were surrounded by it — growth. Hugo’s field rich with grain. The swamps in the North End, ripe with thickened green. Marigolds lining driveways. Lawns under the hum of walked mowers. Discarded school books on abandoned summer shelves. Tennis shoes bursting out at the toes. Yet, it was imagination that surpassed it all on Van Dyke Road.
We were given space. An empty lot sat between our house and Dynda’s. An empty lot to do anything we imagined. What a gift this empty! What drew us to this nothing? Made us race our bikes over gravel and abandon them in the ditch just to be in this open lot? When I type it now, this “lot of possibility”, I have to smile, because I suppose that was it — so much — a lot! — of possibility. Here we had the freedom to imagine our way out of or into any situation. Balls and flashlights. Teams and cans and bases. Forts and races. Worlds away each day, but gently tethered by a mother’s front porch call.
The magic still holds. When Dominique asks me, “What do you want to do today?”— and I can answer, “nothing” — we both smile. And I race toward all things possible, knowing the lot.
Those that play know it’s there, the piano in our library. It’s one of my favorites spots in the house. A collection of art, music, books and photos. And it will call to you, in the voice that you need to hear.
I suppose we’re all drawn to it, what we love, if we dare to follow the radar that pulses from each heart beat. I’m always surprised when people say they don’t know. It’s literally pounding inside of you. I guess they are afraid.
It has been said that we’re driven by one of two things, love or fear. Love will lead you to the piano. Will never allow it to go unplayed. Love will encourage the stumble through each note. The beginning again and again. Love will music your family in, and soon you will all be part of the song.
Fear is quiet. Lonely. Cold. (It’s not lost on me that my painting above the piano reads, “all my heart ever wanted, was just to come in from the cold.”) And it has. This is my hope for all. My welcoming.
In recent days, within minutes of entering our house, our nephew, who was vacationing from the US, was at the piano. I suppose one never takes a vacation from the self. So many miles away, almost instantly, he found his way home.
The best we can do is keep them in sight – the pianos and books, the kitchen tables, the art supplies and open corners on beds, the hearts between outstretched arms. But we all have to listen, to follow, to become. It’s up to each and every one of us to be brave enough to try. To come in. To dare the unplayed piano.
It’s probably the closest I get to meditation. Swimming. The thing about water, you can’t bring anything. No phones or connections to the world whatsoever. Just you and your thoughts. And even they can weigh you down. So I try to push them out with the counting of each lap. They are slippery though — they can fin their way in — with invented conversations, arguments even, completely fabricated. Even my arms will say, “c’mon, enough already”…wiggling fingers that urge the return to pulling water. It takes quite a few strokes, but I always get there. Into the rhythm. Soon my breath and arms and legs are in sync, and the numbers begin disappearing, so quickly I wonder if I actually counted that lap, and I do it again. I imagine it’s like a dancer, who finally learns the routine and can just let go into the dance. That’s my brain in the pool. Buoyant upon the sun-ripe ripples. Floating. Carried. Dancing between the two blues of sky and water. Weightless of what-ifs, just simply being.
I highly recommend it — this letting go. And maybe for you it’s not in the pool, but on the road, or in the garden, in a book, or within a song. It could be anywhere you are able to release the baggage. When I get stuck, dragging the day’s luggage, I imagine myself in the water, satcheled with such. And I laugh. I don’t imagine we were meant to carry any of it. Except maybe joy. Nothing is lighter. Go ahead and carry that with you. Everywhere.
What was it all for if we didn’t have a little fun?
It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming.
Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night. Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening.
In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!
I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons.
So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true.
For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry.
