She’s held this pose for over a week, my lovely tulip. Just like me, no one ever told her she wasn’t a dancer, and most likely (just like me) she wouldn’t have believed them if they had. And who could blame her? Donned in that lovely yellow. Gathered in and matched by the strength of the sun. How could she not keep reaching, moving, believing in all things morning as she opened each day. She did feel it! With each rising. From her very stem. And so she would dance.
A writer writes. A painter paints. A baker bakes. Not because someone pays them. Tells them that’s what they are. We decide. For ourselves. The same is true for happy. For love. You get to decide. You get to feel what you feel. No restrictions or limits. If the yellow calls to you, wakes you with a joy that not only can be, but must be, released back to the blue of the sky, then, dance, I say, simply, joyfully, rise up and dance.
Happy Easter! There’s nothing here we can’t rise above.
I’m not sure where heaven begins. How high up it actually is… but when I saw the mannequins on the fifth floor of this New York walk up in the fashion district, I thought perhaps, for my mother, it starts right here.
You could say she loved clothes, but that’s not the complete story. She loved fashion. What’s the difference? I would equate it to the comparison of house and home. Fashion is about the design. The putting together. Accessorizing. For her it was not about what she was wearing, but how she wore it.
Certainly no one mistook it for the promised land — the Woolworth’s on Broadway in Alexandria, Minnesota — but when I watched her thumbing through the Butterick patterns, or the McCall’s, on Saturday mornings, when I watched the dream come alive as she swooped her hands from waist to knees, stretched her arms out in the make believe dress, for me I was certain I was in the presence of an angel.
It had always been her dream to be a dress designer. I imagine her now, so easily she bypasses the stairs and floats her way to the upper floor. How joyfully she passes on her heart and knowledge to the young people amid the mannequins awaiting. How she drapes and flows. So elegant. So possible. And they can feel it. Beyond their pin pricked fingers and weary eyes, they are Woolworthed into her sense of magic. And it’s Saturday morning, every day. And they dare to dream because of her. Just like me.
I used to imagine that the front stoop of my grandma’s house was only there for the family of Hollyhock dolls that grew on either side of the cement steps. I was only allowed to pick a few each season. She showed me how to pluck the flower from the stem, flip it upside down and push an unopened bud through the then top to make a head that rested above the pink flowing dress. And for the rest of the afternoon, this small gathering of elegant ladies danced outside the entrance reserved just for them.
I gave them the voices to compliment each other. “How lovely is your pink dress!” “And yours is beautiful!” I danced them together like my mother once did at the Lakeside Ballroom with her cousin Janet. And the music from the transistor radio scratched in and out as I adjusted the antenna in the summer breeze. The lessons of last summer were forgotten. I had no fear of the wilting dresses. I only played. And played, believing that all beauty on Rueben and Elsie’s farm would ever remain.
I wasn’t wrong. Yes, the flowered dresses lay almost flat by the end of the day, but decades and countries away, the beauty remains. Yesterday, in the French countryside, she showed me the one Hollyhock flower that somehow grew between the century old crack of the house entrance. I wasn’t surprised. I had enough French words to tell her of how I made the pink ladies on my grandma’s stoop. We both smiled and touched the rhythm of her little pink dress.
I wrote in a poem, “This year… let’s love like no lessons have already been learned…” Of course we have to grow and educate and evolve. But some “lessons,” like those that deal with lost love, disappointment, unreached expectations — to keep our pink ladies dancing, we have to let those go. The heart stoops must remain clear and ever hopeful.
Countless things grew on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. Again and again. And the beauty will ever remain. I wake to this morning sun, and keep on dreaming.
The physical therapist for my hand wants to be a singer. I like knowing that she plays guitar. That her fingers create music. Maybe the song she’s humming in her head is traveling down into her heart, through her arms, then fingers, and into my hand. (I may have heard my pinky sing.)
I suppose as a dreamer, I’ve always trusted those with a dream.
My mother wanted to be a dress designer. And it was that dream that carried us from Herberger’s, to malls, to boutiques, to dressing rooms around the country. It was pure joy that reflected off of three-way mirrors and bounced from her heart to mine. Lives well designed.
Sitting at the table, drinking egg-coffee and eating home-made pastry, I asked my grandma what she would like to be. “A UPS driver,” she said quickly. “Then I could drive from house to house and sit with people and have coffee and visit.” “I think we’re doing that right now,” I said. We smiled in the moment of that dream come true.
