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?
Yesterday I made both bread and cookies, so it’s not surprising that my daily sketch had her hands in the dough. My floured fingers were reminding my heart that it could always be a good day.
I guess that’s how I gauge them. For me they are good days, successful, as long as I do just that — “have my hands in the dough.” If I am in the attempt, covered in paint, or flour, or sweat, trying to make something, learn something, become something, then I’m ok.
And it’s usually the heart that gets most of the credit, and often well deserved. Follow your heart they say. Let your heart lead you. That’s always good advice. But I don’t want to forget the hands. The work. Sometimes the heart needs a little rest from all the heavy lifting. And sometimes, it’s the hands they say I’ve got this. I’ve got you, palms up.
I heard something recently. It was more about the tools you have in the garage, but it seems applicable — “Use what you have to get what you want.” And what I had yesterday, I had my hands. And the day was passed with effort and joy — exactly what I wanted.
And the beauty is, it’s nothing I have to wish for, I just have to do it. Every day. Put my “hands in the dough.”
Sometimes I have more patience with a batch of cookies than I do myself. That doesn’t seem right.
I was always amazed that my grandma never measured anything. A rule follower from Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class, I just didn’t understand. I put my head down on the desk when she asked. Raised my hand before speaking, and even drank the milk that made me gag. But then in Grandma Elsie’s kitchen, flour and sugar flew with wild abandon and I found myself caught up in the twirl. Still a bit uncertain, I would ask, “But what if it isn’t right?” “Then I’ll know soon enough,” she said.
I wanted it — whatever that was — confidence, experience, trust, or maybe a combination of all it. Making the cookies yesterday, I found myself once again in the twirl. I made a test cookie to get to my “soon enough.” It was perfect and I finished the batch.
The years have given me the strength to brave the twirl. To let go the worry of what if it’s not right, or good enough, but to simply try. I can feel the trust in my Elsie hands and kitchen heart. I feed my soul. And I taste this life.
The Christmas carcass became yesterday’s soup. Aproned and worry-free, I Grandma Elsied my way through the process. Adding everything. Measuring nothing. And it was delicious. Steeped with holiday and attention, it tasted rich and full, but for me, the added pleasure, satisfaction, joy, came with nothing being wasted.
I try to practice it — this making use. A scrap of metal turned into a frame. Discarded wood into panels. Yesterday’s still fresh oil paint into tomorrow’s tableau. And to me it’s all important, but I hope I pay the same attention to living. Using everything I have. Every speck of courage, because we’ll get more tomorrow. Loving with every piece of my heart, knowing it means nothing left inside. And perhaps it’s not as easy as pot to stove, but I was taught to attempt in Elsie’s kitchen. To abandon worry and just create.
She’s smiling over my soup bowls, but more over, my heart. Telling me daily to give it all, and just become.
If you dip the cookie in the frosting, pick it up slowly, turn it over, sway it a little side to side and front to back, the frosting will level itself out. I don’t know how it knows, but it does. It’s the gift before the giving.
I think we’re all given the tools. Right from the start. Oh, sure, it takes a little turning. A little swaying. But when you know. You know.
I used to go into my room at five years old and color my emotions. I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling, but I had 24 Crayolas that could relay the message. At six, — as Mrs. Bergstrom gave us the spelling, the words — I began to write poems. Thus began this cookie’s life of self leveling. And the real gift is, I now have something to give.
I’m not special. We’re all given the tools. Maybe you garden. Maybe you bake. Or build. Or teach.
Yesterday, after painting in the studio, feeling the magic of this new portrait beginning, I wanted to call my mom. Oh, how she loved magic!! And perhaps frosting even more. So I returned to the kitchen, dipped the cookies that I had made earlier that day, and turned and swayed and leveled myself in all that love, and somehow I knew she knew.
When you love something, you want to share it. In my youth, I used to think that meant that the other person not only had to love it, but love it for the same reasons. Childish, I know, but I’d like to think I’ve gotten better, more secure. It is more than enough to simply love.
I enjoy making Christmas cookies. Thanks to a childhood friend, I have one cutter in the shape of Minnesota. Of course no one here in France knows what it is, but the shape of my home state is just as delicious as the Christmas tree, or the star, and they enjoy it. Sometimes I watch. I smile when I think, oh, my husband just took a bite of Duluth, and that same shape that rests in my heart, without his knowledge or permission, is colored in the morning blue of a fresh snow, and is silently full.
