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.”
Perhaps if you were to call it an eggplant, you wouldn’t give it such a frame. But l’aubergine, yes, an aubergine could hold its own, and perhaps even more, be the one not supported by, but wearing the frame.
Hearing my name called now, it comes with a French accent, an English one, even German…so isn’t it funny that I always hear my mother’s voice. The familiar long o, so long it sometimes didn’t even have room for the i at the end, it simply wrapped itself around and ended with the d. Framing my heart, not just with love, but with a responsibility. In that drawn out o, I knew I was to keep becoming.
I try every day. Offering up the words and the art. Would she find it worthy of how she framed me? The light in which she wanted me to be seen. My mother. I hope so. I think so. I keep trying. Because didn’t she bat away the ordinary? Try to clear the path? Shrug off and roll her eyes at purple? Yes, yes, yes…Joyfully, I was led to believe that I was aubergine.
The bisous is nice — a kiss on both cheeks — but for me, it will never replace a good hug. I have the imprints on my heart. I can tell you the progression through the years of my grandmother’s hug. The first I can remember were mostly knees. Then I was sticky faced against her apron (maybe because of me, or maybe because of the apron). She was pillowy. And welcoming. Pulling me in so close, I was almost behind her. And then there was the angled structure of my grandfather. Firm and elbowed. Offering the blessed assurance of “I’ll be here, strong, a foot in each furrow.” And then there was my mother. I knew every inch of her. Where my head could rest. Where my mind could wander. The home of every embrace. The feel of each blouse and sweater, hugged so closely, as if to wear the same. And didn’t we wear them together, our sleeved hearts, through every fashion lay-a-wayed and purchased.
This is to be hugged.
It’s not our culture here in France. But it is happening. Slowly. And isn’t it beautiful, that without pattern, knowledge or language even, we can teach each other how we need to be loved.
Ever since I painted his picture, Dominique’s cousin, he has hugged the stuffing out of me. Such a joyful surprise from this man of French measure. Nearly lifting me off the ground. A melding of imprints. Strength and joy and tenderness. All the arms around me now, I paint my way home.
Knowing that the number one rule in improv (perhaps the only) is to always continue the conversation with “yes, and…” — and thinking that life is really one big improvisation — I try to do the same in my daily practices.
I got up early this morning to make the baguettes. The sticky dough questions my every move, and yes, I continue. My tiny spatula is barely a match for the fluidity. It’s like trying to herd cats or gather water in the palm of your hand. But the scent of bread baking is priceless. The impossible cut straight from the oven melts the butter, and beds the lavender honey, and there really is no better way to begin the day.
It feels good to begin in all that agreement. I will ride it to my sketchbook — the current sketchbook whose only rule is “Bird, and…” Every page must contain a bird. It started from the need to lighten the moment. To feel barely more than air. To fly. Thus, the birds, and… whatever I wanted to paint with them. Be it ukulele, purse, or human, it always continues with the bird, and…
The two most recent humans in the book, although pages apart, seem to belong together. And how telling of our world, I suppose. This “pages apart.” But I’m encouraged by the ease of paper turning…the smell of fresh bread, the taste of lavender honey… So as the sun questions, “Will we rise to the moment?” — I can only answer, YES!
I see the Sainte Victoire mountain every day. It always catches my breath. On the halfway point of my daily walk I get the best view. I try to drink it in slowly. It is the latte I order extra hot to make it last longer. It is the tentative first sip of familiar and spectacular against my lips. Delicious.
Sometimes I wonder if I would have noticed it. Would I have just gulped it in and moved on? It was Cezanne who led me to it. Painting by painting. Image by image. In books and museums. Telling me again how worthy it was. How beautiful. And I believed it before I stood beneath it. Before I climbed it. Before I painted it.
That’s what we can do for each other. It’s why I love a latte, I suppose. Because of each one shared with my mother, with my friends. Each sip an experience. Of laughter and tears. An extension of a meal. A way to make the afternoon last longer. A gathering of love, sip by sip.
And the thing is, we can do it with everything. When we share what we love. The things we find important. When we show each other the view from our hearts, it can be the familiar turned spectacular. I mean it’s just a rock, a giant rock, this Sainte Victoire. So if we can turn that into a “breath-taker” — just imagine what else love can do!
It’s time to show our hearts. Look at things differently. Open our minds. And just see!!!!
Perhaps panic is too strong of a word, but I am unsettled when hovering between reads. It took three days of sampling between my last book and the one I’m currently reading. Three days and three nights. Three nights of wanting to get into the next one, but stumbling over the words. Feeling like the story was all jumbled, or even worse, not there at all. No connections. Nothing serifing to my heart.
