Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.
Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.
People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.
It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.
I recently learned that when birds sleep in a row, the two on the outer edges keep one eye open to protect and allow those on the inside to fall asleep. It doesn’t surprise me, I have rested within that protective watch.
There is a big scientific name for it, which I’ve already forgotten, this act of being able to keep “one eye open” while being in a half sleep — we’ve always just called that “pulling an Elsie.” She had to have been doing the same thing — birding her way through every card and dice game played on her kitchen table. Able to sleep while we pondered over our next move, then waking at the exact moment to handily beat us with chirping joy! And I saw her do it everywhere. In the funeral home where she phone-sat. At the grocery store check-out line (she did indeed check out). Even once in the car. But I was never worried. The speed at which she could belly-jiggle herself awake allowed all of us to rest, to play, to run in a carefree summer, to sleep soundly under her watch.
I suppose you could just rule it all as nature. But I know not everyone was blessed with a Grandma Elsie. So I give thanks. And make my way to the outer edges.
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.“
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 find it thrilling, reading a book and entering a place I’ve already been. Like I’m in on the secret. Like the letters of the words are eyelashes in the wink that says, I see you.
I’m nearly finished with the book, “Geek Love.” It is perhaps the wildest ride I’ve encountered for quite some time. It couldn’t be further from my reality, and yet… yet, there it was, as clear as if I were en route on Highway 7, looking up at the green sign, “Hopkins, Minnesota.” Never have I read a book that mentioned it before. Minnesota, sure. Minneapolis, of course. But never Hopkins. And I was knee deep, no, heart deep, in the word.
Maybe it’s empathy. Validation. Or simply our need to be seen. But it got me thinking. If mere words can do that, simply on a page, couldn’t we do that for each other? Aren’t we supposed to? Having not only traveled through place, but emotion, don’t we have the responsibility to turn back and say, “I’ve been there. And I see you,”? I think so. So I gather the words and arrange them on this page, and maybe you see yourself, and maybe that gets you looking, and maybe you see someone else, and they find comfort in you having been there… and… and they see hope… and someone else…and the story never ends.
I only saw it last night. Could it have come sooner, or was it right on time? Awakening in the thick sky of wee hours, I had left the shutter open, and saw how it wasn’t simply dark, but so black it was blue, like a Magpie. And if it were a bird, this absence of light, couldn’t it just as easily gather those night weary worries under wing? Couldn’t it say, this is not for you to carry? Not now. Not in this light. This is the color of letting go. This is the color of release.
Some say a Magpie will steal anything. I don’t know if that’s true, but if they did, if they do, I decide to leave my concerns above cover, and let them take it. And I give thanks for the thief of worry. No longer bruised, but released by the black and blue of it all. And I am saved.
It’s not lost on me that the words are so similar. So often when painting the birds, I feel the smiling, winged “wink” from above.
He didn’t really know me, when he commissioned the painting for his wife. (Didn’t know that I have a “bird by bird” daily regime.) When I finished, he asked if I could add a little something special on the back. “Could you paint a bird in flight?” I looked around the open sky to see who was watching, “Yes,” I smiled, “I could paint a bird…”
I painted for her a yellow bird to match the yellow house on the front. And I wasn’t sure if they were led to me, or I was chosen, or if we all simply met mid flight. And I suppose it’s that idea that I like the most, thinking we’re all just trying to make this journey a little lighter, a little more joyful… and wouldn’t it be something if we did our best to lift each other, even with just a wink and a smile.
Anyway, it’s always a good reason to keep looking up.
There’s probably a path worn from my daily trek to the hills of the Montaiguet. But I can tell you, I have never walked the same way twice. (Sure, if you’re going to count by tread marks, but my travels are led (or whisked away) by imagination, and are more like the darting of the birds to the stories just behind the trees.
I suppose I started on Van Dyke Road, dragging a wagon full of fellow wanderers — more than willing participants in the sunlit adventure of the afternoon. No rules or fences, only wonder. “I wonder if my hand could fit in there?… or if my doll could reach that highest limb? If the elephant I won tossing rings at the Douglas County fair missed its friends, and were they waiting in the North End? Could we all survive on one can of Chicken Noodle soup? Could the wagon actually take flight if pushed fast enough down the hill? How do you get grass stains out of a baby blanket? Is there a secret land in Hugo’s field? Could my mother always find me?”
My feet may not be as quick, by my mind is still as wistful as the wondering wren. The sun comes up, and I flutter.
I saw the nest in springtime. Of course it would have been spring, but I did not yet know the timing of such nests and eggs. What I did know was that I had my banana seat bike, the one I got for my birthday, March 27th. Youth’s privilege allowed me to see my bicycle also as a ladder. I propped it against the trunk. Tippy toe on the seat, I could just reach the lowest hanging branch. I wrapped each hand around. I needed to get my feet up as well. I pressed my toes into the seat and thrusted, just nipping the branch with one bumper tennis shoe. I did it again. Not there. My celebration on final thrust for wrapping my feet around the branch, turning myself into a swing was negated by the tumbling of my bike to the ground. I had heard the saying before, but I only now understood that I was really out on a limb.
I did have some fear of letting myself fall, but my biggest fear now was landing on my bicycle which rested perfectly beneath me without a clue of the harm it could cause. I spoke to it on the off chance it could actually hear me, like I was sure my stuffed animals could. What I heard back in my head was an arrested apology that said, you’re going to have to do this on your own.
My bark weary hands urged my brain for a solution. Remembering why I came up here in the first place, to see the bird nest, I had a desperate longing for my own, nest. Of course I called for my mom, purely out of instinct because I knew she was at work. Dangling was not an ever solution. I was going to have to decide. To trust. To let go.
Some will call it luck. Fate. Faith. But I landed between bars. Unscathed. Into the beautiful nest of our unmowed lawn.
Had I landed improperly. Twisted an ankle. Broken an arm. Would I have stopped climbing? Future me in the fifth grade, arm broken at Noonan’s Park Ice Skating rink, says probably not. My take on it, I will never be stifled nor stuck in certainty. In life and love, I’m going out on that limb.
I don’t know how many fallen bird nests I saw. I stopped counting when my mom assured me that the birds did not fall with it. “They flew…” she said. “But were they sad to leave?” I asked. Never one to sugarcoat things, or possibly she knew how close we were to living the same truth, she said, “For a little while, maybe, but then they realized the sky was theirs too.”
Everything changes. That’s life. But it doesn’t have to signify a fall. I’m getting better at noticing it. Sometimes mid flap, but I get there. So many nests get taken away, or are simply left behind. But comfort can be found. Again and again.
We are all given the tools. For me, wings are disguised as paint brushes and letters. Ruffled blouses and open paths. And every day I fly. The sky is always there. It turns out the answer remains — just to look up.
