Getting my hair cut a few days ago, I saw her. My hair wet and slicked back, there was nothing to disguise my face. She was saying something about my preferred style as she brushed, but all I could hear was the smile of my mother’s reflection. And it washed over me, the same joyful relief and responsibility, as it always had whenever anyone said, “You look just like your mother.”
Sometimes I catch myself — the brain can so easily throw out words that the heart would never dare. And I imagine those words coming out of my mother’s mouth and I fling them away. Because it’s not just her face, it’s about all that she had faced. And how she did it, with grace and dignity. And she, carrying her father’s, wasn’t I carrying both? And isn’t it my responsibility to do the same, and more?
Sometimes I fail. My hand slips on the rock where he stands. My heart breaks the ruffle of her dress. And I know they see me. I have nothing to disguise myself from them. But they keep smiling at me. On shoulder and in mirror. I hear them. I see them. And know they see the love in my attempt. And I give them back their smiles, and I am saved.
People from miles around envied the swings on our playground at Washington Elementary. And by people, I mostly mean the other grade-schoolers up the street at St. Mary’s. Those at LIncoln School had their own, but I imagine they were still impressed. The chains were so long. And the straps of the seats didn’t cut into your thighs. They were perfection. And placed as they were, after pumping for several minutes, and perhaps aided with a slight push from behind from your best friend who dared the thrust of your return, if you stretched your legs at the height of your swing, it appeared as if you were climbing atop the roof of the school. What a thrill to reach that height. And it was that thrill of being lifted that made my stomach jump to my throat, and gave me the courage to face anything the school would offer after the ringing of the recess bell.
Imagine my delight, the first time it happened without the aid of chain links and gravity. I had just cut my finger on the very razor blade in the kitchen bureau that my grandma told me not to touch. It was my heart that sank first. Not because it hurt that badly, but because I was sure she would no longer love me. Still operating under the rudimentary conditions of the playground, where friends were lost and gained in one recess, I started to cry. She wiped her ever dish soaped hands on her apron and knelt before me. Walked me to the bathroom sink and cleaned my minor wound on my finger, but the one on my heart remained. I was still small enough to be shattered, but too big to be carried, so she walked me to grandpa’s recliner. She sat down first, making that happy sound of a cushion expanding. She told me to stand in front. She grabbed the wooden lever on the side, and with that one swoop, she launched the recliner’s leg, and lifted me off of mine into her lap. My belly jumped, along with my heart, and I could only laugh. I knew I could face anything, as long as she loved me.
Even typing this, my belly races to my heart, and I am saved.
There were rare occasions when I saw adults cry. Gathered snuggly around my grandparent’s kitchen table. Perhaps to confine the news that came in the letter. Or the heartache of a loved one lost. To give it open space was to let it catch up to us in the summers of our youth. But sometimes, with the need for a Sugar Daddy, or a Slowpoke, I would sneak through the screen door and see it, them, dampened eyes and heads down, and my heart would sink. The ground seemed to shake beneath my bumper tennis shoes. I backed out the door.
It was my grandfather who caught up to me. Dazed and darkened under the largest tree near the road. He could see I didn’t want to be dazzled by false comfort. And he was never one to do it. “It’s like the Magpie,” he said. He was never much for small talk. He got right to the point. “What is?” I said. “The color. So black that it’s blue.” “I don’t get it.” He told me to get up. He led me back to the kitchen. Dishes had already begun clanking. There was the scent of coffee in the air. Chairs being pushed aside. Knees unbending. Even a few laughters of relief. Life. He looked down at me. “Blue,” he said. I smiled and nodded.
I have carried it for years. This knowledge, even when things are so black, they are also blue. You have to get up. You have to want to see it. But it’s always there.
I look out the morning window. He’s still right. I smile into the blue.
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.
