Spring arrived not only on the side of the hill, but also in my step. I can buy it at the grocery store. In fact I did just a few days before. And it was delicious. But it can’t match the thrill of finding asparagus, petite stalk by stalk, just off the pathway.
And when I say hill, mountain would be closer to my leg’s truth. It is quite steep. And can be challenging. But while searching for the wild asparagus, I noticed on my second trip up, I hadn’t heard a thing from my thighs. Now, I’m sure they didn’t feel any different from the day before, but I think they knew the task. I think they knew they were as much a part of the hunt as my eyes that scanned, my back that bent, and my hands that grasped. I think to complain would have set them apart, so they marched silently up the hill, and joined in the victory when the asparagus omelette was made just hours later.
It was my grandfather who always told me whenever I was in deep struggle, (often self imposed), to focus on someone else. And I’m sure I struggled with that as well, screaming like an angry ascending quad, but he was right. He was always right. It’s a lesson I keep learning. Sometimes more quickly than others. But I still celebrate in the victory. He would like that — because in doing so, I am also thinking of him.
He comes the day. I’m about to join in. I climb. I hope. I reach. I pray. I curse. I kick. I laugh. I rest. I climb. I hope.
She stood beside Martin Luther King, Jr. and sang “We shall overcome.” She was only 19 at the time. Recalling it today, Joan Baez states she really thought that it meant once, this overcoming…laughing, in the way that you do from exhaustion but an unwillingness to give up, she says at 83, “I didn’t realize we would have to overcome again and again…”
My mother loved her for a different anthem — the song Diamonds and Rust. She must have spun a hole in the record, with her own reasons and willingness to overcome. It’s gained popularity again today because of the recent movie about Bob Dylan (for whom she wrote this song). The world keeps beginning.
When I was a kid, watching the record spin, I thought I would just figure stuff out, you know, and become something, and that would be it…that would be my life. Thank God that isn’t the way, not for me anyway. I think that I, we, just have to keep becoming. We change and grow. We are molded by love and trips around the sun. It takes a long time to build a soul. We get older, maybe wiser, (even better, we gain a little grace) but we don’t finish – we don’t have to – we begin, and be, and begin again. I think that’s the gift of living…the joy of being alive! We shall overcome.
Last week we had the good fortune of revisiting the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Located on theLeft Bank of the Seine, it houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionistmasterpieces in the world. Painters include Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. It began as a railway station in 1898. By 1939, the short platforms became unsuitable for the newer, longer trains, and some considered it useless. There was even talk of tearing it down. But because of the vision of a select few, it was saved. And it is now one of the most beautiful and visited museums in the world. I suppose it’s always been human nature to give up. Supplied with life’s hammer, we have a decision to make, again and again. To build or destroy. Standing on the left bank once again, I know my decision is already made. The first thing I see each morning is this painting. The children by the sea. There is wonder. There is joy. This can never change. I put down my hammer, and pick up a brush. There is beauty to be made. Still.
They didn’t make it clear when they bent over to get face to face and asked the question, “What do you want to become when you grow up?” They made it seem like it was a one time thing. I never dreamed it would be daily.
The easiest thing would be to just let them all fall to the ground, the wild plums from our garden tree. But that’s not who I am. So I stand bucketed beneath the limbs and pluck and shake and fill. Wild plums do not give it away easily. Skin and pit are prepared to put up quite a fight. I could just smash them all together, and it would be easier, but again I answer, possibly with less conviction, but still, that’s not really who I am. So I peel each tiny fruit. One by one. Put them in the colander to let the juices flow. Smash them by hand, struggling to release the pit that hangs on, and on…but I can’t blame a pit for being a pit. The juice and sweet pulp that remains gets sugared and boiled into the most beautiful rouge — prune rouge.
We had it on our homemade bread for breakfast. The day becomes, and I begin.
Maybe there’s no way to be warned. And maybe it’s better that we aren’t. It would be a little overwhelming to hear that you are going to have to become, and become and become. Every day you will be asked to become the person you want to be. For me, it’s from canvas, to paper, to table. From person to person, customers online, strangers en route, family in house…who am I to each of them, to myself? Of course I fail, but therein lies the beauty of it all, I get to become again. We all do.
That’s not to say it’s easy. Tears and sweat will need to be wiped away constantly, but when you get there, to the sweet prune rouge of it all, it is beautiful, this becoming, so I face the mirror and ask myself, still and again, to become.
It was the most delightful combination of comfort and brand new.
I made a book of photographs for Dominique’s mother. Each visit we would go through the book, again, for the first time. Her short term memory collapsed upon itself within just a few minutes, but the long term — the love of her family — this recognition remained until the end. So we turned, page by page, holding.
Maybe it’s the heart that takes over, when the brain has had enough. The brain that has warned us, urged us. Shot the warning signs again and again. But thankfully the heart seems to win — turning the the brain’s fears of “remember when…” into the heart’s gathering of “aaaah, but remember when…”
They say memory is unreliable. I suppose if you’re using the brain, that’s true. So I write the stories from my heart, where they seem to be holding, strong. Each day turning the page, saying the “I love you’s” again, and for the first time.
Waiting to take the flight back to France after my last visit to my mom, sitting at the airport, lonesome, she texted me that she wanted a jacket just like my new one from Sundance. Typing in the size, credit info, her address, I began to smile. I had a beginning.
I love the Sundance store. I’ve been three times already this trip. When I see the perfect blouse, or scarf, or dress, I take a heart picture and send it up to heaven, and life keeps beginning.