When we think of people not just as who they are, but who they are trying to become, I think maybe we can be a little more forgiving, a little more empathetic, perhaps more understanding, and certainly more joyful — what could be more fun that travelling along on a dream?!! But we have to be willing to dare, and willing to share. I encourage you to do both. My singing pinky is proof that everything is worth the dream.
It was hard to believe that something so delicious could make me ill. But it was evident after only a few tries, I couldn’t eat ice cream. Somehow still, I found it very exciting when the pale yellow blur of the Schwan’s ice cream delivery truck drove toward my grandma’s house. I began running up the gravel, hands waving in air, directing him into the driveway. I knew full well that my grandma’s love of root beer floats would never allow her to miss a delivery. I hopped and skipped and ran with the truck to the house. Uniformed and certain, he jumped the steps and went to the back of the truck. “You’re Elsie’s granddaughter?” “Oh, yes!” I said proudly. I could tell by the smiling way he said her name that he liked her. He unloaded two of the giant tubs as my grandma came out the screen door. Her hands ever floured or wet, or both, she wiped them on her apron before signing for our haul of vanilla.
How wonderful, I thought, to deliver ice cream. Everyone must be so happy to see you. I was, and I didn’t even eat it. The only other delivery person that I knew was my Uncle Mike, who drove a beer truck in the Twin Cities. I asked him if people jumped up and down when he arrived. He looked confused. Like I do with the Schwan’s truck, I explained. Not so much, he said. Maybe you should paint your truck yellow, I said. He smiled.
Surely it has to be taught. There must have been a million things my grandma delighted over with me. Things she had no interest in. How else would I have known, known this joy of feeling good for others. I loved art and clothes and drawing and crayons and “Look, look what I made! It’s flowers glued to a scrap of bark! Look!” And my grandma showed all of her teeth in love. An ear to ear joy. This is the only explanation I have for being happy, truly happy, to celebrate a Schwan’s delivery, not for me, but for her!
Joy is not owned. It is passed and given away freely. It is run along beside. A yellow blur of others. The day is pulling toward the driveway. I raise my hands in the air and skip to whatever joy it may bring.
Maybe it’s because I want to hear it. Maybe it’s because Mr. Iverson told us in the first grade that they could be about anything, the poems that he wanted us to write — the poems that he would inscribe neatly on the black board and our hearts, measured out note by note. And they were special. Lyrical. The ordinary things, our houses and shoes. Our games and basements and cars and trees. They all became magical because we called them poetry.
We recently got a new doorbell for our gate. It is connected to our phones. It gives us the alert whenever motion is detected, even when it’s us. When I go for my morning walk, just past the gate, she pings in my ear and says, “There is motion at your front door.” And every day it is the poem that starts my journey. There IS motion at my front door – and isn’t it a good reminder! I always smile. Because isn’t it what we’ve been told in movies and books. By philosophers and teachers. “When you stop learning you die.” “It’s over when you stop dreaming.” “Sharks never stop swimming. You gotta keep moving.” The list goes on. It’s all about motivation. And could there be a better place to start than your front door? So I hear it. I feel it. There IS motion! I AM alive! And so I begin with my doorbell’s poem, off in search of another. Because we get to decide. We hold the chalk that turns the cursive words into prayers and sets the path of our journey.
I have to go now. Begin. Create something. There is motion at my heart’s door.
I have know idea how they got them in the house. It never occurred to me to think of those things — the logistics of moving an organ, a clock. And just as I assumed this clock that coo-cooed on the hour was called a Grandfather clock because it was his, I thought it was a Grandma organ, because it was hers.
But it must have been fairly spectacular – this finding of an organ mover, a clock mover, to a farm house just outside of Alexandria, Minnesota. And they must have come through the front door – a door we never used, never even considered. And even if they came through this front door, there would have been a stoop to be navigated. A tiny hall before reaching the living room. But as I said, I didn’t think of it, how they got there. But I did count on it, them being there.
And that was the gift, I suppose. It was all an assurance. One I didn’t ask for, or prayed to keep, I just had it. I knew, without a doubt, what would be found in this house. Coats and overalls hanging in the entry. A kitchen table with uneven legs. Candy in the corner cupboard on the lazy-susan. Sugared cereal beneath the silverware drawer beside the kitchen sink, a kitchen sink that was forever filled with dishes. Something on the stove. Publisher’s Clearing house magazines on the dining room table. The hint of pipe tobacco and baked goods. Television on. A ticking clock. The hum of the organ at the ready. And a love, no matter how many doors or windows were left open, would never leave.
