To be so filled with life that it has to flush from your very pores. Cheeks ruddy and ever ready. I suppose we all think it will last forever — sure that our feet will keep the deal that youth has made. But maybe it’s the heart that takes over. (Or maybe it led all along.) Maybe it’s the heart that drags us from spring’s mud into summer’s bliss. Maybe it’s the heart that races through grass’s morning dew again and again, and lifts us up from green knees when we fall, ever promising to keep our cheeks flushed through autumn. Through winter.
Every time I paint a face, I feel the colors in my own, flowing through my hands. And the corners of my mouth rise up, smiling, so happy to be a part of youth’s reddening still.
What will you do today, to remain in the race of summer?
I see the Sainte Victoire mountain every day. It always catches my breath. On the halfway point of my daily walk I get the best view. I try to drink it in slowly. It is the latte I order extra hot to make it last longer. It is the tentative first sip of familiar and spectacular against my lips. Delicious.
Sometimes I wonder if I would have noticed it. Would I have just gulped it in and moved on? It was Cezanne who led me to it. Painting by painting. Image by image. In books and museums. Telling me again how worthy it was. How beautiful. And I believed it before I stood beneath it. Before I climbed it. Before I painted it.
That’s what we can do for each other. It’s why I love a latte, I suppose. Because of each one shared with my mother, with my friends. Each sip an experience. Of laughter and tears. An extension of a meal. A way to make the afternoon last longer. A gathering of love, sip by sip.
And the thing is, we can do it with everything. When we share what we love. The things we find important. When we show each other the view from our hearts, it can be the familiar turned spectacular. I mean it’s just a rock, a giant rock, this Sainte Victoire. So if we can turn that into a “breath-taker” — just imagine what else love can do!
It’s time to show our hearts. Look at things differently. Open our minds. And just see!!!!
It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming.
Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night. Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening.
In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!
I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons.
So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true.
For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry.
Every year the month of July writes a poem that can only be read from my upstairs bathroom window. My breath — that leaps from heart to smile — gives thanks to my brain for not memorizing, but allowing it to be a surprise each time.
Certainly there are other trees in the area, we live in the south of France after all. Paintings and poems are bursting into view as I walk my daily route. But this one feels just for us. Our little private firework popping in rhyme. I, we, don’t strain our necks to look past the blooming white tree beneath the pink. The hedge blocks the view from foot and car. Framed perfectly by the window sill, it knows we will come. And it waits. And when I hear it speak in rose, I don’t dismay the temporary, but give thanks for it. If it were ever, if I heard the words again and again throughout the year, would I be breathless? Maybe not. So I give thanks for the gift of July. The passing moment. The brief and beautiful poem outside my window.
Van Dyke Road separated the two worlds. It was so magical how far crossing one small stretch of gravel could take me. The back of our house faced a sea of grain — Hugo’s field. And in a way, it was like swimming, running through the stalks at full chubby- legged-speed, arms stretched to each side, creating a golden wave. Across the road though, behind Weiss’s house, was a lake. Not a big one. Nor a clean one, of the 10,000 our state touted. We didn’t swim in it. So what was the allure? It had to be the dock.
Florence and Alvin had a big yard. Bonnie, the daughter, was so much older, that to me, she was just another adult. So there were no arms of youth waving me over to play. I would sneak along the shrub line. Roll down the manicured slope to the lake’s edge. I could hear the dock before I saw it. The wave rocked wood cracking gently. I took off one bumper tennis shoe and placed my lavender-white toes on the sun warmed plank. It was extraordinary. I have no memory of being a shoeless baby, but I imagine at some point some uncle or boisterous neighbor blew their warm breath on my rounded feet, and I knew, standing there, barefoot on Weiss’s dock, this must be exactly how it felt. I giggled like that infant and took off my other shoe.
I braved each crack to the end. My body craved what my feet already had, so I lay down and let it gather in my arms, legs and back. My fingers danced at my side in the tiny puddles of cool water that gathered in the wood’s unevenness. I don’t know if I saw all the beauty of these imperfections, but I’d like to think I did.
Who knows how long I stayed. Summer afternoons felt eternal. I guess in a way, they are. I can still rest in that warmth.
I have written so many times about swimming – in actual lakes. Lake Latoka was only a bike ride away. But just out my door, front and back, oh, how my heart and imagination swam. Daily. And maybe that’s what home is after all…this ability to dream in the comfort of shore.
For me, it’s the softness of her gaze. No sharp edges to her reaction. Even her shoulders aren’t weighted. This is what makes her beautiful — not what she sees, but how she sees it. From within.
I paint her to remind myself the same is true for all of us. How we navigate through this world is what people really see. We need to stay informed, of course, but the ugliness that gathers, and there is a lot, I don’t want that inside of me. So I soften my gaze. My eyes. My lips. My tongue. Relax my shoulders. Nothing for hatred and ill will to hang on. (Because aren’t those sharp edges so much easier to cling to?)
