Unlike her delicious pastries, most of my grandma’s ideas outside the kitchen were, as one might say, half-baked.
Even the successes that she served were a little hard to understand. They were given names that I didn’t realize were made up until in later years trying to Google a recipe. And if there were in fact recipes, they were never followed. When asked, she would laugh and puff the flour from hand to aproned belly and say, “Oh, I started in the middle.”
Not really understanding, I still found it unconventionally delightful. As were the chinchillas in the basement. The Publisher’s Clearing house magazines spread across the table. The various plots of land underwater or undeveloped purchased from a roadside gas station. The grab bags from Ben Franklin. The constant thrill of simply playing, neither winning nor losing, just in the game.
In front of my newest sketchbook, I understand. I never start at the first page. I always begin somewhere in the middle — where the pressure is off, only the joy of being in it. I’m trying to allow myself more of that freedom in my day to day. Not worrying about what was or what will be, just allowing, just being… aproning up and dancing in the kitchen.
Long before I could read them, I carried them. I knew the words of the books, my mother having read them to me night after night. Not being able to read yet myself, I was under the assumption, (or I was probably just of the age to hope) that if I kept the words nearby, cradled in hand and tucked against hip, that they would stay with me. They did. Now, I can’t say for sure that it was because I held them close, pressed them dear…but I can’t say that it wasn’t.
I have done the same with love. Kept a library in my heart.
I walked a new path yesterday. My feet plodded up the unexplored hill. My head peaking above as I neared the top. A school. A soccer field. And then, not the promised land, but a box filled with promise, a community library. And the biggest surprise, two books in English. The collected works of Mark Twain was as thick as my open hand. I clutched it to my heart and put the paperback in my back pocket. The proportion of books to body was nearly the same as when I carried them in youth’s palm. My steps, as light as they were then. Carried in the word.
I had been right. It stays with me. Coddled close, this love for word and promise. Did I walk home a little faster? Probably. Did I smile the whole way? Indeed.
I’ve always loved paper. Even before the freedoms of learning to ride a bicycle and then a car, there was something so liberating about the writing of words. The clarity of question, thought, and answer, right there at the end of a #2. We all knew it. I suppose that’s why we passed the notes in class. All feelings could be declared or denied, with the simple checking of a box. Do you like him? Check yes or no. Where are you going after school? Check practice or Hardees.
Maybe it’s why I continue to write — a simple checking of yes to the day. It’s still so powerful and clear. A way to remember. A way to forget. A letting in and a letting go. Simply with words.
My #2 is often replaced electronically. But it will never replace the feeling of holding it in my hands. The questions. The hopes. Dreams. The story.
When I tell you mine, and then you share yours, it is the pedaling of banana seat bikes and wind in our hair. It is the release of laughter ridden into. It is an open car window on a summer’s road, releasing music from an AM radio – KDWB 63. It is the exclamation point of a giant X that goes beyond the edges of the yes box.
Humans were made to connect. I ask myself daily — Can we do this? Can we do this together? Can we feel the freedoms of connection? I know my answer. Are you checking yes or no?
I remember the first time I signed out a book at the Alexandria Public Library. Who could forget such a moment? Because with each letter, I was formed into the stone lion that should have been guarding the front entrance. Just with the signing of my name on that yellowing card, (beneath all the other lions), I not only became part of each word, each sentence, each book that lined the shelves, I became the welcome to the next reader, the stairs themselves, to this sacred place.
I think it’s the very reason we put things in books. Images and words. To tell the stories of our lives. To share the sacred places we have been to, we have gone through. Because don’t we look to them, the other lions, those who have made it beyond the places we are struggling. They are the strength that lift the feet. Up each stair. Until we can proudly write our names, claim our positions in each story, and become the lions for those still looking up.
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…
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.
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.
