It’s a variety of the beignet, but distinctive to the south of France. More importantly, they are simply delicious! As luck would have it, the best I’ve ever tasted come from the boulangerie nearest our home. I suppose I’ve eaten my share, knowing that when I enter the door, either of the two women working there shout out, “Des oriellettes!” And I must say, it only makes them more delicious!
It’s the equivalent of the coffee shop knowing your order. The butcher your cut of meat. The librarian knowing your last read. The person on the walking path waving with an “it’s great to see you again this morning.” We all want to be seen. And what a simple and glorious gift it is! Names and numbers, status and rank, not required. A little eye contact. A smile. It goes a long way.
Sure, the oriellettes are sweet. What keeps me coming back, what tells them to fill up that sachet, is a little glimpse that they see me, maybe even enjoy it, and I enjoy it too — nothing much sweeter than that! My heart begins to dance.
I have had this canvas for about 15 years. It has transitioned and traveled with me through abstraction and country. The last painting was here in France, a seascape of sorts. But I can’t tell you exactly what came before that. I know it’s still there. Underneath. Behind, within this woman.
If you ask me who she is, prepare yourself for the underpainting. She is the curve of every woman.
She is my grandmother whose hands never stopped. Hands that I watched in amazement and wrote, “If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.”
She is my mother. The posture of grace. In an apartment kitchen filled with more worry than nourishment, she lifted a hand, and gently directed me in the dance.
She is my friend, long past her days of professional dance, who still walks in the garage as if onto the stage.
She is another friend, deep in grief, (a depth that only comes with love) who dares the dance of my mother, and releases, again, and again, with the curve of a woman.
When I look at the sides of the canvas, I see these bright and dark colors. Not who she is now. Not who I am now. But I see the lines of the underpainting — the embossing and debossing of all that paint (the experience) that has come before. And it adds pattern to her dress. Movement to her hands. Strength to her feet. And opens the sky. Opens her heart. My heart. Your heart. Wide open.
Mrs. Bergstrom stood at the front of the first grade class, the “times” tables rubbing off onto her shoulder from the blackboard, and she told us that we had to “learn it by heart.” Always one to feel a little more than perhaps necessary, I assumed she meant everything from here on out. I still do.
I’m a firm believer that the heart can, and must, override the hands’ hesitation.
I can’t think of anything where my heart didn’t first convince my brain to urge my hands to continue. From painting a portrait to baking a cake, I am grateful for my hands every day, but even they are well aware of who’s leading.
Painting her yesterday, I could feel it. I know that fear of moving forward. Risking it all. Being vulnerable. But I also know that I won’t get stuck there. I will lean in. As I always do. I will brush away the shouldered what ifs, and take my elementary self, by heart, into the music of the day, and I will dance.
You can’t tell me that they’re always trying to get somewhere. Most of the time, it looks like they’re playing in the wind. Dancing even. These birds so elegantly bouncing and bounding above. And why wouldn’t they dance, they already have the song.
She never wore a tutu, nor spandex dresses, but oh how my mother could dance. She would teach me on the carpet of the living room floor. It was slower. But when I had mastered the steps, she’d lead me to the kitchen floor, and I barely felt my stockinged feet touch the linoleum. She’d sing along to the boombox, pull me in and spin me out and I knew I was flying. I asked her if she had dance instructors? No, she said. In school? I asked. No. Did grandma teach you. She laughed (sure it was a bit of a dance maneuvering through all those people in the farm kitchen), but no. Then how did you know you could dance? I asked. I could always hear the song, she said, and pulled me in once again.
And wasn’t that belief? Wasn’t that the true art of living? Just listening for the music. Trusting your feet would follow. Believing, one way or another, you were going to fly!
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.
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 have to admit, (physically and metaphorically) I’m shooting most of my photos in the wind. As I walk along the gravel path, the wildflowers seem to pop up, blooming as proof that it can be done, even in the strongest of winds that race directions through the hills. Some barely petaled, they still have the audacity of hopeful beauty, and I think, if I could just catch them mid sway, it would be like capturing the wind…and if I did, in fact, capture that wind, it would find its way into my heart, spreading limb to limb, and even against all forces of the natural and unnatural, I too, would dance.
So even as the sun blinds the screen of my phone, I point and shoot, not knowing until much later what will appear. Looking at yesterday’s photos from the comfort of home, I have to swivel in my chair. I smile at the blurred backgrounds — the forgotten hardships — and see the dancing petals. So fragile. So strong. So beautiful. And I smile, knowing today, it just might be me, who flowers in all of this wild. Me, barely petaled, who dances in the wind.
