I don’t think I owned a watch until I was in highschool, so it was impossible to judge the hour’s wait after eating and before entering the lake. I began turning my mother’s wrist every few minutes to view the Timex. She shook me off like the pest I was being. Ten minutes. 15 minutes. “Oh for heaven’s sake, you’re lit up like the Fourth of July!” She motioned me to go in already, knowing the risk of me imploding on land was greater than cramping in the water.
I entered the water each time as if it were my first. Every splash released my “rocket’s red glare,” my “bombs bursting in air!” Of course it was never “through the night” but it was my proof, proof that everything was possible, exciting, uncontainable!
I didn’t have the words for it then, but this unfettered joy was my America. I don’t ever want to lose that spirit. I don’t want us as a nation to ever lose it. The risk of us imploding perhaps is stronger than it has ever been. But we are still free. We are still young, and ever hopeful.
I saw this young girl at City Park in Alexandria, Minnesota. I had to paint her. She lives on the canvas. She lives in my heart. This is who I am. Who we are!
Hope races me into the deep end of this Independence Day and I raise my hands in all the promise of the joy that can, should, and I pray, will ever remain. Happy Fourth of July!
In my late teens, I had to have surgery on my jaws. The only place that was doing this procedure was in Fargo, North Dakota. We lived two hours away, in Alexandria, Minnesota. My mom drove a light blue mini station wagon. We had no GPS, no cell phone, and no real sense of direction, on the road, and barely in our daily lives. My mom set out to find the hospital. We had an address and the light of day, but soon lost both. As the sun was setting, we drove around block after block. Nothing familiar. Nothing welcoming. The sun kept sinking and so did our spirits. “We’re never going to find it,” my mother said. “We’re lost.” She kept driving. Slowly. “They’re never going to find us.” Still driving. “We’re going to die in North Dak… “and she stopped. Suddenly beaming. “Oh, look!” she shouted, “there’s Herbergers!” And we were saved. Herberger’s was our familiar. Our welcome. To those of you who didn’t grow up in the midwest, it was the Department Store. The gathering place. The anchor of the mall. It was home. I am not ashamed to admit that it saved us so many times. It was a distraction. A diversion. A place to go behind a dressing room curtain and be whomever you wanted to be. Now this retail therapy may be more American than I knew. Here in France, you have to anticipate what you need on Thursday, get it Friday, because Saturday is crazy busy, Sunday is closed, and Monday is closed. Yes, Monday. I remember being disoriented when the American stores were closed on Easter Sunday, so this was a radical change. It took a minute to detox, but certainly I have. Things are slower. Not better or worse, just different. I have learned a different patience (because it comes in all forms). I have found a different perspective. Closed on Mondays was not going to change, so I had to adapt. Now I look at it as a relief – “Well, we don’t have to go anywhere today, because we can’t. What will I focus on? I should make something.” And so I do. Not just art, not just stories, anything. Here is my chance to make anything. Let’s make cookies. Oh, dear, we have to refrigerate for an hour? I can’t possibly wait that long. That’s how I first started. Still in a rush. Now I bake croissants. They take two days. Two days, imagine that. And worth every roll of the pin. Time really is nothing. It is what we do with the time. We are offered, once again a new perpective in this Covid time. It is different. It is challenging. But in this time, if we look hard enough, we will find what truly matters, we will see something, the light, and we will be saved.
**The logo for Herberger’s was a rose – hence the title.
Rhonda Steen was the best pitcher in the Alexandria Girls’ Elementary School Summer league when I was in third, fourth and fifth grade. I can’t tell you the name of her team because we didn’t have uniforms, and in fact, each year we randomly chose new teams. We didn’t keep stats, so I have no actual proof that she was the best, I just remember that I could hit a home run off of almost every other pitcher but her. She brought something new to the game. It was slow pitch, so this was all technique. Every other pitcher up until then threw the ball gently toward home plate, almost as if they wanted you to hit it. Rhonda threw each pitch with the most aggressive arc we had ever seen. The ball seemed to sky into the blue, hover a bit over the batter (as they tried to swat it like a fly above their heads), and then drop directly behind them, magically in the strike zone. Most of us, with no sun glasses, no hats, certainly no tar beneath the eyes, lost every ball in the summer sun and just waited to see what the teenage umpire called… inevitably it was a strike.
We didn’t receive ribbons or trophies. Except for the year that my team lost every game, I don’t remember the wins or losses. I don’t remember that is was important. I remember riding my bike to the games. I remember the fields, the dirt, the girls. We were friends in the heat of summer, not tied together by uniforms or sponsors, but by friendship. We just played. We didn’t know it then, but I suppose Rhonda’s expert pitching was a sign that we would eventually separate, follow different paths…keep track of the scores, the wins, start worrying about whether or not this life was actually a success.
I still have my baseball glove. It was a hand-me-down from my brother, who’s name eventually wore off and I permanently inked my own. I introduced my husband’s grandchildren to the game. I pitch to them a tennis ball and if they hit it, they race each other around the trees until they fall over. It is pure and it is beautiful. And we all win.
I don’t think Rhonda made a career of her special skill, certainly I did not. But wait, maybe I did. I guess my job is to bring you the pure love of these and other stories, through pictures and words. And I hope I can do that. I hope you can feel that. When you reply “oh, that was my mother,” or “that was my neighborhood,” it connects us all. When we get down to the pureness of it all, in the disinfected light of a summer day, we truly are all connected. Sure, we can see we have different skills, different goals, different teams… but under that one sun’s warmth, wearing the same dust on our knees, we are one, we are more than winning, we are truly living.
