I used to think they were so glamorous, the women on the front of the Butterick sewing patterns. My mother’s love for the designs was enough to lure me away from the toy aisle at Woolworth’s and join her in search of the fashion dream. For as much as I enjoyed the newest doll encased in plastic with her pink outfit, it was nothing compared to the palpable life that flowed from the dress patterns into my mother’s hands at the back of the store.
I didn’t have the words for it then, but I somehow knew it was more than glamour, and closer to worth. Not in search of proof that she could be, worthy, but knowing somewhere deep in her heart, that she already was. And so I left the ease and certainty of the lined toys and joined her in the dream.
And didn’t we become. And become again. Without money, or even a well lit path, we started our journey. Our joyful journey. And she sewed and believed. And shopped. Holding clothes under neck in front of the three-way yes (four, including mine!)
The woman arriving in my sketchbook reminded me of how far we have come. A simple nod from the back of Woolworth’s. And I know the magic moved from her hands into mine. So I pass it along to you, hoping, knowing, there is no end. The patterned dream lives on.
I did end up breaking my arm, and my heart countless times, but never my neck. And oh! didn’t they warn us, scold us, over and over. Anything we did slightly out of the norm, teachers, parents, neighbors, all gave the warning, “You’re gonna break your neck!” From the monkey bars to the top of our desks, in trees and on clotheslines, it seemed we were all willing to take that risk.
There was a lot to learn. And I suppose a lot to warn us about, so maybe they just grouped it all under the “neck.” Because it was vital, wasn’t it. In order to survive, you had to stick your neck out from time to time. Hold your head up high, they said. And sometimes, even when you were up to your neck, you still had to save someone’s neck, (sometimes your own). Somehow, we got by, perhaps merely by the scruff of our necks.
I suppose I’m doing it each day, with these stories, this artwork, sticking my neck out. But just as my five year old self told me to grab hold of the neighbor’s swinging clothesline, it feels so necessary in order to be alive! To expose yourself, to take the risk, to love!
In the fifth grade, at our Valentine’s Day party on the frozen pond of Noonan’s park, I raced on my skates to grab the human “whip” that would not only be cracked, but also break my arm. Still fully casted in plaster by our next field trip to the Chanhassen Dinner theatre, I sat in the audience and listened to the Impossible Dream. “To run,” they sang, “where the brave dare not go!” We cheered and clapped and I waved my plastered arm in the air.
Who knows what the day will bring. I’m stilling willing to take the risk.
“Let’s say the things we never said. Let’s forgive the things we never could. Let’s love like no lessons have already been learned. Let’s dream like we have the chance, and live like we have no other.“
I realized quickly that there was no need to wait for the random field trip. At Washington Elementary, once a week, we were marched down the terrazzoed hall, past the drinking fountain, the boys’ and girls’ lavatories, and up the stairs to the library. With no need for a signed permission slip from my mother, no bus fumes, no pleather stuck to the back of my thighs, I was allowed (just imagine!) to pick anything, any book I wanted. And take it. Just take it for a week. Go on the journey! Be the girl with the pesky little sister, or the big dog. Be the cowgirl, or even the horse. Live on the prairie in a little house. Fall with the boy down the well. Or be the mother of them all. It was better than any trip I had ever imagined. (And I had (have) a big one.)
The most beautiful thing of all, we never have to lose our tickets. I take a journey every day. Within the pages of a book that I read. On the pages of my sketchbook that I paint. I don’t need permission to become a poet, or a baker, or a gardener. (Even though my mother would have signed any slip, and still does with a heavenly wink.) For she was the one who loved books first. It was my mother I was following long before the line past the fountain. And when I read a passage today and think, Oh, she would love this, I stop myself and say, She does love this. How could I not believe that she continues to make the trip? Once you’ve made the journey, gone past the gravel road, the railroad tracks, the Viking statue, Olson’s Super Market, beyond the elementary school, the middle, and the high, the college, and the state and the country… you don’t stop. With hearts as open as pages, we keep wondering, we keep wandering — no slips required. Only love.
I can’t tell you how or why I started painting French birds. No more, I suppose, than I can remember the first time my mother said, “Let’s go shopping.” Some things just take on a life of their own. And now I joyfully find myself wing deep in berets and stripes.
Maybe it’s the unlikeliness of it all. We had no money, and not much of a mall. No history passed down from my grandmother. No gps in our car. No google – no computer even. Just the pure desire to dress our way into lives we knew our hearts were already living. So we gassed up the used Malibu and wore a path on I-94. Passing fields and billboards as if winged ourselves. And we found ourselves at the Dales. Ridgedale, Southdale, Brookdale even, when something just needed to be found.
I see it now more clearly. How we fit striped tops over our wings and found our way. Found ourselves.
Here in France, because my mother dared the freeway, I find myself in front of my sketchbook, and I am not lost, but ever wing deep in joy.
It turns out my mother is currently living under the assumed name of “animal prints” on TikTok. I know this to be true, because yesterday when I posted this video, she was the first to respond saying “I love that striped top. I need to be wearing it.” That is so my mother.
