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.
The Great Gatsby is now being celebrated at MIA for its 100th year. It’s no surprise, as someone whose first perspective drawing in art class was completely backwards, I did enter the exhibition from the second room. But as always, it was the right door for me. Maybe it was the giant farm land picture, next to the clippings of French fashion, that whispered “over here,” or the script from the book that said, maybe we would always be westerners, but I knew I was home.
I suppose the universe will always let you know if you’re on the right path.
For me it’s always been books and art, and a dash of fashion. My maps. So I say to those who ask, “Can’t you read a map?” — “Of course I can, just not yours.”
Late that same afternoon, I drove to the Barnes and Noble in the area. Emptied and dark, I began to panic. It’s never just a book store. I ran to the store next door. She didn’t know much, but something about “moving to an Office Max, maybe open, or going to,” — she didn’t know. I knew of two abandoned office supply stores in the area, one a former Office Depot and the other a Staples. I asked her if it was by the Trader Joe’s, or the Whole Foods. She didn’t know. “I only get off the freeway and come to work,” she said. (We all have our own maps.)
I didn’t need more books. My suitcase already full. But I did need to know that it was ok. That the books were living on. So I drove to the first one — no. I drove to the second location I had in mind, and there it was – signed and open – calling once again, “over here.” I wandered in the words until I was secure. My heart map folded, fitting perfectly behind my mother’s blouse, once again, still, I am home.
It was our first book connection. The fact that we were even exchanging notes of literature was a good sign. My Antonia. His in French, mine in English, but the story was the same. And we were linked.
I suppose it’s like how some will save ticket stubs from a concert, or flowers dried in a box, to serve as reminders. It’s the same for me in a bookstore. I saw it on the shelf yesterday. I picked it up and held it towards him. We both smiled. On the back of the jacket it read, “Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade.” The Antonia of my heart did, does, the same.
People always ask me, “how do you remember?” I guess it’s love that leaves the images. And if I feel the slip, I race to paper or pen, to computer or sketchbook, and gather them in. Is every detail perfect? I can’t be sure. But I know it doesn’t have to be. I’m not making a map. I don’t need to travel back, only travel with. And those images, those feelings, they are secure. They will not fade.
The thing was, you had to be a reader to even understand the advertisement. A book was always within arms reach, so when it aired in between Saturday morning cartoons, promoting books, I rose up from my “head in elbowed arms” position and got a little closer to the television. “Reading is fundamental,” they said. I didn’t bother to ask my mother. I had been trained by Mrs. Bergstrom at Washington Elementary, and my mother repeated it daily, so I raced to the bookshelf to pull out the giant red dictionary to “Look it up.” I put my index finger in the section marking the “f”s. My finger traced through the pages as I sounded out the words. Fe, Fo, fun, funda, fundamental! Important, necessary, I was in agreement with it all. I ran to the laundry room. Saturday meant cartoons for me, and laundry for my mother. Her head bent over pulling clothes out of the dryer, I eagerly tapped her shoulder. “Reading is fundamental,” I said proudly. “It is,” she smiled, still filling her basket. I asked her about her next load, working fundamental into the conversation, remembering that to make a word your own, you had to use it three times. I often went to four or five, just to make sure. Satisfied that I had gained ownership, I went back to the tv. I saw my library book there. I turned off the set. Grabbed my book and went back to the laundry room. Nothing was more necessary, nor more important than she was. “I better read to you,” I said. She smiled and listened. We both leaned against the rumble of the washer, gathered in the greatest importance. Together.
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.
We went in search of seals along the coastline of Monterey, California, but instead I found myself back at the kitchen table of our house on Van Dyke Road.
I was just a tween when I read it, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I loved to read. I had been reading for years. First just moving my eyes along with my mother’s words. Then sounding them out by myself by lamp light. (I never had to hide under covers, my mother encouraged me to read.) But this was the first book, my first adult feeling book, my first read that made me climb the stairs from my bedroom, taking them two at a time because of the urgency to discuss this marvelous book with my mother. She smiled as she wiped the orange countertop with a dishrag. She knew the feeling. She was a voracious reader herself. She let me go on and on, not unlike Lenny I suppose, about each word. Each page. Each rabbit. My life has never been the same.
That conversation remained throughout her life. We would call each other after every book. From city to city. Country to country. The words kept us connected. She wrote notes on sticky pads. I wrote thoughts on my iPad. We gathered in between.
We didn’t see the seals yesterday, but the romance of this coastline went deep. John Steinbeck helped for sure, but it was my mother that aided most in the authoring of my soul.
We are given what we need, I suppose, when we need it. In the absence of seals, I visited my home.
