Coming out of the restaurant she told me, “I love your hair! You look so sassy and smart!” The thank yous were still tumbling from my smile when she said, “But I guess that comes from the inside, doesn’t it..” My heart was smiling too.
Now, I consider myself pretty good at giving compliments, but this was something! She took “beautiful inside and out” to a whole new level. And she seemed as happy as I was, to give it. Bravo to the lady outside Martina’s Restaurant.
My mother was the first to teach me how to give a compliment. (And just by being herself, she gave me ample reason to want to.) She also taught me how to receive it, as the gift that is given.
It’s curious, we wouldn’t do it with a regular gift, refuse a birthday present let’s say. We wouldn’t put our hands out and say No! So why do so many do it with a compliment? “Oh no, not me,” or “not this old thing,” they’ll say, while backing themselves away. When really, thank you, is all that is needed. That is the reciprocal gift.
I’m still receiving this offering in the morning mirror. (Never underestimate the power of a compliment.) And I think the bar has been raised. So I challenge myself. I challenge you. Today, let’s give the compliments freely. (Even to ourselves.) And accept them with joy — so much joy that we have to bundle it and give it away again. Would that make us sassy? I don’t know, but it would make us smart!
It made me laugh. Thinking of how I’m always trying to straddle two worlds. She was sitting at the outdoor cafe when I walked by. She was reading her English translation book, while eating Sushi and a bag of potato chips.
I suppose we never leave behind one place to get to the next. We carry all of our experiences. Some as rocks in shoes. Others as perfectly worn tread. Both gifts.
I’m reminded of the saying, “walk a mile in their shoes…”, but I wonder if that’s really necessary. Do we have to experience everything to be understanding? Isn’t it enough to know we’re all on a journey? Our victories and losses along the way will vary. But certainly, being human, we possess the wherewithal to know we’re all having them. Can’t we connect without “trading shoes”? (Because I don’t think we’d do it anyway.) What if we all just gathered in the skips and the stumbles? Shared the path…
I have been lost in translation too many times to count. In my own French way, I’ve ordered the “potato chips with the sushi” – just to try to fit in. Knowing how easily that door can close, I have to leave it open for others.
I don’t know if my smile relayed all of that as I passed by, but I hope so. She smiled in return. A little always gets through.
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.
Some would argue that in the song “Feeling Good,” the singer has already found their desired freedom. Others say that they are singing to convince themselves of the possibility. I seem to be, not unlike the dragonfly, somewhere hovering in between.
The birds have their songs. The bees, their honey. So what about that dragonfly? Are we not in the same sky? Under the same sun? Sure we’re not all given the same gifts, the same advantages, but we are given the same day. The same 24 hours to make the most of it. I don’t want to waste my time envying the bird, but celebrating my own flight.
And I don’t always get it right. But on those days, I try to sing even louder —
“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day It’s a new life for me, yeah It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day It’s a new life for me, ooh And I’m feeling good!”
There’s a reason for the chorus. The importance of it. That’s why it’s repeated again and again. So on the days when I make the same mistakes, I sing myself out. Not with shame or worry, but simply a welcoming of the chorus.
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.