We had a shared language. From ruffles to stripes. One developed through years of shopping malls and our own closets. Playing dress up. Fashion show. The joy flowed like well draped fabric. And I understood completely. For her to say she was “scouring the catalogs for that blouse” after seeing a recent painting, was the best compliment she could give to me.
So how could I doubt that heaven has TikTok?
I suppose believers will always believe. And I do. And if you needed any more evidence, there’s this — while typing today’s post, I checked google to make sure I was spelling “scouring” correctly — here’s the sample definition that appeared — “I scoured the mall for a blue and white shirt, but couldn’t find it anywhere.” Feel free to say hello to my mother on TikTok.
She’s held this pose for over a week, my lovely tulip. Just like me, no one ever told her she wasn’t a dancer, and most likely (just like me) she wouldn’t have believed them if they had. And who could blame her? Donned in that lovely yellow. Gathered in and matched by the strength of the sun. How could she not keep reaching, moving, believing in all things morning as she opened each day. She did feel it! With each rising. From her very stem. And so she would dance.
A writer writes. A painter paints. A baker bakes. Not because someone pays them. Tells them that’s what they are. We decide. For ourselves. The same is true for happy. For love. You get to decide. You get to feel what you feel. No restrictions or limits. If the yellow calls to you, wakes you with a joy that not only can be, but must be, released back to the blue of the sky, then, dance, I say, simply, joyfully, rise up and dance.
Happy Easter! There’s nothing here we can’t rise above.
There is a light that comes through one of our smallest windows. It angles just enough to pass its bedroom door. Past the open hallway door. Beyond the closets. Landing directly on Margaux’s face as she leans toward the water. Something happens to my heart when I see it. All I want is to capture it. This warmth. And I have tried with my phone. My iPad. Our 35mm camera. Nothing. It tells me, time and time again, to just be in it. So I stand, quietly, enough to the side not to block, enough in the path, to feel it on my shoulder.
And isn’t that the way of love.
I used to try to fight it, draped in the beam of my mother’s memory. Then I tried to gather it all in. Neither were possible. I don’t always get it right, but mostly now, I simply let it shine. Let her shine. Never to block. Never to capture. But simply feel. And I tell you, it is a warmth, like no other. That only the heart can see.
There was an undeniable security in knowing there would always be what I needed inside my grandmother’s purse. A Kleenex. Of course. And if you used them all up, there would always be one rolled up in her sleeve. Aspirin — sure. Breath mints. Slowpokes. Sugar daddies and babies. Toasted marshmallows. Roasted peanuts, sometimes sacked, sometimes floating at the bottom. Safety pins. Paper clips. Pencils. Paper. Crayons. Perfume. Change for the meter and the gum ball machine. And all the white gum balls that we didn’t want, begging for just another nickel, sure that the next one would be red or yellow. And I suppose mostly that’s what her purse held, what she held, the promise that things could always work out if you didn’t come empty handed.
Throughout history, people have said it much more eloquently, “Ask not what your country can do for you…” and so on. I’m sure they’ve said it in every time and tongue. But waking in France, I still hear it in the language of my grandmother’s hands — what are you going to bring today? I smile, and begin rifling through my heart’s purse.
When painting a nest, you have to create the base first. All the blacks and browns must cover, then the lighter twigs can be added. It would be impossible to add the structure afterwards. To put in the dark shadows after the tans and whites.
I guess it’s the same in real life. You have to do the work. Put in the time. Do people still do it? The hard things? It’s easy to want to skip ahead. We’re all guilty of that. But I have the reminders. Of all those who nested me. The dirty steps my grandfather took to the field each day. The heeled steps my mother took to the office. Without glory or praise, they built the nest that comforts me still.
Maybe it’s silly, but I put them out for my mother. Jelly beans or a chocolate egg. A small thank you for keeping me safe until I could fly. And still in mid air. The base to my ever changing nest.
So I craft the words each morning. Each a twig. A thank you and a hope. That we all will be saved.
Being blonde and from Minnesota, it was exotic to braid one’s hair. And even more so when it was wet. To sleep in the kinks to come upon morning’s release. Probably the most daring of all, was to do it before fourth grade picture day at Washington Elementary.
I was horrified when I saw myself in the mirror. Flat on top, and then a sea of crinkled mane, then straight once again at the ends. It wasn’t a hairstyle so much as a triangle. I brushed and brushed. As if the faster strokes would release me from this nightmare. There was no time to shower. The bus had already made one pass on its way to Norton’s and would soon be coming back up the hill.
I was tall for my age. Always in the back row. My only hope was that the inexperienced photographer had no light training and I could hide in the shadows. In my stocking cap I apologized to Mrs. Paulson, who’s skirt was ironed and blouse was bowed. I pulled it off of my head. She wasn’t an expressive teacher. Not overtly emotional. She touched my shoulder that day, for the first and only time. Her fingers pressing in with “an everything will be ok.” I’ve never seen that photo again. But her kindness remains.
I never braided my hair again. Never really thought about it, until I painted this girl yesterday. But I have written about Mrs. Paulson so many times since then. Because she made a difference in my life.