When we used to go on trips, my mom and I, before returning home, we had to put a “dream in our pockets” — something new to focus on. Never the ending of this trip, but beginning a new one. I mention it only because she’s still filling my dream pockets. Yesterday, when I got the news from my publisher regarding a new painting commission, it was glorious, but not all that surprising. Returning home, I will have a new project, something to focus on that I love, a beginning.
The sun is coming through the morning window. I have all that I need, and just enough to wish for.
It’s not that I don’t make resolutions, it’s just that mine are more of the day to day kind. Perhaps even moment by moment. I don’t know why I thought of it this morning. Maybe it was the crowd of Valentine’s Day hearts hanging in the hotel breakfast room that shouted January is almost over!
It goes so quickly. And I don’t want to waste any of it. So I looked it up this morning. This “resolution.” I had to scroll down a little, but I found my answer. By definition, in scientific terms, resolution means the smallest interval measurable. I smiled, because I guess that’s how my heart runs, my brain operates, in these smallest of intervals.
If the coffee is good and strong, and the hotel has peanut butter for my toast, breakfast is good. When the words come for my blog. When you respond. I feel connected. I fill my sketchbook slowly, page by page. The story, my life, unfolds.
I remember making those paper hearts in school. Folding the paper in half. Cutting out the heart shape. Then, still folded, making all the tiny cuts. Even then I remember thinking we had just done the same thing for snowflakes. In a blink the teacher took them from the wall, we changed the paper and made the same little cuts into heart-flakes. We didn’t think about the whole school year. We just made the tiny adjustments. The tiny cuts. And moved through each day.
I guess I’m still doing that. Making the tiny cuts and unfolding the day. Determined, resolute even, to measure the moments heart by heart.
For most things, an outfit for example, my mother’s decisions were slow and methodical, including several trips to the store, three-way mirrors, test runs with the right shoes, the accenting jewelry, the perfect shade of make-up applied in the proper lighting. Such gentle care she took to reach her destination. So it was surprising to me, on any given road trip, how quickly she could decide whether a city was the right stop for her. It wasn’t often, but it was swift and sure when it happened. Pulling off the exit, as I opened my car door, her decision would be made. “Nope,” she would say, and I knew she wouldn’t be getting out of the car. “I hate it,” she said. And just in case her point wasn’t clear, she added, “with a passion.” The echo of my laughter rang in the rear view mirror as we pulled out of town.
But that’s how we did all things I suppose, with a passion. The cds turned along with the wheels beneath us and we sang! We sang as if each lyric was happening to us at that very moment. It was, we were, wild and free! So many things in this life are out of our control. And maybe that’s why she did it — say no. It feels so good. So freeing. To decide what’s right for you. Not out of spite or anger, but pure passion, passion for your own life, your own living.
We pulled into the city yesterday (I won’t say which one – we all have our own right to decide.) I had to use the restroom. Dominique kept one hand on the car door. The words were French, and not exactly identical, but I knew we weren’t staying. I laughed as we sang ourselves down the road…with a passion.
According to the song, we were not yet even “puppies,” but each morning around 8:15 — just after being dropped off of the school bus at Washington Elementary, and just before Miss Green began our 5th grade class — we sang alongside the turntable with Donny Osmond, “And they called it puppy love Just because we’re in our teens…”
Of course we weren’t in our teens, but even just having a record player, we felt old enough to experience all the emotions. The closest we actually got to boys was playing four square on the playground. We rotated through the boxes, never touching, hovering somewhere between wanting to beat them and wanting to be liked. I suppose we thought the answers would come in the next song. But none of us actually had the money to buy a new 45 at Carlson’s Music Center, so we sang it again and again, “
Someone, help me, help me, help me please. Is the answer up above? How can I, oh how can I tell them,this is not a puppy love.”We began to lean on Mr. Iverson, our music teacher. Each week he gathered us together to learn a new song — new meaning new to us, but certainly old, perhaps older than our parents. We were desperate for new. “Please please please,” we begged, “let us sing something from the radio.” Our hands shot up straight in the air when he asked for suggestions. “Seasons in the sun” was the overwhelming response. They played it constantly on KDWB, the radio station that intermittantly came in from Minneapolis. Unfamiliar with the lyrics, he said he would play the record and decide. He placed it on the turntable and immediatlely his face turned. None of us had heard the actual verses. We were all just mesmorized by the chorus — “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun…” Unfortunately, the majority of the song was about dying. Somehow we had missed that. He scratched the record racing to get the needle out of the groove. I guess we were all in such a hurry to become older, at least puppies, that we missed it.
And that’s the gift, isn’t it? I’m always surprised as summer turns into fall. It happens year after year, and I’m still hovering between the bus ride and when class actually begins. Luxuriating in the 15 minutes of unsupervised freedom. Still ready to believe. To become. To begin again.
I begin to miss it immediately. That last bite of toast. A spoon licked clean of homemade jam. And the cup’s final drop of coffee — it’s strongest sip of the morning. As Virginia Woolf would say — “a sip of the divine specific.”
Maybe it’s the newness of it all. The beginning. The conversation so fresh and coherent, laced with headlines and caffeine. Lingering in the sugared possibilities, I am not doing. Not ahead, nor behind, I just am. I know that soon I will be studying, typing, splashing, moving, creating, but at this moment, while the beans have magically moved from brew to waft, I float with them, over tabled worries and responsibilities. Light as I will be.
I am, by nature, a day-filler. I’m a doer. A “let’s get things done” person. And I love it. To create is joy. Whether it is canvas or confiture (jam), I have a real need to make it. A pace that speeds me to the blur of day’s end. A pace that outruns (sometimes), that overcomes (sometimes), but always forces me to stop. And just before I fall to sleep, brushing away the should-haves and could-haves, weeding through the less-than-“devine,” I smile, I breathe, comforted by the calming thought — it’s almost time for breakfast.
