At the moment my two most popular pins on Pinterest are of young women reading. It warms my heart that neither are distracted by the thousands of views and likes. Nor by the news that we are becoming a post-literate world. They can’t be certain of what lies ahead, but they continue. Fighting back, not with fist nor fury, but by simply reading.
There is so much noise currently. But there are things that still give me hope. An open window. An open spine. The quiet exchange of knowledge. Of truth. That you will take the time to read my simple words. And we connect, not over a ranting rage, but a common calm.
I quietly open the morning window. Taking comfort in knowing that hope always whispers.
I imagine how the next day went. And the day after. Because their lives didn’t end when I got to the last page. Isn’t that what a good book does? With the same tools as every other writer, all the curved lines that form letters, the dots and dashes that make you stop in your tracks, an author can change the way you feel (not just in the moment) but for a lifetime.
I suppose it’s the same with love, when it’s written well upon your heart. That has to be what draws us in. What keeps us thinking. Those whose lives are so developed, whose storyline runs so deep, it continues long after the final turning of the page. These are the lives I want to surround myself with. It’s the life I want to live, and not in a vain way, (although I do indeed want you to keep coming back – I want to hold your interest) but also for myself — I want to be interested in my own life — to see where this goes. What could happen next? I want to live so deeply that the only choice isn’t even a choice, but a continuation.
The morning sun awakens the letters that tickle their way from heart to head to hands…and the story continues…
Receiving a letter in college was monumental. We shared a community phone for our floor, and had to pay for long distance, so it was rarely used. The mailboxes were the tie to the outside world. Located in the entrance of our fifth floor walk-up, what lay behind the gray square door was significantly tied to the speed at which I could climb the stairs. One small letter could erase the added weight of my backpack, loaded down with the likes of Shakespeare and other anthologies. Anticipation picked up each foot. Thumb trying to break the seal before opening the door. Books thrown on sofa, I cracked the remaining seal, and breathed in the connection. And I was saved.
I could always count on the weekly letter from my mother. Sometimes my grandma. An occassional random boyfriend marked with a mascot of another school, or PFC. And I learned quite early on, to get a letter, you needed to send one. To be lifted, you had to do some lifting.
When I was painting her yesterday, the stories ran through my head. Up and down the staircase of my heart and brain. All those things I needed to say. All those things I needed to hear. And I wondered how you would see it. When you saw her. At first glance. Was she getting the letter? Or was she sending it? I suppose it depends on if you are needing to hear something, or if you have something that needs to be said.
We’re always navigating through both. And I guess the key is to keep the chain open. To be lifted. To keep lifting.
Life will weigh us with worry and “other anthologies,” but it will also give us what we need if we choose to participate.
I saw the black and white feathers in the lawn. It’s funny how you can tell the difference between something let go, and something torn apart. While I don’t want anything to hurt our backyard birds, my first thought was, I hope it wasn’t another Magpie.
It’s ironic I suppose, the closer you are to someone, the less you see it coming.
But the resilience of the heart and brain. To keep trusting. To keep loving. It’s so beautiful. And isn’t it even more beautiful that I don’t think about it. That I have to be reminded of it, by feathers in the yard.
I walk through the vacation of our summer yard. Nearly bare of clothes and worry. The birds flutter and sing, and I know we all have it. This youth of spirit. To forgive. To barefoot again upon love’s green, beneath the chatter, the hope of the Magpie.
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.
You can’t tell me that they’re always trying to get somewhere. Most of the time, it looks like they’re playing in the wind. Dancing even. These birds so elegantly bouncing and bounding above. And why wouldn’t they dance, they already have the song.
She never wore a tutu, nor spandex dresses, but oh how my mother could dance. She would teach me on the carpet of the living room floor. It was slower. But when I had mastered the steps, she’d lead me to the kitchen floor, and I barely felt my stockinged feet touch the linoleum. She’d sing along to the boombox, pull me in and spin me out and I knew I was flying. I asked her if she had dance instructors? No, she said. In school? I asked. No. Did grandma teach you. She laughed (sure it was a bit of a dance maneuvering through all those people in the farm kitchen), but no. Then how did you know you could dance? I asked. I could always hear the song, she said, and pulled me in once again.
And wasn’t that belief? Wasn’t that the true art of living? Just listening for the music. Trusting your feet would follow. Believing, one way or another, you were going to fly!
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.
A robin is never just a robin. Nor a wren a wren. I can sit in front of my sketchbook for hours daily, and never paint the same thing twice. It’s always a different flight. A different branch. An old man with a new bird. A woman making another choice.
Heraclitus said, “No one ever steps into the same river twice.” For the river is not the same river and the person is not the same person. Isn’t it the same with love and friendship and simply living. And it shouldn’t be frightening. What a thing! — to be given a new river daily. A new chance to do the right thing. It’s what the poets hope for, the singers wish for, and what all of us waking to this new day simply get, joyfully receive, by opening our eyes. But will we see it? — how extraordinary it is to be given another chance. To come to the river, with fresh eyes and hearts and hands, and make a difference.Knee deep I tell myself, I tell you, this is not yesterday’s river. Nor yesterday’s wren. We can do better. We must do better. Good morning.
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.
“Women in pain become birds.” I just read that. I often find myself looking around for the cameras that are surely filming me in this episode. And as I flutter through the inexplicable planned randomness of the page, I think, yes, but not in the way the author meant — small. No, I think women do become birds, but there is beautiful strength in that. A grandness of sky. Adapting in mid flight. Hovering. Not avoiding the breeze, but feeling it. Using it. All while dressed and feathered.
I say this, not in praise of my own wings, but marveling at those before me. I have been nested and pushed by the best. Elsied and Ivyed into the blue. Words like small were replaced with capable, and I learned to fly.
It’s not to say that days won’t be fragile. That we won’t be fragile. But we have been given everything we need. Mostly love.
I wrote it long ago. The truth of it still lifts me. “She believed in the pure randomness of it all. It could happen to anyone at any time, pain, happiness, confusion, even love.”
