It’s not like we were told, but I think we all assumed we had to pick one. By October in each school year at Jefferson Senior High, we fell into line. Jocks, Hoods, Preppies, Nerds, Geeks. Some of us tried to hover between band, the gym and English class, but the differences were clear. Sometimes even uniformed. The only thing I was sure about was that everyone seemed so sure in their roles. Perhaps they thought the same about me. I wasn’t.
I suppose it takes a long time to build a soul. A life. Along the way you discover parts. Tiny sparks of color that make you feel a little bit more like yourself. You grow and change. Adaptations often more regular than choice (maybe these adjustments are the real choices).
Looking at the palette that makes up my latest creation, I smile. A dab of this. A stroke of that. This collection — this beautiful mess of colors that make up my life. Yes, I am an artist. An author. But I dip my brush and I bake. I dip my brush and play yard sports with the kids. I dip my brush and travel. Play fashion show. And read. And build. And change. Stroke by stroke, I am given my wings. Not confined by stereotypes or assumptions. I am my own blend of feathers. And one way or another, I am going to fly!
Where your heart can rest, and your mind can wander, I guess that’s home.
We pulled into the town. I felt no connection. That feeling when you know you’re lonesome, but you just can’t pinpoint for what. We drove the Main Street. How could there be no parking spaces and yet nothing to park for? We turned on 10th per Google’s direction for coffee. It must have closed. Try ninth, she suggested. Driving slowly I saw the coffee shop, next to a bookstore. Yes!
The first sip was the familiar road. Entering the bookstore, well, that was home.Nestled in all those words, I was wander-welcomed. It’s a rare combination, this feeling of calm and excitement. This feeling that anything could be true, could be real, even the story of yourself.
I don’t have a physical place to go to, in the sense that some would call home. Not my grandparents’, nor my mother’s house. But I have something else. I have the stories they gave to me. I can take them anywhere. Everywhere.
Recently I found a note, a birthday card, tucked into one of my mom’s books. It was from her mother. I don’t know for which birthday. It would have been true any year. She wrote of what a lovely daughter she was and how she made the world a better place. These words are the open doors to my forever. My safe. My possible.
I’m the lucky one. I can walk into this unfamiliar bookstore, in this unfamiliar town, and be gathered in. Sensing the stories I carry, the words that rest on shelf and table say, “Come in, you and your heart sit down.” I do. We do. We all are home. Indeed, a better place.
The way they warned us, the teachers at Washington Elementary, trouble seemed to be a place, a spot. “Don’t get into trouble,” they said. The only “trouble” I was having was figuring out where this place was exactly. Because when the teacher said, “Now Steven is in trouble,” he seemed to still be right there, sitting beside us. Hadn’t he said “present,” when she called out his name? Why couldn’t I understand? How come I couldn’t see it? Maybe trouble was invisible, I thought.
It sounds funny, I suppose, but it turns out, I wasn’t all that wrong. We never know what people are going through. We see the outsides so easily, but that’s usually not the whole story. To see the real story, we need to actually be present. It’s not enough to just call it out. We have to be there. Show up. Again and Again. And ask questions when we don’t understand. Listen. Raise our hands. Reach out. Find a way to connect. See with our hearts what our eyes cannot. Make all around us visible.
And if you saw that I am not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…
From the age of five we began looking to see if things fit.
We got our feet measured at Iverson’s shoes, checking for the length and width in the silver contraption. After wiggling our toes inside the bumper tennies, the man on the triangle seat pinched the ends in search of our toes. If he gave the all clear we raced to the glass windows and back. And we were shoed.
In Herberger’s basement, when it was still on Main Street, we tried on pants. The clerk pulled at our waistbands to check for room. Tugged at the length and estimated the time before they would be too short. Up the stairs, past the billing department, were the dresses. Beautiful dresses that were measured to our knees. Zipped up our backs. Smoothed down the fronts.
Dr. Blanchard checked for space in our mouths. Dr. Perkins took our heights and weights. We stood in lines in the school gymnasium to check our eyes and our hearing. All, I supposed, to see if we actually fit.
I had my own checks and balances. Accompanying my mother to Olson’s Supermarket. I waited for her in front of the book section, right by the check out lines. I would pick out the words I understood. Look at the pictures. Then clutch it to my heart. Somehow my heart always knew. The woman in the red smock asked what I was doing. “Just seeing if it fits,” I said. My mother never had to ask. She knew me.
I suppose I’m still doing that. With everything. People. Places. Time. The only way I have ever been able to tell if something really fits is by clutching it to my heart. Sometimes it still stumbles over the bigger words. The tighter spots. The growing pains. But pulled in close, beat by beat, it always leads me home.
