I did end up breaking my arm, and my heart countless times, but never my neck. And oh! didn’t they warn us, scold us, over and over. Anything we did slightly out of the norm, teachers, parents, neighbors, all gave the warning, “You’re gonna break your neck!” From the monkey bars to the top of our desks, in trees and on clotheslines, it seemed we were all willing to take that risk.
There was a lot to learn. And I suppose a lot to warn us about, so maybe they just grouped it all under the “neck.” Because it was vital, wasn’t it. In order to survive, you had to stick your neck out from time to time. Hold your head up high, they said. And sometimes, even when you were up to your neck, you still had to save someone’s neck, (sometimes your own). Somehow, we got by, perhaps merely by the scruff of our necks.
I suppose I’m doing it each day, with these stories, this artwork, sticking my neck out. But just as my five year old self told me to grab hold of the neighbor’s swinging clothesline, it feels so necessary in order to be alive! To expose yourself, to take the risk, to love!
In the fifth grade, at our Valentine’s Day party on the frozen pond of Noonan’s park, I raced on my skates to grab the human “whip” that would not only be cracked, but also break my arm. Still fully casted in plaster by our next field trip to the Chanhassen Dinner theatre, I sat in the audience and listened to the Impossible Dream. “To run,” they sang, “where the brave dare not go!” We cheered and clapped and I waved my plastered arm in the air.
Who knows what the day will bring. I’m stilling willing to take the risk.
“Let’s say the things we never said. Let’s forgive the things we never could. Let’s love like no lessons have already been learned. Let’s dream like we have the chance, and live like we have no other.“
Shopping Michigan Avenue, my mom and I wanted it to never end. We went in every store. Up and down. Miles and miles of Chicago’s “magnificent.”
We weren’t big Nike fans, but the store itself was gorgeous. We feigned affection. Running our fingers against t-shirts and track suits (long before leisure wear, that’s what we called them.) I don’t know who stopped first, but we stood in front of the poster and read. Words could always hold our attention. There was a woman running on a country road with these words, “There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.” We both smiled, and ran along beside her.
The places we traveled in that truth! I still do.
I’m still sometimes thrown by Mondays in France. Nothing is open. Yesterday morning, I told Dominique that we were out of treats. Before he finished asking, “Where would you like…” we both realized the Mondayness of the situation. By mid afternoon, I was able to travel to Chicago in order to find that my French kitchen was always open. Monday didn’t stand a chance against my molasses. I made the cookies, and may I say, they are magnificent.
I pride myself in finding a way. My mother saw to that. She’s still guiding me through Monday. Tuesday is here. Wide open! Let’s run!
Maybe it was more intimidating when dress shops had an actual name. When the boutique said it was not just fashionable, but the fashion of this woman. This LaRou. And we knew it was her choice, her idea of what to wear, because it was right there, in the name of the store, within the possessive of the “s.” With all respect and admiration, I followed my mother beneath the gentle ring of the opening door, as she stepped into LaRou’s.
She lightly touched the fabrics. Sure not to leave a trace of evidence that the money wasn’t there. Yet smiling, behind the knowledge, she was worthy of wearing.
Through the years, I watched her confidence grow. I watched her walk through the bells a little faster. A little taller. The names on the stores changed. The locations. From Alexandria, to Minneapolis, to Chicago and New York. All the “s”s that were dropped, she collected and wore them proudly. For each outfit was not theirs any longer. She added the grace. The style. And didn’t they all become Ivy’s.
I see it so clearly now. Watching people become. How extraordinary they are, you are, when you step into your grace. Claim it as your own. Walk proudly under the ringing of your own bell — your opening to this life. Claiming your apostrophe. Beautiful!
My mother took in ironing. Just being born, of course I didn’t have the words for it, or any words at all, but I think I knew. I could feel it, the warmth. Not the heat from the iron, nor the steam, but the balm of service done with grace.
It wasn’t humility. She wasn’t lowering herself. She loved clothes. She needed the money. She tested the quality of the fabric between thumb and forefinger. She knew how it would behave. How to make the collar and cuffs respond, not with rigidity, but a wantful desire to frame a face, release a hand. When finished, she didn’t just exchange it for cash, she showed them how to wear it — not as a mannequin, but a woman with style unpurchased. And they knew it. That’s why they came back. They could have gone to the local dry cleaner on Broadway, but they returned to my mother, in the white house, near the end of Van Dyke Road.
I watched her years later, doing it for herself, and I could still feel the hands that cupped the back of my head, marveling at the warmth against my resting spine. My mother took in ironing, and ever returned it with grace.
I bought it at an antique store in Hopkins, Minnesota and carried it back to France with me. You know it’s valuable when I allow it space in my ever overpacked suitcase.
It’s from a time when people still wrote letters. When desk objects were given beauty along with function. On the right is a tiny scale for the weight of the words, and the left a circular housing for the precious stamps that carry them. Of course I don’t need the scale. I have a pretty good idea of the weight of the words. At least I hope the receiver knows — knows that I could have just sent a text, an email, but instead thumbed through all of my cards, along with the thoughts of this person, picked out the one that fit the situation, borrowed my husband’s best pen, wrote in cursive (like nobody’s taught anymore), signed it, meant it, sealed it with wax, and walked it to the post office. And isn’t it just as important that I know?
My little antique scale can’t weigh all that, but it does remind me to keep doing it. Yes, I have an Apple Pencil, an iPad. I love modern technology. It is connecting us today. But I keep reminders around me — that there is more. The more of photographs printed. Books with spines. Jams without preservatives. Art with actual signatures. And I make the connections with heart and hand. And the joy that it brings, that I carry so easily, daily, makes me smile, because it actually weighs nothing at all.
