There was a certain freedom to it – being in the girls’ gym. You might think freedom a strange word for this windowless box in the basement of Central Junior High. But certainly there were no pressures to impress.
We cycled through the normal courses. Basketball. Volleyball. A simple change with a new set of balls. But when it came time for the gymnastics week, the whole pink gymnasium was transformed. Beams and mats. Horses and Bars. Certainly we should have been padded on knees and elbows. At the very least helmeted, gauging our limited expertise. Yet, we flung ourselves without knowledge or permission in unwashed gym shorts and t-shirts for the allotted 50 minutes. No guidance. No spotters. No inhibitions.
The floor exercise came with a record player. We were decades ahead of the popular saying, “Dance like no one is watching,” — believe me, no one was. Dropping the needle with a scratch, then racing to the mat, we made “routines” (completely ignoring the definition of routine, because certainly these movements couldn’t be repeated, as we made them up to the music.)
We were never graded. If you could make it up the cement stairs back to the locker room, you passed.
I can feel it sometimes. Hear the turning of the record as the day begins. And I just abandon rule and worry, and move. I get to decide. We get to decide, how to make our freedom. How to fill it. Drop the needle, and simply dance.
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
We used to play croquet. Lawn darts. Frisbee. We’d throw or knock almost anything around the lawn on a Sunday afternoon. But it was horseshoes that my mother loved. That may surprise you. She, always so elegant. Bloused without a wrinkle. Creamed without a wrinkle. But once her church clothes were hung, folded. Her shoes put back in the original box. Her jewelry in the dresser. We would play. And she was good. Leaners. Ringers. She could really do it! And maybe it was the unexpected that added to the joy. This letting go. This letting fly. Tossing and clanking every “should have” and every “supposed to”.
Walking through Centennial Lakes park, I see them playing croquet and mini golf. Pedaling big ducks on the water. Not to win. Not to get anywhere, but just to be! The freedom of play. And I think, wouldn’t it be great if we allowed this for everyone. Allowed people to not just be one thing. Didn’t put them in a box. Label them. That if they had one thought, they could only have that thought.
I don’t want to be contained. I can still hear the mantra of the Stevie Nicks 45 that my mother played again and again, “Leather and Lace.” It could have easily been ruffles and horseshoes.
This trip I have shopped at the finest stores in the Galleria. I have thrifted at the Goodwills. Joy is everywhere. Not to be contained. I, we, can toss and clank the “rules,” and just enjoy!
I don’t suppose the spaces left from loved ones passed can ever be completely filled. But maybe it’s wrong to think they ever were. These relationships weren’t beautiful, memorable, longed for even still, because of their solid perfection. Perhaps they were always stardust, flittering, fluttering, changing shape, with room always left for dancing, beneath the flickering light.
It’s the way I choose to think of it, my mother’s space, not as a hole left behind, but a dance floor. And all that magic that sprinkles from her still, lights up the people around me, and they step in, tap me on the shoulder, and ask me to dance. They are my new daily connections. My new last calls. My shared laughter and secrets. Hopes and challenges. Not replacements, but keepers of the dance.
We’re not all good at the same thing. Some are meant to pull you in, and simply sway. Other’s tap their feet and keep the beat alive. Some dizzy you into laughter. Dance you into breathless. And hold out the ladle of punch. I am grateful for them all. All of you, who keep my dance floor filled, my heart in motion, in sway, in the right tempo, under the stardust.
I was always aware of time when it came to the things I loved. I thought I could outrun all of it. Pumping my thighs just ahead of aging. If I got up early enough, made a pact with the summer sun not to waste a moment, ran beside Hugo’s golden fields, ate my self-packed lunch in the green of the yard, read books in lakes, rode bike on gravel, hit balls on fields…then summer, (even though deep in the back of my mind I knew it would end), somehow it would always last. The promise still holds.
My mother was that summer. Maybe that’s why I still get up early, to meet her in the promise. To gather in all that I love — the “Joie de vivre” (the joy of life).
Walking on the path yesterday morning here in France, I heard the slow pop of the gravel beneath the approaching car, and I was immediately on Van Dyke Road. I wondered if my new French friend recognized my chubby hand in the gathering heat. Her “Phyllis Norton-like” wave out her rolled-down window told me yes. We both smiled as the years disappeared with each pop under her wheel. We bounced our smiles into the blue of ever and spoke the language, the hope, of youth.
Love and summer make the same promise. So I keep my end and wake up early to gather it in, gather myself in…knowing with each gravelly step, I am home.
I was listening to a short story while walking yesterday. Somewhere between the farmhouse, the stranger, the shooting, the sheriff, the horses, the chase, the lost love, the death, the title revealed, my feet had climbed the Montaiguet without ever telling my breath. And it really came as no surprise, stories have always carried me.
