They loved them for different reasons. My grandma’s a bit more practical. She needed her pockets for Kleenex and treats — we needed candy she said, you know, just to be sure. My mother kept her dreams in her pockets, be it skirt, coat or pants, needing a place to coddle them in hand, you know, just to be sure.
So maybe they weren’t that different after all. They just found their way to comfort through different pocketed resources. And after all, didn’t they both love the autumn candy at Walgreen’s.
We have no candy corn in France. No mellowcremes, or Autumn Mix by Brach’s. Yet, my pockets remain full, with the same magic as the heart, I suppose.
We get to decide the magic that we carry. The love we hold on to. The hopes and dreams and comforts that fill our pockets. Sometimes I find myself leaning up against a French wall, and rolling it all between my fingers, you know, just to be sure.
As a child, sometimes more than once a day, I would have to gather and push all of my swirling thoughts out the front door of our house on Van Dyke Road. It was there on that cement stoop that they could breathe. All of my hopes and plans. My dreams and curiosities. They felt free, like summer toes in green, dew-damp grass. They tumbled without spotters. They grew without restriction. Voices were given to dolls and animals. I planted my future in Hugo’s field. Dared my existence in the North End. Outraced my worry over popping gravel behind my banana seat bike. And in all that release, I felt complete. Full.
I still try to allow the space for the swirling. Letting it loose on canvas and paper. Roaming up the hills of the Montaiguet. Splashing in the pool. I don’t think any of it was meant to be contained. Not imagination. Certainly not love. So I give it space. Room to tumble. And on the stoop of all that feeling, all of that letting go, I am saved.
“I meant no, but it came out yes.” — This was the first card in which my mother appeared. And then she began popping up with great frequency. “There are no operators standing by…” And of course, “I was so tired yesterday, I could hardly think — thank God I was at work.” Certainly the entire poem of “I saw the truth about you…” (because I did). And “Hit by a train…” (because she was). And she wore it like a badge of courage, a badge of grace. My greatest thrill was to watch her at an event, when someone would pick up a card, or print and say, “this is so me!” And she would clutch her imaginary pearls and say, “Well, actually…”
There’s only one way to the canvas or page, and that’s through my heart. Dominique stood in front of the portrait and said, “I feel like I know her…” And I had to smile, because surely he did, somehow. Certainly there are traces of all of his (now our) family, and friends, that pump through my veins. Love cannot unsee. And it can never stop growing, as it picks up the pieces of each other again and again.
Starting the new painting yesterday, I had to stop and smile, because I could see who was coming.
So if from time to time you see yourself here, then know that you too have been seen. You may clutch your pearls and say, “Well, actually… I have been loved.”
I learned quickly on that you don’t tell a farmer, “I have nothing to do.”
We weren’t allowed to be bored on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. And truth be told, there really was no reason to be. Trees to climb and gardens to race. Barns to explore. Cows to annoy. Cupboards to climb into. Lazy Susans to spin. Party lines to listen in on. A balcony to jump off. An electric fence to dare. Flowers to make into dolls. Grass to stain knees. Gravel to collect in shoes. Stairs to count. Overalls to climb into. Dropped off for a summer day, my mother could leave me without prompts.
Writing my daily blog, I ignore the supplied suggestions. Why would I want to write what everyone else was writing? Live like everyone else was living?
Years ago I wrote, “It isn’t that something comes along and gives you a reason to get out of bed. You have to get out of bed and go find that reason, everyday.” It’s ever how I want to live.
I see my grandpa’s portrait on the wall in front of me as I write this. I smile and ready myself to race around today’s barn.
Once she realized that “soon” was no more real than “a long time ago,” — that she could just be in it, this shouldered and weightless grace — there was no more worry of where it had flown, or if it would fly away, it just was…and she was… What a relief to be feathered this way. Not to be ready, but simply be, and know that it was ok.
She smiled at the slyness of this effortless grace, not asking for it to remain, (because certainly grace needed no request) but hoping that she could, that she would… Be.
Of course we had done it with our toys. Our halloween candy. It was transactional and it made sense, this emptying of pockets and putting on the front stairs to distribute with neighborhood girls. A thing for a thing. But everything changed the first day of kindergarten at Washington Elementary. When Mrs. Strand said we were going to “share with the class,” a rustling through pockets and Trapper Keepers could be heard. Were we supposed to bring something? Worried and empty stooped, I sat in panic.