I suppose I only know it, because I was always given that soft place to land. My grandma’s lap, my mother’s heart. I see now that it was not only for me, but for them as well. A gift we must give each other. A gift we must give ourselves. I dare the morning and the mirror softly. No sharp edges in sight.
It seems I always needed a little extra assurance, and she was more than willing to give it to me. I was still at the picking up and putting down phase. Old enough to walk, or at least waddle, but the need to have my grandma near was stronger than any urge to wander off, so when she placed me somewhere near her kitchen chores I stayed. I held her gaze as if with ropes. “I’m not going to leave you,” she said. I smiled. And I believed her. I’m not going to say that I didn’t test it from time to time — the speed at which she could apron wipe her hands and grab the sharp object from my grasp. I think we both knew I was too much of a rule follower to do anything drastic, but it was always worth the feeling of her dishwater warm hands around me.
I sat in the doctor’s office yesterday, hovering somewhere between translation and nerves. Oh, it was to be the smallest of procedures. Nothing really, but yet, I needed a little of that sweet assurance. The French words jumped from his mouth to the tablet and my eyes darted around his desk, landing on nothing short of two warm hands around me. It was a small sack, probably filled with samples from the pharmacie, most certainly labeled by angels, “Elsie sante.” In the decade plus that I’ve been here, I’ve never seen this brand before. But it wasn’t really a surprise. Hadn’t she promised? I’m smiling. She hasn’t left yet.
It’s not that I’m attached to the shoes really, but the miles they carried me.
I was gifted a new pair of shoes for my birthday. I’ve tried them on. Admired them in the mirror. Jumped up and down. Ran in place to see if they were fast. (The same thing I’ve done since getting my first pair at Iverson’s shoes in Alexandria, Minnesota.) They are going to be lovely, I know it, but not just yet.
I put on my old pair again today. I can see my socks through the holes above the laces. I know why they rip there. It’s from each bend at the bed of my toes as I climb up the hills of the Montaiguet. They are not flawed, but accomplished.
I hope I can see it the same way in myself, in those around me. What if we all could? What if we could see, not the imperfections, but the climb? What if we saw the days that, in the rain, the wind, we still went to the hill? The mornings after not much sleep, we dragged those feet higher. And higher still. And if we did, see all the wind and rain and rocks and miles and steeps, wouldn’t all those shoes seem a lot more beautiful?!!! I’m smiling, because my socks are smiling through the opening. They will get their much deserved rest tomorrow, but today, once again, we open with a climb.
Would I have seen it — the majestic beauty of the Sainte Victoire — if Cezanne hadn’t shown it in paintings again and again? I’d like to think yes, but I can’t be sure. Never to lose it, the appreciation, each day when I walk by the viewpoint, I stop. Sometimes I take a photo. Sometimes I just wave and give thanks. Some days I climb a little higher. Perhaps to get a little closer. Like Laura did on Little House on the Prairie, when she needed to be in voice reach of heaven. She rattled her braids and sweated her brow. Tested the very muscles of her thighs just to get a little closer.
I don’t measure these daily steps in “likes.” I measure them in steps. How close can I get to the real beauty of those around me? The heavenly goodness of my grandparents and mother. Of teachers and friends. I can’t take the chance that they don’t know, that you don’t know. So I keep climbing. With keyboard and brush. Telling their stories. Our stories.
I suppose we all think we’re just one voice, what could it matter? But I have to believe it does. It matters to me. And when I see you out there, thighs burning, heart racing, I tell you I can’t climb it for you, but it can be climbed. We can do this — I tell it to my own sweating brow, and yours, yes, we can.
We went through all of my possible names at Sephora to try to find my fidelity card. Jodi Hills. Jodi Orsolini. Jodi Hills Orsolini. Even Dominique. Nothing. (We didn’t try “Goat” like they have me listed as at the winery.) It’s the second time they’ve lost it. Well, lost is probably the wrong word. My name just eludes them. And still, I exist. I could be upset about it. It’s my skin after all. And thick or thin, I still want the make-up. Thick or thin skinned, I have to stand in front of the mirror alone and apply. And I do. And, humbly, I must say, I like what I see. And I know my name. I know who I am.
When I was little, my brother called me Tess. Tessma Luma. Tessie Trueheart. I didn’t question it. I liked it. My friends called me Jodes. Joder. Jo-Jo Starbucks. Josi Hi. Jod. And I suppose I knew it was me, not by the actual name they used, but the sound of the call, the familiarity I heard with not just my ears, but my heart.
I remember getting off the bus at Lee’s house to play with Lincoln and Tony. Mrs. Lee was the only mom in the neighborhood to call me Tessma Luma. I walked through their open screen door and knew I was home.
Here in France, they emphasize the second syllable. My name is Jho-DEE! At first I must admit it sounded strange. Now it swings as easily as a screen door.
I guess it always comes down to being comfortable in your own skin. No one can give you that, you have to hear it — hear it from the filter within. I smile at the “rose by any other name” in the mirror, and decide to have a good day.
