Maybe nature knows, how the gifts are only borrowed. From nest to song, how it’s all impermanent. We’re given everything we need between sky and tree, but it has always been for the sharing. We were meant to live in the birdsong.
I think all creative ideas (and I’m including love here, perhaps topping the list) are like dandelion seeds floating on a summer breeze, with the bravest of barefoot children chasing them, stretching to pluck them from the blue, knowing if they don’t, there are countless chubby legs running behind and beside, willing to make the journey. And just as the summer child borrows the fleeting day, I gather the words and the paint, into the shape of love, and hope and try and pray it makes it to the next season.
Painting in a new room yesterday, brush in hand, I sang along with each stroke, the Christmas songs so generously lent to me, to us, each year. Within the music, somewhere on the canvas, I am suspended in time, in the gift of the moment. No doors of advent are opening. No rushing toward the next. I’m catch myself in the song of the bird, in a moment of happiness, and I find myself in the most wonderous gift of all. I know I won’t keep the painting. It must be shared. Chubby summer legs will be waiting.
Ernest Hemingway said, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you…
Now we were not men, nor living in Paris, but my mother never shied us away from a little editing.
Our “Paris” changed from week to week depending on the books we read. We were lucky enough to have library cards, but mostly we were lucky to have each other, and that was always more than enough.
I suppose it was beside her in my twin size bed that I first heard her say, “Isn’t it so me?” I looked at her, her eyes twinkling in some distant light. I knew she was no longer on Van Dyke Road. She was in the book. She was not reading the words, but among them. As one who never wanted to be left behind, I knew I better grab hold of her, a hand, a skirt, anything near her, a participle dangling…as she danced among the paragraphs.
Oh, how we traveled. In clothes we didn’t own. In cities we never walked. In feelings that we knew as sure as the front of our hands. Hands that held the words that carried us, luckless as some may have seen — only viewing the backs, but even tucked under blankets, dreaming before dreams, we stood as tall as any tale could be.
You might think I am lucky to visit Paris now.. And I will agree. But it’s not new, it’s only because, just as Hemingway said, the luck stayed with me all these years. I was taught to keep dreaming, to keep editing, when everyone else said no, when some said only maybe, when other didn’t even bother to respond, my home grown mothered luck said, “Oh, yes, baby girl, you ARE lucky enough! This IS your Paris!”
Today we will be traveling from Marseille to Paris. Paris to New York. New York to Minneapolis. The fact that I get to type words like travel and Paris and New York and Minneapolis, and that I have stories from each place, memories, footprints, even artprints…this fills me!
Maybe it was from Ernest Hemingway that I first learned about this “feast.”
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway, to a friend, 1950
My “lucky enough” was that I always found a way to feast, even with what some would call absolutely nothing. But what they couldn’t see was I had words. I had hands. I had paint. I had an imagination. This took me everywhere — long before I stepped onto a plane. And it has stayed with me. Hemingway was right. It does stay with you – if you carry it, nurture it, give thanks for it – every day!
Zipping up the luggage now. Giving thanks. Time to feast! Bon appétit!