It was the same concern I had starting in the first grade, when we were allowed to check out books from the Washington Elementary library. We were allotted approximately ten minutes to pick our choice of the week. Ten minutes. I spent longer in my discussion with my mother each night about how that wasn’t enough time for such an important decision. I showed her the whole production — of how most of the class just walked up to the shelf. I opened the cupboard door as I was explaining and picked out a box of minute rice, or paprika, and shook it in my spaghetti arm to explain how they just blindly picked anything. Anything! Without a care in the world — I had heard that phrase on the party line at my grandma’s house. But I did care. And my mother knew it. So she didn’t argue. She just shook her head in agreement. Clutched her imaginary pearls, and I did the same. We both loved books. No further explanation was needed. “In your time,” she said, “and if you need more, you ask for it.” So I did. And it was given. During recess. Lunch hour. I was given the freedom to peruse. To let it remain important. What a gift!
And I suppose that’s why it never reaches a panic now. I remember — it’s only because it’s important. And I still have the luxury to feel it. To believe it. I am wandering today in the 1500s of Italy, in Maggie O’Farrell’s “A Marriage Portrait.” My mind safely adrift here in France, all made possible by my access to the Washington Elementary library. Hooked, connected, serifed by heart, I live in the word, all in my time.
I told him I needed a ladder. No, my grandfather replied. “But I have to get it back into the tree,” I said without crying, but just barely. Not about to change his response, but curiosity getting the best of him, he asked what. “The nest,” I said. He just smiled and again shook his head no. “A bird’s nest,” I reiterated, as if he just didn’t understand and surely with the added description he would go get the ladder and help me. But he didn’t. “The babies…” I pleaded, having never actually seen them, only heard them from below. “They’re fine. They’re already gone,” he explained. “How did they know? Were they ready?” I asked, still assuming we were all afforded that luxury. “You find a way,” he said, both of us knowing we were no longer talking about the birds. Both of us knowing that it was my house, my nest, that I missed. It was a ladder back to when my father lived with us. When everything seemed certain. A ladder back to the nest of trust and security. There was no ladder. We both knew I would have to find a way. He put his finger on the sore part of my heart, “They will be ok,” he said without crying, but just barely. And I knew, with the certainty of tree and the absence of ladder, that I would be too.
I can’t say that through the years I have not asked for the ladder. Thinking, just get me over this. But I eventually get there. Never over. Always through. And my heart moves from sore, to soar. And I am saved.
Maybe it’s easier to see when we’re younger. Or maybe they do the work for us. Giving us uniforms. Gathering us together on buses and in classrooms. Cross-legged on floors in circles, whispering and giggling. They give us mascots and rally songs. And we are a part of something.
And then they send us off into the world. Hoping it was enough. Hoping they gave us the skills to recognize those around us. To connect without uniform.
And you know it when you do. As certain as if the rally song was playing behind you. Those friends, old and new, that know you as you become and become. As you change and grow. Those that walk beside you. In moments of pure joy. In the tenderness of sorrow. Through the uncertainties of success and loss. Always. All ways. Beside. Without hesitation, they join in the laughter, they answer each doubt, each question the same, “…because we’re friends.”
I suppose we could have been called anything, and I would have loved it, but we were Cardinals, so the moment I put on the red uniform, for volleyball, basketball, track, band, whatever, whenever, I, we, represented Independent School District #206, and proudly became those beautiful red birds.
We shortened everything. Perhaps we were in such a hurry to grow up. The name of the town, Alexandria, became Alex, and then simply Alek. Cardinals became Cards, always led with a “Go!” I see the urgency now. To get somewhere. To win. And now, it all seems like a fluttering, a blur of red and black wings.
The Alexandria Boys’ Basketball team won the state championship this weekend. I don’t live there anymore. Not even in the country. The high school that I went to has been torn down. I can’t name a player on this year’s team. But somehow, magically, in that winning flutter, I am part of the we — the “We did it!”
Perhaps more than any team, I think the same when remembering my mother. With each victory big or small. Selling a painting, surviving a hard situation, conquering a fear, just being happy for no reason on a Monday morning — I look to the heavens and joyfully say, “We did it!”
We are only as strong as our connections. They don’t have to be cardinals, but they should lift you, help you reach things you never even imagined. They should be the ones you look to, recognize, call you by name, ever tell you, “one way or another, we are going to fly!”