It didn’t turn out to be a thing at all. It was a verbal exchange of our summers. (No one referred to it as summer vacation, because we had yet to do something to vacation from.) When we knew the drill, oh, weren’t our pockets once again full! We spoke of lakes and bicycles. Softball games and skinned knees. Bugs and porch lamps and moms calling for dinner. We had so much to share.
I suppose I haven’t stopped since. The thrill of the exchange has never left.
Moving to France, there was so much uncertainty. Not knowing the culture, the language. Even the color palette was different. There was, I must admit, a lot of “pocket checking.” Did I have anything to offer?
I first heard the word at the dining table. I offered Charles a large piece of a cake that I had made. It was the last piece. He looked at me and asked, “Partager” (did I want to share?) I did. Everything.
I began painting those around me. The world around me. Immersed myself in the palette of Provence. My heart is full. There is so much to share.
A common criticism within the arts is that the piece is overworked. I suppose the same is true with most things. A poem can be too flowery. A batter over mixed. An outfit over accessorized.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned,” is a quote attributed to Leonardo DaVinci. It highlights the fact that perfection is unattainable and creative work is only completed when the artist chooses to stop and let it go.
So I stopped yesterday. On my large painting. And wasn’t it her hand itself that reminded me. You have to let go. It’s so easy to want to add a “but” in there, slip in a “maybe”… but maybe if I, or but I just wanted to… Here’s where I tell myself again and again… I don’t want to live a maybe life.
Sitting in front of the dancing woman, because letting go doesn’t mean you have to be alone, I picked up a small panel, and painted a duck. Some might say a small duck. But this was the duck that helped me move on, helped me feel accomplished in what I had done, satisfied, but not overworked. And as my mother used to say, “Nothing small could do that.”
At the moment my two most popular pins on Pinterest are of young women reading. It warms my heart that neither are distracted by the thousands of views and likes. Nor by the news that we are becoming a post-literate world. They can’t be certain of what lies ahead, but they continue. Fighting back, not with fist nor fury, but by simply reading.
There is so much noise currently. But there are things that still give me hope. An open window. An open spine. The quiet exchange of knowledge. Of truth. That you will take the time to read my simple words. And we connect, not over a ranting rage, but a common calm.
I quietly open the morning window. Taking comfort in knowing that hope always whispers.
“If you opened people up we’d find landscapes.” Agnès Varda
When I fell from my training bicycle, riding down the hill on Van Dyke Road (at my brother’s urging) I was opened up from chin to knuckles to knees to shins. I was certain that if I weren’t bandaged from head to toe, the neighbors would be able to see directly inside of me, revealing every thought, hope and broken promise.
Right from the start, all of my feelings were worn close to the surface, and without skin, well, wasn’t it obvious? Having survived this grand opening, perhaps I never saw the need to hide myself away ever again. Each day when I write, when I paint, a little credit must be given to the gravel of Van Dyke Road, the first to offer, demand even, my vulnerability.
This landscape that I carry, I must admit has often gone uncelebrated through the years. Buried beneath the dazzle of mountain and beach, of lavender field and golden grain. Can you even ask a gravel road to outshine the Champs-Élysées? And yet, when called upon, when skinned to my very core, or delighted to the same, it is there. To hold me. To lift me. To be my solid ground.
My husband often laughs that I always have something in my shoe. It just occurred to me, perhaps it simply fell from heart.
I think I get it now. What he saw. What wasn’t yet there.
The commitment of painting flowers begins in the shadows. In the black. I suppose the desire will always be there, to begin with the popping of the petals, but it’s impossible to paint that way, backwards. They, like all of us I suppose, have to come through.
Finishing the larger of the two paintings, I was there. Not just in the shadows, but in the dirt. The black dirt. The empty field, with my grandfather.
I was always amazed at what he could do. Taking the black, turning it to green, and then gold. What I thought was magic, was maybe artistry. Or maybe they are one and the same. Maybe that’s humanity itself. Being able to see beyond. To sit what isn’t yet there.
Could I be painting the flowers without his vision? Or my grandmother’s in the kitchen. Or my mother’s in her closet? Maybe I only see, because I was seen. I awake from the shadows, because of them.