Throughout all of history, hearts have laughed at what the hands try to carry.
I always overpack. It all seems so necessary, so “I can’t live without it,” until I have to drag it from car to hotel to car again.
I write the stories of my hometown daily. I have them with me, even a country, and what some may call a lifetime away. Truth be told, driving into town yesterday, almost none of it is there. The pool were I learned to swim is gone. My high school is an empty lot. What’s left of my middle school is part of the courthouse. Washington Elementary — condos. Even the old public library — empty. So why do I still hear the words? Feel the splashes? Raise my hopeful hand in a class that isn’t there?
Waking up in the Best Western, I certainly can’t call this home, can I? My bursting suitcases try to make the case, with things that I brought from France. Things I picked up in Minneapolis. Duluth. Brainerd. Vintage shirts purchased from the Alex thrift store reminding me of when I was a Cardinal. I suppose we’re all trying to gather in the proof that being here matters. (Wherever that here may be.) And we struggle to drag that proof beside us. And the funny thing is, I know the answer. I have written it. Painted it. Lived it. What remains may only be in the heart.
Sitting with friends yesterday in memory’s laughter of burned pizzas, and chances taken, tears shared and future plans, everything is still alive. Pools and teachers and libraries and mothers. Everything remains. Brushing against arms. Leaning into hugs. I know my heart is the only suitcase I need. And it fills, even when full. It’s all that matters.
It won’t make the visitor’s guide, but Duluth, for me, is famous for two things. It is home to one of the largest speeches I ever gave, and it ended my mother’s self-imposed waffle ban.
I felt like I was paying attention when I booked the event, but for some reason, I had it in my head that it was for a group of 50 people. I asked my mother to come along. No one could sell my after-speech merchandise like my mother. They gave us a lovely room overlooking Lake Superior. We changed our clothes and met the director at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC). She opened the door to the largest room I had ever seen — Beyoncé big. Without speaking, I made eye contact with my mom. “It’s a little big, isn’t it?” I said, still assuming the 50 guests. “Oh, no,” she replied, it will easily seat the 700.” I could no longer look at my mom. 700? It wasn’t like I was limiting myself, but I had always thought of myself as an intimate speaker, a story teller. This would be a leap. I would have to break out of my small shell and lead this group. My mom knew. She knew everything. “50, 700, so what,” she said. “You can totally do this!” She was always on my side. She sat in the front row, and I led them. With words and heart and flinging arms, a little singing, and stage racing…I had them, all 700. And it was glorious — for me, Superior!
We woke to smell of baking the next morning. What was that delicious scent? We went down to breakfast. Still intoxicated by yesterday’s accomplishment, we were starving. Waffles. That glorious smell was waffles. You have to know the back story to know why this is significant. When my father had left decades earlier, he took with him the waffle iron. My mother was the only one who liked waffles. Of all the blows to ego and heart and soul and mind, this was the easiest one to fight, and so began the great waffle ban. Neither of us would eat them. This included any syrup enriched breakfasts such as pancakes, but the waffles were the banner of the banning.
Sometimes we choose to grow. Sometimes growth is thrust upon us. We were not the people we used to be. None of us. There were no more limits but the ones we placed on ourselves. We had chosen life. Joy! Chance! We were proud of our story. Ready to tell it! Ready to live it! We ate those waffles, and never spoke of the ban again.
It’s not lost on me as I see the lift bridge of Duluth today. Rising up, letting things pass. I suppose we all have to do this. Life is as sweet as you make it!
We weren’t allowed to swim at night, for obvious reasons. I suppose they were the very reasons why we did it.
I was staying over night at her house. She lived just across the road from one of 10,000 lakes. We had put on our pajamas. Gone through the list of “have you ever”s… been kissed by a boy…stolen penny candy from Ben Franklin…snuck into the Andria Cinema… all the usual questions that we knew all the answers to, but asked them just the same. When we heard her parents turn off The Tonight Show and slipper down the hall to bed, we changed from our pajamas into our swim suits. Neither one of us would ever claim ownership to the plan, it was just something we were doing. Night swimming.
There was always talk of it late in the school year on bus rides home. The teenagers would speak softly of the magic. The lure. Still in our preteens, time couldn’t go fast enough. We felt immortal, and ready to prove it at any given moment.