So it continues to be spectacular — this never knowing how it all got in — mostly the love. I just remember always having it. I still have it. And what a thing to move! To carry throughout a lifetime! Enough to make a heart ever coo-coo and hum.
I would have never dreamed of rummaging through my grandma’s purse. But I did admire it, sitting between us on the front bench seat of the car. It weighed nearly as much as I did. We never used our seatbelts then. The two safety measures were the outstretched straight arm of my grandma, (which could surprisingly secure me, along with the purse) and the rule that I wasn’t allowed to stick my body out of the window beyond my shoulders. I had the idea that if I wrapped my foot in the purse handles it would hold me as the wind blew open my pinkening cheeks.
The AM radio, permanently tuned into the farm report, was also blocked by her massive purse. There was a station I had heard of, out of the Twin Cities, KDWB 63. “It won’t come in,” she said, cruising down the country road. “Maybe if I held the antenna,” I pleaded. “I could just bend it through the window.” I knocked off the orange styrofoam ball that was attached to the antenna top before she pulled at my leg and secured my sweaty thighs against the leather seat. “Paul Harvey’s coming on..listen.”
Calmed by his melodic voice and the feel of the golden metal clasp of her purse beneath my fingers, I imagined a day when I would carry the weight of the world beneath white leather straps. I would have make-up and breath mints, I thought, and quarters for the parking meters. And candy and pencils and paper. And perfume and underpants. Yes, and Kleenex. And a checkbook with pictures. The tv guide for planning, of course. And grocery lists and photographs of everyone I loved. A book for reading. Rubber bands for my hair. Band-aids, because something would always happen. And Bazooka Joe gum, for the cartoons. Before I filled my imaginary purse, Paul Harvey was saying, “Good day!” “Wasn’t that good!” my grandma said, not asking. I smiled and shook my head. It was good. I had an open window. My grandma’s attention. An endless summer ahead. Youth’s purse was filled. I had everything I needed, and just enough to wish for. I slipped my hand through the loops and touched her floral dress. It was a good day indeed.
When I went off to college, the first thing that surprised me was the noise. I had always studied in silence. I was alone for the most part. I didn’t turn on the television or stereo. I liked hearing the books I was reading, feeling the words I was writing. So the first few nights in the dorm were alarmingly loud. No one had headphones. Doors seemed to be quite optional. It was overwhelming to say the least.
I wore a path to the library. And then I found the silent rooms. Doubled glass. No distractions. Glorious. My first sanctuary. It was there I could invent anything, even myself. I surrounded myself in words. Some lay quietly in yellowed pages. Others rearranged themselves and shot through my #2 pencil. It wasn’t the first time I heard my own voice, but it was the first I started to use it.
I fear that some believe courage is only born out of chaos. That we must rise above all the noise with a clattering of our own. I suppose at times this could be necessary, but maybe the most bold is to listen to your own heart, your own mind. To brave the silence and find yourself.
There is a setting on my iphotos. It is called noise reduction. It takes away all the clutter to get at the real picture. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I have been hitting that button for most of my life. Sometimes I forget. I get caught up in all the clamor — “but he said, and she did, and they are!!!!!” It’s then I have to remove myself. Find my balance. Listen to the quiet.
I whisper by hand into my sketchbook. And I am found.
I asked my grandpa, “Where do they keep their coats?” He looked confused. “The cows,” I said.
On the way to my grandpa’s place, we passed many other farms. Some of the cows were black. Some black and white. Some brown. Maybe it was because I watched my mother in a constant state of wardrobe change. Maybe because we played dress up. And fashion show. I assumed the cows were putting on their outfit of choice before they went to the field. Wasn’t that what the barn was for? The stalls? To hang their coats at night?
I’m not sure how long I believed it. But I remember he didn’t correct me the first time. Some magic should remain for as long as possible. I think he knew that.
I love that I have no recollection of the truth being revealed. Not for this. Nor Santa Claus. Or the Easter Bunny. None of that magic was jerked from my heart. It was allowed to wander at a cow’s pace in the changing fields of color.
It was my mother who always wanted to be a fashion designer. Some might say that never happened. I disagree. She taught me well. And just ask any Herberger’s shopper. She was always more than willing to lend her hand in design. She taught me that dreams don’t necessarily have to “come true,” to be valuable. The mere act of dreaming — believing in the sometimes unbelievable — saved us repeatedly. It still does.