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!”
She was the first to notice, the waitress in Stillwater, Minnesota. I have worn these earrings every day for a couple of years — the outline of the Sainte Victoire mountain. She brought the check to the table and asked, “What mountain is that?” I beamed, for me of course, but for her as well — being curious, paying attention. “It’s the Sainte Victoire,” I replied, “in Aix en Provence where we live.” And the conversation began, all because she was alive, awake!
These earrings represent home. Heart. Courage. Strength. They are the mountains I have, can, and will continue to climb daily. What made her, of all people, notice? Even in France, no one has asked about them. But she did. Maybe she was climbing her own mountain. Maybe she was asking her legs to carry what her heart just couldn’t bear at the moment. Or maybe she just liked them. And that’s enough too. The thing is, she asked the question. A specific question.
We get lazy I think. Uninterested. We settle on the “how are you?”s and think we did enough. But is it? Is it enough? Is it enough to just pass through each other’s lives? Without learning? Without caring?
Two years of climbing were wiped away in just a few brief seconds, and I was happy! It really takes so little. So I tell myself, I tell you, be curious, pay attention, — it’s not too much to ask.
I thought it was the biggest hill possible. Actually I didn’t give much thought to other ones, this was the one in our yard on Van Dyke Road. By the time I finished bundling — snow pants, extra socks to fit into hand me down boots, hat, mittens, scarf, hooded jacket — I could barely remember where I was headed, let alone get there. A slight push from my mother’s hand, and I was out the door. Walking past the picture window, I looked inside for assurance, and waddled my way to the side of the house, dragging my red plastic sled behind me. It was a quick slope that led to the renter’s door of the basement. If it had been possible to run in this outfit, I would have, but I could merely let myself fall into the aligned plastic rocket. The ride was quick, but spectacular. Worth every bundle. I rolled myself out of the sled and dragged it back up the hill again. And again. Until my socks had worked themselves into a bundle at my toes, my breath had frozen into my woolen scarf, and I could no longer feel my fingers. Returning to the warmth and safety behind the glass window.
I suppose there is no bigger hill than the one you are on. Driving through the Rocky Mountains yesterday, I had no need for bundling, not the outer kind anyway. It was warm in the car. My fingers would not freeze upon the wheel. But I did gather myself in. Collected myself in what I have already climbed. My mother kept a yellow sticky note by her phone that read, “What haven’t you gotten through?”
Reaching Denver, I smiled. The sun shone as brightly as a yellow note that held. We had once again made it through, and it was spectacular!
I only had to hear it once for it to stick. “There are no stupid questions,” Mrs. Strand said, addressing the thirty strained-necked five year olds looking up from their cross legged positions at Washington Elementary. So the questioning began.
Behind our house on VanDyke Road, there was a field of grain. Hugo’s field. Lined from green to gold every summer. My grandpa had the same, but he also had a field for the cows. Unlike the fields of grain, it was fenced and trampled — “But still a field?” I asked my grandpa. “Yes, he said. “But what will grow?” “The cows,” he said. I shook my head in agreement.
I was surprised the first time my mother dropped me off at the field to play softball. This was a field too? This sanded and based lot. The teenage boy who we loosely called coach said he would teach of the basics – hitting and fielding. Fielding? No one else raised their hands. Why wasn’t anyone else questioning all these forms of field. I put down my hand and began to play.
It wasn’t lost on me that when you were asked to choose your line of work, it was your field. And when you became good at your chosen profession, you were “outstanding in your field.” The first time I heard this, probably because of Mrs. Strand, Hugo, because of Grandpa, because of the teenage boy, I heard, “out standing in your field.” I still think of it that way. Because this is where I go to create, to the tender fields that led me here. And they were tender. Even through every cracked bit of earth, with every run and trample, I learned. When yields were low. I learned. Each season, I grew. Never with a guarantee, but always a promise of hope. It is with this welcoming of wonder, I wander today’s field.
Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
I don’t know how she knew. There were no influencers. No self help books. And even if there were, she wouldn’t have had time to read them. She would have laughed at the thought of someone telling her to stay “in the now.” “Where else would I be?” She would have said.
It was a Saturday evening. Grandma Elsie’s “now” was filled with some pots brewing, others soaking. She shooed me away from the stove into the wafting of Grandpa’s pipe. I followed it into the living room. I didn’t ask, I simply followed the pinstripe of his overalls onto his lap. He perched the pipe away from the top of my blonde head. “You smell like today, “ I said. He raised his eyebrows. It was a combination of sun, and breeze, and hay and earth, topped with just a hint of tobacco. I squeezed the pouch in his pocket, still wanting to touch the end of his pipe, but remembering the heat from the first and last time I touched it. I pulled at the corners of his pierced lips to form a smile. He was still so new. I wanted to know everything. I didn’t have the words for it then, but he, being already formed, I wondered if I could be a part of it. I sculpted his face and flannel like clay, wanting to be somehow connected. I put a thumb on each of his eyebrows and pulled upward. “That means surprise,” I said. He smiled on his own this time, without my pulling, and I knew that we were connected.
The pans clanked in the kitchen. The coo-coo of the clock stayed silent. It was only a moment, but it was beautiful. And we were in it. I’m sure he had thoughts of tomorrow’s farm, but he didn’t stray. He tapped his pipe in the tray beside the lounger. And we gathered in the scented remains of the day.