Rita will turn 98 on the fourth of July. I only know this because of an apron.
It was her niece who bought it for her — this apron of mine. She had been a ballroom dancer with her husband. Still dancing in her nineties. And wasn’t that the whole point of what I wrote on that apron — “and then one day you realize, every floor is actually a dance floor…” Life is something! We are pushed and pulled, sometimes knocked over, knocked flat, by the pulsing beat..but the wisest, the strongest of us all, keep dancing.
It was my mother who taught me to dance in our kitchen. Nothing stopped her. In the green house on Van Dyke Road, in her lengthy arm exuberance, she knocked the light fixture from the ceiling. It fell like a disco ball, just missing both of our heads and crashed to the floor. A broom, a paper sack, and the record kept playing. When we moved to the brown house, she turned up the stereo in the dining room, and we danced within the frame of the orange countertops until we lost the house, and began apartmenting. Each floor became smaller, but never the dance. Still she pushed her hand into mine to signal the turn, and I would – sometimes spinning into stove, sink or fridge, but the dance continued.
So it seems no accident after all that I was invited into Rita’s kitchen. Aproned and joyful, she led me onto her dance floor. Watching the video she shared, I wanted to capture everything. I knew I would paint her. Every dish in the cupboard, plaque on the wall, it all felt so important. And it is!
I finished this painting yesterday in France. This image of her in California. Beginning from the lessons I had learned in Minnesota. We are all connected by this joyful beating of hearts. This music that never ends. This rocket’s red glare!
I often use the word “she.” Today I mean Rita. I mean my mother. Myself. (And hopefully you!) When I write the words, “…and so she would dance.”
She certainly wouldn’t have been considered a dancer, my grandma, but one could make the Ginger Rogers comparison quite easily. It is often said that Ms. Rogers not only did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. Yes, my grandpa worked hard, and he had the crops to prove it, but my aproned grandma kept longer hours, with nine children and 27 grandchildren pulling from behind.
The thing is though, as it is with most who are excellent at their craft, the work is hidden. Like a floating Ginger, she moved from stove to sink to table to garden to clothesline to town. And I never caught a glimpse of the struggle. Of course it had to be there, but I never saw her rub her aching toes. I never heard her catch her breath while offering the love and attention we all demanded.
There were no words like self-care then. But she was smart enough to take her personal time. And we were smart enough to know that it was at noon each weekday in front of the tv set to watch NBC’s Days of our Lives. Just as some of the Bohemians on neighboring farms were thought to be relatives, my cousins and I thought the same of the Hortons from Salem. I suppose I loved this time the most because I saw Grandma Elsie from the front. Her welcoming belly was not hidden by a steaming pot or bubbling kitchen sink. No, it was there to climb on, to hug, to rest against. We took our turns dancing with Ginger as Ma and Pa Horton looked on.
Working in my sketchbook, alone in the studio, I know these small paintings won’t sell, or even be seen, but as my hand stumbles through the pages, I know, without pressure, or even promise, it is my time to dance.
Just before leaving the Mall of America, I tried on one last dress. I twirled a little in front of the three way. I put my hands in the pockets. Looked to the side. Over my shoulder. Floated out to the main area of the store. Dominique said it was pretty. I smiled. Saw myself in summer’s south of France, and gave one last spin. Put it back on the hanger. And we went back to our final night by the airport.
We used to do it all the time. Just try things on. My mom and I. We had everything when we were together, but for extra money to spend. But that didn’t stop us. Standing waist high, the tag of her dress dangling in my face, I looked up at her at her three reflections, and knew she was a princess. A queen. She tucked the tag in and gave a twirl. Dancing with all four of her, I was sure she was going to buy it. She took it off and gave a smile of “maybe next time,” to the clerk.
We went on to another store. She was swinging her hand in mine, like she was really happy. I was confused. “But you didn’t even buy it…” She bent down. “It’s better to look pretty in it, than to own it. Anyone with a few extra dollars can do that.” I nodded. “I want to try,” I said. And we never stopped.
Of course she bought things. Of course I do. But the real treasure was, and still is, the experience. With anything. Everything. How we feel, will never be surpassed by what we have. I, we, cannot own this day, but we would do well to swing it by the hand, and enjoy it for all it is!
