Spring arrived not only on the side of the hill, but also in my step. I can buy it at the grocery store. In fact I did just a few days before. And it was delicious. But it can’t match the thrill of finding asparagus, petite stalk by stalk, just off the pathway.
And when I say hill, mountain would be closer to my leg’s truth. It is quite steep. And can be challenging. But while searching for the wild asparagus, I noticed on my second trip up, I hadn’t heard a thing from my thighs. Now, I’m sure they didn’t feel any different from the day before, but I think they knew the task. I think they knew they were as much a part of the hunt as my eyes that scanned, my back that bent, and my hands that grasped. I think to complain would have set them apart, so they marched silently up the hill, and joined in the victory when the asparagus omelette was made just hours later.
It was my grandfather who always told me whenever I was in deep struggle, (often self imposed), to focus on someone else. And I’m sure I struggled with that as well, screaming like an angry ascending quad, but he was right. He was always right. It’s a lesson I keep learning. Sometimes more quickly than others. But I still celebrate in the victory. He would like that — because in doing so, I am also thinking of him.
He comes the day. I’m about to join in. I climb. I hope. I reach. I pray. I curse. I kick. I laugh. I rest. I climb. I hope.
I’ve started a new project. Each time I do, there are always things to be learned. Computer programs change so quickly. The paths to incorporate my artwork from page to printer are constantly changing course. And armed with my mother’s sense of direction, (she who thought the map at the mall should be on the ground so you could just step into it), I can’t say that I find my way quickly, but joyfully, I always find my way. I suppose it’s because I’m never traveling alone.
My first step was to get photos of all the new images. I was stumbling about. Turning pages. Checking lighting. It all felt so clunky. And then I got the tap on my brain’s shoulder that said, “get the sticky notes.” It was my friend Deb who gave me the little notebook of multi-colored tabs. We first used them to mark our favorite outfits in the Sundance catalog, sipping lattes, and reading the cover letter from Robert Redford, as if he had addressed it to us personally. We had colors to mark “maybe,” “yes,” and “why am I not wearing it right now.” Hours of entertainment with just a stick of a color.
Smiling, I used those notes to mark the pages of my artwork. It all began to make sense. I found my direction. Even using the new programs on my computer became easier.
I keep moving forward, but not without those who got me here.
There’s an expression that people use when someone dies that I’ve never liked — “She’s no longer with us.” It couldn’t be further from the truth. While the Sundance store has closed, my friend Deb sits right beside me. And I am saved.
There was a group of men helping my grandfather. I suppose neighbors. Being the sponge that I was, I listened to them during their break. I could still fit underneath the table, amid the smell of earth from boots and overalls. They drank the coffee and ate the kolaches, and spoke as if they were one of us, even though they said the name wrong. Hvezda. Yes, it began with an H, but we didn’t pronounce it. It was vee-ezda, not he-vezda, I shook my head and told the table leg. Still, they finished the plates and drank the coffee to the grounds. Joyfully. And they would come back, again and again.
I didn’t ask why. The answer, for my grandfather, was always nature. So I walked in it. I hope I still do.
They say that Redwoods are smart enough to share with neighboring trees the water that they collect. Knowing that to hoard it would put them at greater risk in a wildfire.
My grandparents were Redwoods. What am I? What are we?
I’m currently reading Theo of Golden. It wasn’t long in when I realized I had seen the main character before — the elderly man with the gray hair, kind eyes, and green flat cap. I opened my sketchbook. There he was. Now with every word of the book, I can see his face. That’s the magic of not just reading, but living in the word.
I suppose we’d call that empathy. Maybe that’s what books are for. To give us the practice for real life. Oh, it comes so easily with the turning of the pages. How we can immerse ourselves into their lives. Really see them. Experience the journey. And if it’s a pleasure to do by the book, shouldn’t it be so face to face. Certainly everyone in literature is an other, ones that we can fascinate. Why do we fear them in real life? I wonder if we imagined their stories, gave them faces, what our world would, could become.
I think it’s worth the practice. So I dive in deeply. Gently. Amid the stories. Amid my own. And maybe we see each other a little more clearly. And we become…
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.”
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.