Is that what love has always been? If so, what a relief to know it is in the giving that we become filled. Oh, the stress of waiting and wanting to receive… So I offer my love, in all the shapes and colors I know, and find myself with more than I ever could have asked for. And I am saved.
Shopping Michigan Avenue, my mom and I wanted it to never end. We went in every store. Up and down. Miles and miles of Chicago’s “magnificent.”
We weren’t big Nike fans, but the store itself was gorgeous. We feigned affection. Running our fingers against t-shirts and track suits (long before leisure wear, that’s what we called them.) I don’t know who stopped first, but we stood in front of the poster and read. Words could always hold our attention. There was a woman running on a country road with these words, “There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.” We both smiled, and ran along beside her.
The places we traveled in that truth! I still do.
I’m still sometimes thrown by Mondays in France. Nothing is open. Yesterday morning, I told Dominique that we were out of treats. Before he finished asking, “Where would you like…” we both realized the Mondayness of the situation. By mid afternoon, I was able to travel to Chicago in order to find that my French kitchen was always open. Monday didn’t stand a chance against my molasses. I made the cookies, and may I say, they are magnificent.
I pride myself in finding a way. My mother saw to that. She’s still guiding me through Monday. Tuesday is here. Wide open! Let’s run!
It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough people to feed. Yet she never seemed to mind when neighbors (neighbors whose houses could not even be seen beyond the fields) popped over at the first waft of the oven’s scent. Her wide knuckled hands waved off the intrusion and welcomed them to the kitchen table.
On the rare occasion that her lap was open, (usually during Days of Our Lives), I would sit and twirl her thinning wedding band. Still able to move at the base of her finger, I knew she would never be able to get it over the middle knuckle. “Did it shrink?” I asked. “What?” “Your ring.” She let out a laugh that sounded like a leak of a hose. “No, my fingers got bigger.” I was shushed to listen to Ma and Pa Horton on the tv.
It makes me happy to think it wasn’t because of the work. I know now, it was the wave of the welcoming. Her hands, just like her heart, got bigger with every visit.
I felt it yesterday as I passed some cookies fresh from the oven over the fence to our neighbor. Her five year old granddaughter was visiting. She said her love for the cookies was bigger than the sun and the moon together! I felt the Elsie-ing of my hands and heart. What a welcome feeling!
They differed in so many ways. Grandma Elsie would have laughed at the thought—harder than she’d laugh when beating us at a card game whose rules went unexplained — “iron my dish towels?????” I’m not sure a towel was dry long enough in her house for it to be ironed. A constant rotation from laundry to sink. From hot pan, to table wipe, to sticky face. Tucked inside her waist, then back to the laundry. I know for sure that after ironing mine, and hanging them just so on the rack, that’s all my mother.
But too, as I stand aproned and covered in flour, baking the bread that could easily be bought at the nearest boulangerie, I am my grandma.
Margaux, 14, will only know them by what I share. She loves the bread. She may not call it by name, but as she Elsies her way back for another slice, I think she knows. Excited for her shopping trip, I tell her to wear a button down, for speed in the dressing room, and to save on her hair and make-up. She smiles, and Ivies her way to Paris.
One day, will she Jodi her dish towels? I can’t be sure. But while I am here, she will feel us all, and know she is home.
It doesn’t matter how many times I see it. It always fills me. The Gold Medal Flour. The Guthrie. The Stone Arch Bridge. Anything downtown Minneapolis. Maybe it’s the case for any place you begin, but here, I will always keep beginning.
I never baked bread before moving to France. Flour was merely the golden sign that lit a Minneapolis summer night. Bare shouldered in the warmth of evening, nothing could tire us. Nature’s season of laugher (and youth’s season as well) we could go all night. It’s funny, so many years later, I can still feel it. Not throughout my whole body, but in my heart’s mill, where I keep such pressure things.
Waking this morning after the long flight back home, from home, it’s always a little disorienting. Neither time, nor yesterday seem real. But I make sense of it, mixing flour and yeast, water and salt. Fueled by the sweet light of what was and what will be. Nothing lost. All grist for the mill. Dough rising. And a new day begins.