I began to learn the power of words at age five. Mrs. Strand read to us in kindergarten. I loved her for it, but I had a sense of urgency to get to the first grade where I knew we would learn to read for ourselves. I’d like to think I took my time. I’d like to think I thanked Mrs. Strand, but I can’t be sure. It was her words that launched me into the front row of Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade class. I wanted to sit as close to her as possible. If the words she wrote on the blackboard were to travel into her pointing stick as she tapped the word on the board, and be flung into the open and wandering minds of all the wriggling 6 year olds, I wanted those words, that power, to hit me first — so even in this front row middle seat, I leaned ever forward, closer still. And I must have been breathing because I’m still here, but it felt like a year, a glorious year of inhaling.
I joyfully rode that air. Every word she gave to us, I gave to my mother in poems. When the wind was knocked out from inside of her. I, we, replaced it with the hope of each letter. Arranged them again, and again, until we were lifted. Until without our knowledge or permission, we were looking out gratitude’s vast view, and we were saved.
I don’t know if it works for everyone. But I take the chance that maybe it does. I keep writing the words daily. Bringing you inside farmhouse and classroom, on top of bicycles and mountains, on the chance that you too will forget the labor of breath, and only feel the heights reached from all that inhale.
I don’t know how she knew. There were no influencers. No self help books. And even if there were, she wouldn’t have had time to read them. She would have laughed at the thought of someone telling her to stay “in the now.” “Where else would I be?” She would have said.
It was a Saturday evening. Grandma Elsie’s “now” was filled with some pots brewing, others soaking. She shooed me away from the stove into the wafting of Grandpa’s pipe. I followed it into the living room. I didn’t ask, I simply followed the pinstripe of his overalls onto his lap. He perched the pipe away from the top of my blonde head. “You smell like today, “ I said. He raised his eyebrows. It was a combination of sun, and breeze, and hay and earth, topped with just a hint of tobacco. I squeezed the pouch in his pocket, still wanting to touch the end of his pipe, but remembering the heat from the first and last time I touched it. I pulled at the corners of his pierced lips to form a smile. He was still so new. I wanted to know everything. I didn’t have the words for it then, but he, being already formed, I wondered if I could be a part of it. I sculpted his face and flannel like clay, wanting to be somehow connected. I put a thumb on each of his eyebrows and pulled upward. “That means surprise,” I said. He smiled on his own this time, without my pulling, and I knew that we were connected.
The pans clanked in the kitchen. The coo-coo of the clock stayed silent. It was only a moment, but it was beautiful. And we were in it. I’m sure he had thoughts of tomorrow’s farm, but he didn’t stray. He tapped his pipe in the tray beside the lounger. And we gathered in the scented remains of the day.
When I was five I began drawing. Six, writing. Every paper in my tiny bedroom was filled. I sat on my twin bed and poured out my heart to the Raggedy Ann and Andy sheets. Emboldened with their always smiling and gentle approval, I held the paper in my plattered, chubby hands, and presented it to my mother. She knew the gift that it was, and welcomed it with a caring so safe, so loving, that I knew I could do it again and again.
I did it daily. When my mother passed, it was that little girl that looked directly at me, that looks at me every day, hands and heart extended, she asks me where she is to go. And she’s so small. And I don’t want to hurt her. She’s still so filled with ideas and belief, and I can’t turn her away. When she comes to me, with all that raggedy trust, I smile, and do the best that I can with what she is offering. I tell her what she has made, what we have made, is something special, and I clutch it to my beating chest before setting it free.
If you’re reading this, I, we, stand before you, so small, but still believing it matters. And I will do it, again, and again.
It took so little to show that we really meant it when we were young. Just a simple reaching out of a pinky finger to wrap around another’s. We swore it to be true, and our curled pinkies confirmed it.
I suppose it was fitting that our weakest of links, these tiny little fingers exposed like this, showed our biggest strength — a vulnerability, a trust. It was never with clenched fists or raised arms. Just our hearts exchanging beats. Pinky to Pinky.
I don’t know when we stopped doing it. Who was it that suggested a shaking fist deserved more attention? When did we start exchanging “vulnerable” for “sure”? Why did we think all that certainty would connect us?
The truth is, I’m rarely sure. I think I lean more on curious. To what if. To what could be. I have garnered more there — not necessarily the answers, but I have found challenge and creativity, fulfillment and reward, friendship, even love.
So take these daily words as my pinky promise, my reaching out, my hope for connection. I will give to you, not always “the best,” but it will ever be “my best.” This, I swear.
