I’ve yet to capture it on film. (But certainly in the shutter of my heart.) Some call it golden hour. And I suppose, as glorious as it is, it’s not that uncommon, but in this house I live, at this one certain time, I have witnessed this light between rooms, not only shine and illuminate, but bend.
It’s just a small window in the sewing room, Grandma Elsie’s sewing room, but when the hour is golden, the light thrusts through every pane. And you may think thrust is too strong, but wouldn’t it have to in order to bounce off of two doors, across the hallway and land beautifully upon the painting of the children at the beach? It’s almost as if it knows the destination, knows how deserving they are of the light.
It doesn’t last long, but spectacular rarely needs a lot of time to make its point. It’s in these tiny, well lit moments that I remember how lucky we are. How we are given everything we need, and more! How even in our struggles of darkness, in our failed attempts to reach all that shines…with obstacles lining the way — magically, joyfully, light bends. Golden.
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 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.
There were “grab bags” at the counter of the antique store yesterday. Of course Grandma Elsie would have bought one. Or perhaps she had them placed there from heaven, simply to answer my question, “I wonder if Grandma had ever been here?”
I don’t know where she got it from. I never knew her parents. But she had it as long as I knew her, this feeling of possibility. She was, as she often said, “so close to winning!” No mail-in sweepstake went unanswered. No “Crazy Days” was ever missed. Ben Franklin and Woolworth’s always had the grab-bags. She bought one for herself, and one for me, even when I said, “Oh, you don’t have to, Grandma,” (just as I did, when she offered to make me a root-beer float) — but either way, before I knew it, there was a paper sack of dime store leftovers in my hand and a root-beer float melting on the kitchen table.
I suppose that’s where I get it from — this believing that my next painting will be the best. Hoping my next story will be a grab bag of words that no one can put down. And why, when traveling through the smallest town in Arizona, stopping only for a bathroom break, I am lured to a counter in an antique store lined with grab bags and I believe it is a sign from my Grandma Elsie. Even in this place, so far from anywhere, I am so close to winning!