Our hearts fueled with Mountain Dew and no previous knowledge, we barefooted out the back door, through the yard. Stopping dead in our tracks like spiders on a wall as one of us clinked the chain from the swingset. No lights turned on. We proceeded. We thought of flashlights after the fact. Even our hindsight was dim. Each step became slower. Each night sound became louder. And creepier. The sounds of our breathing said we were both willing to turn back if only one of us would admit it. Neither did. It was hard to tell the difference between grass, sand and water. But for the feel, all were black. Toes were dampened first. Then ankles. Our hands reached out at the same time. Grabbing tightly, we walked to our knees, sure that our heads were already under water. We grabbed the opposite hands, forming a circle now. We stood still.
There is an unexplained magic to friendship. We are given the right gifts at the right time. “I want to go back,” we both trembled the words together at the same time. “Jinx!” We laughed. Hooked our pinkies together. “What goes up the chimney… Smoke!” With linked fingers we ran on bare tiptoes back to the house.
There are a million challenges that I have gotten beyond because of friends. Through the darkest times they have been there, clasping hands. No common blood pulsing through our pinkies, just trust, just love. They have challenged me. Lifted me. Saved me. I give thanks for them, for you, every day.
I suppose it all takes time. To see the ordinary. And to appreciate it. Those of you that follow me here, have come, I hope, to know my grandparents, my mother, my schoolmates, and teachers. Some might say “just plain folks.” And that’s probably true. But maybe that’s the real beauty of it all. To find the spectacular in farmers, housewives and receptionists. To see the extraordinary in the daily living.
And in seeing them, it helps me see myself. Helps me find the gratitude of the day given. Of the toast for breakfast. The smell of coffee. The hand that reaches out for mine.
I am reading the book, “Love, Kurt (The Vonnegut Love Letters). I have this book, only because I have a special friend. Last year, together with our husbands, we went to Stillwater, MN. My friend and I stood in the bookstore as if before the Christmas morning tree. So many gifts in front of us, we had a hard time deciding. We each settled on our present. I loved her choice as much as mine. This year, she gave her book to me. Those simple words don’t seem to give it enough meaning, but I will tell you that it fills my heart. It brings me back to a laughter filled day on brisk streets and slow choices. It, for me too, is a love letter.
In the book, Kurt Vonnegut writes with his young pen, to his young wife, “Angel, will you stick by me if it goes backwards and downwards? Holy smokes, Angel: what if I turn out to be just plain folks?” Tears fill my eyes. I imagine we’ve all had the worries. Will I be special enough to be loved?
It’s these memories, of course, that give me that comfort. That give me the yes. My heart is packed full of the love from these glorious and plain folks. And I have loved them. Love them still. And I am one. Proud to be living with these extraordinary people. It is plain to see, they, we, are more than enough to be loved.
Bracing her hands against her knees, still looking up at the painting, smiling, joyful tears filled her eyes. I stepped closer in, wanting too, to be caught in her moment of happiness.
It isn’t often that I get to finish the sale in person. Normally it’s online, and then I ship it out. The grateful emails are nice, but nothing like being face to face. Yesterday, I got to witness her reaction. In real life. In real time. Of course the money is always nice. There is validation to the dollar amount. But to see the reaction. To know that this painting brings her and her husband home, this is priceless. This is why I keep painting.
There is an intimacy to this life, that should never be missed. When people allow you into their moments, be it tears of joy, or sorrow, go all the way in. Stand beside the raised arms or bent knees and feel the moment. It is the most precious gift we have to give. We have to receive. It takes courage, for sure, to do both, but the rewards are immeasurable.
I hope you see these words each day as doors. As windows. Come in, you and your heart sit down.
It’s ironic, I suppose, that we only played freeze-tag during our Minnesota summers. Lit only by the tenacity of the hanging summer sun, and the surrounding porch lights, we gathered in the vacant lot next to Dynda’s. It was usually Lynn or Shari Norton, being the oldest, who decided what game to play. I loved kickball. And softball. Even kick the can — though I’m not sure I ever understood the rules. The only game I didn’t love was freeze tag. If the person who was “it” touched you, you had to stop. Immobilized. Standing still. Alone. While others tripped in giggles and weeds, you had to just stand there. Excluded from the fun. Hoping that someone would come and touch you to free you.
It was just a game. I knew, standing there, I still had cool sheets to rest in. A kiss good-night waiting from my mother. But still. It became pretty clear to me, even then, that we need each other.
There are so many distractions in this world. It’s easy to lose sight of the lost. Those frozen in time and space. When maybe just a simple tag, a touch, a smile, could set them free. I’m as guilty as the next person. But I want to get better. And let’s be honest. It really doesn’t take all that much. A returned email. A letter. A phone call. A knock on the door beneath the porch light that waits. Maybe one day, we can all be tripping in the giggles and weeds.
