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.“
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.
It’s ironic I suppose, but it takes a long time to figure out that no one really has it figured out.
While she was getting ready for work, I was getting ready for school. Well, mostly I was just watching her put on her make-up. Standing there waist high in my flannels, I viewed the show like it was the new fall series after a summer of reruns on channel 7, the only channel we received in Alexandria, Minnesota. “Did Grandma Elsie teach you how to do it?” Even as I was asking I knew the answer — Grandma Elsie was more of an apron gal. My mom just smiled. “So how did you know?” She just smiled again and told me to get dressed. She was never late for work. “Do you have a “Mrs” to tell you what to do at work?” “A Mrs.?” “You know, like our teacher Mrs. Strand tells us everything before we do it.” “No, not really.” “Then how do you know?” “You figure it out.”
The only figuring I knew was math. So I assumed things just added up. I slid into my school clothes and raced off to the bus.
It turns out, I wasn’t that wrong. Things do just kind of add up. Oh sure, we get divided and subtracted without our knowledge or permission, but someone we find a way to the solution. I try to think of it when I’m in the midst of a problem. How did the last one work out? And I barely remember. Soon, this one will feel the same. I remind myself of it in front of my own mirror. Applying the make-up to a hint of my mother’s smile. Of course she didn’t have all the answers. Neither did grandma. But I find that comforting. Because somehow they found their way to their own solution, their own joy. They sang the words to their own song. So will I. So will you.
I am not the “Mrs” to tell you what to do, but if I may offer any advice on this day, I will tell you only this, “Go ahead and sing!”
