How easily my confidence could be rattled. Like jacks thrown on the playground. Oh, how I’d scramble to pick up a little “c’mon now…” with each bounce of the ball. Gather up a “who cares what they think,” a “you’re fine.” And as my pockets filled with these words, certainly given to me at one point by my mother, I bounced the ball a little higher. Got off my knees. Stopped scooping jacks. And joined back in the fun.

It’s less frequent, but on occasion I can return to the lowest ground of Washington Elementary, with just a slip of someone’s tongue. Foolish as it seems, even to me. And I find myself asking, “What are you doing? Still trying to gather up your confidence? It was never on the ground. Your heart’s pocket has never been, never will be empty.”

And I realize that I don’t do anything because I’m sure, I do it because I love it. I paint the hands of the woman, veined not with certainty, but with effort. I bake the cake, mixing in lavender honey to replace the last 80 grams of condensed milk that I do not have. I express the feeling in a language that I cannot call my own. And love with a heart dusted from playground sand.

Off my knees. The day begins. I have a painting to finish.

I’m not sure that she ever set foot in a Starbuck’s. A Caribou. But to say she wasn’t already aware, would be incorrect. I’ve said it and heard it a million times, “…it’s about the experience…” I suppose every coffee-shop goer will tell you that same thing.

Wasn’t she a part of it, so many years before? Brewing her coffee on the farm stove. Slowly. Filling the kitchen with the scent of sped awareness. Filling those shallow cups around the daytime table. Continuing the conversation from the morning’s party-line telephone call. Each cup filled again and again without the need for asking. Hiding the grounded proof that lay at the bottom of each cup. As they pushed in their chairs and walked out the swinging screen door, my grandma’s friends had no need for goodbyes. They would be connected forever. By telephone lines. Coffee grounds. And shared experience.

I brew our coffee each morning. No farm in sight, but certainly in heart. Each sip brightens the conversation. And the last taste, always the strongest, still offers the proof that I am part of it all. The party lines and forever friends. The love of family. And I am home.

…so it begins.

I was told once that our brains are like filing cabinets. And depending on where the memory is filed, is how they come up. Sometimes they are filed by color or date or sequence. They could be filed by event or object. So, for example, if you were thinking of a woman in a yellow dress, it could be filed under yellow, dress, woman or party. And being who I am, I see not only the filing cabinets, but also the person scurrying around with the files, who I call Vern, because that’s his name. Sometimes I have to encourage Vern. Sometimes I have to thank him. Other times, like this morning, he simply makes me smile, pulling up a name I was looking for weeks ago. He waves the file overhead and grins sheepishly. “It’s Carol Feldman,” he says, the name of your junior high gym teacher. 

She was filed under her face — a face that appeared in my sketchbook. That’s why her name didn’t come to me when I was talking about the gym activity. You wouldn’t recognize her by the clothes that I painted her in. But I knew her face, and so did Vern. Immediately I was beneath Central Junior High, in the dimly pink basement that we called the girls’ gym. And Vern wasn’t wrong. For it wasn’t her physical prowess that I remember. Her athleticism. Her zip up track suits are but a blur. But I remember she was kind. That she had a gentle smile. A relief, really, from all the math problems and social studies. And so how fitting to file her by face, her kind and gentle face. I pause in my sketchbook, run down the teenage stairs, waving, “Hi, Miss Feldman, Miss Feldman, HI!”

You could hear the tapping of tiny feet on the terrazzo floor keeping time with the second hand of the clock that hung above the door. Knees hitting against the top of desks. Pencils clicking. Hearts begging to be recessed into the playground of Washington Elementary. When she could no longer voice the math tables above the din, Mrs. Strand would roll her eyes, drop her shoulders and release us sans the bell, knowing that if anything was to be received in the afternoon, all of this energy had to be released. 

Some days as we stomped and trampled our way back to the class, draped in a chorus of “I’m not finished yet,” she would wave her hand and tell us to run around the lot one more time. 

What do you do when there’s no longer a daily phone call. No email from the one you love. No embrace to be gathered in. No laughter to capture, bent over at the waist. No tears of tenderness caught in heart’s lap. What do you do with all of the extra love? 

I put it on canvas. On paper. In sketchbooks. Inside loaves of bread. Serif it to every story. And still it remains. Knocking at the morning door. A foot tapping, knee banging, eager hearted reminder that I will never finish loving you.  I give thanks for that, every day, and run once again around the block. 

In the tenth grade it was Miss “B”, (our English teacher who was also known for being able to discover water with a divining rod), who set out to teach us the craft of speed reading. I loved to read, but it was never my desire to go faster, only deeper. A large percentage of the class welcomed this speed, wanting to get through a book as quickly as possible. To finish homework faster. Rifle through the pages and then bike to the Hardees parking lot for after school gatherings. And maybe some of them also thought of her as the “water witch,” but I was more interested in the “divine” of it all — for water and words. 

And that’s how I picture myself, still. Walking the fields of the paper. Twigs in each hand, searching for the meaning of each word. Getting lost in the magic of it all. The wonder. 

I don’t know if Miss “B” found the water. But I did find the divine. I do. Each time I open a book and crawl inside. Stepping lightly. Not to trample, but to gather in. Sometimes we learn, not the lesson at hand, but what our hearts need to know. If you need me, I’ll be out joyfully wandering. 

It took a long time for me to grow into my mother’s face. The first time someone said it, you look just like your mother, it was as if I found my way home. Amid all the impermanence of driveways and houses. Of streets and cities and doors opening and closing, I had the permanence of knowing where I came from. And with that, the knowledge that I could go anywhere, be anyone. 

And if my mother looked like her father, then how could I not find comfort in my grandfather’s portrait? 

Yesterday, I was showing new friends of the family some of my paintings. This is my grandfather, I said in a new language. In a different country. And still, when they saw him, this man who looked like my mother, who looked like me, I felt they saw a little bit more of my heart. And I was a part of the palette. I was home. 

There is a myth that claims upon returning to their usual spot, (not knowing that the lake had been paved over) a flock of geese, thinking it was water, came crashing into the pavement and died. 

How do we know if nobody tells us? 

I think we have a tendency to do this with a lot of things. We smooth things over. Sugar coat them. Sweep them under rugs. Hide them under bushels. And I’m not certain why. I think, if we go through something, we have a responsibility to help others do the same. And this can only be done with the truth. And while you might think the truth is harsh, it’s actually an offering of a safe place to land.

Isn’t it their own fault? Didn’t they “V” their way right into their own demise. Yes. But haven’t we all been led astray from time to time? I know I have. And I have been greeted by the pavement of “I told you so,” and I have been welcomed by the forgiveness of “come in, you and your heart sit down.” 

Maybe it’s silly, (I guess I am that silly goose). But what if we did that for each other, simply offered a soft place to land? 

You can’t imagine the amount of stories I have heard, just from people who play the ukulele. And it makes me so happy when people see themselves in the smallest of my paintings. They find themselves in a ruffled blouse, or my grandma’s kitchen. Beside a red truck. In a striped shirt of a French bird. Because it’s no longer me on the way to the mall with my mother. It becomes their story. With their American mother. On their way. And we are all connected.

And it occurred to me, if you can hear the music of this little bird, if the violin sings to you, and we find ourselves under the same sky, branch to branch, then certainly we could see each other, human to human. And what if we did… really see each other… imagine how that music would sound. Just for a moment, let’s listen.