She wrote her first order in Chicago. My mom was always there for moral support. Cheering me on as I sold my goods. But she was yet to pick up the pad and pen. She looked beautiful standing beside me — as if she just stepped off Michigan Avenue. She visited with the customers. Told the various stories behind the art. (Most of them included her.) She made them laugh with their hearts. As they say, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and soon my booth was overflowing. I looked up at her (as I always did). I think she knew I wanted her to grab an order form. I saw the “oh, no” rising in her face. But just as she had done with me since birth, I could see her capabilities first. I nodded my belief in her and she picked up the clipboard. I more than loved her. I was so proud of her. And she of herself. I could see the “oh, yes” fluttering!
Our roles are always changing. Sometimes you’re the little girl. Sometimes the bird. If you’re lucky you will be surrounded with those who welcome both. And if you’re wise, you’ll allow them the same.
When I first understood that my Grandma had a name other than Grandma, I thought it was O’Elsie. Because that’s what I always heard. From my Grandpa’s mouth, the ladies at the kitchen table, or the faceless voices on the party line. What I came to learn was that they were all saying, “Oh, Elsie…” And always as a term of endearment. When she would make them laugh out loud. When she touched them with her kindness. When she surprised them (especially my grandpa) with a rootbeer float or a basement full of chinchillas. And it came to be my measurement for living, this need combine with the heart’s emission of simply – Oh!
I don’t want to live timidly. And I’m not talking about shock. To shock is simple. To wow is devine. Oh, and wasn’t she so! My Grandma Elsie.
I hear the birds singing from the morning window and I think, “Oh, it’s going to be a lovely day.” And my heart smiles.
It’s not that I assumed the garage doors had the sense of the birds, but it is made evident whenever the wind blows. (I suppose that’s when the truth of us is revealed.) And, oh, they’re built solid, these blocks of wood and iron, but never a match against the wind. Every time – it’s BANG! BANG! They beat against the garage, thrown from side to side. Always fighting it. Always losing. But then the birds, in that same wind, barely more than air themselves, they seem to dance. Each wing flaps with lessons learned, and risen above.
I’m not proud of it, but I have done my share of banging. Trying to fight off the new storm with all of my wooden might. But I’m learning. And learning again. What used to blow through me, now gives me wings.
Perhaps I’m more careful now of where I lay my expectations, knowing that often the people who rise up to the occasion aren’t the most expected. Like a gift without pressure of holiday they gloriously appear, and lift you higher than you could have ever imagined.
When I was a young girl, I found so much help in the school system. Teachers offered aid and solace. Encouragement and discipline. It was a structure that I depended on. Solid. When I first arrived in France, I had to attend a mandatory French school. Around the table, desperations were as vast as the countries we came from. Of course I looked to the teacher as I had always done. It didn’t take long for me to learn of my mistake. She would not save me. Nor any of us. She made fun of each nationality, as if she had an offensive handbook. And when the insults weren’t understood with language, she used gestures that could not be ignored.
After three months, without common language or permission, we began to stumble into something close to humanity. We found out more about each other. After learning that I paint and write, it was our teacher who asked me to be the teacher. To bring in art, books, and give a demonstration, in French on my final day of school. I agreed. For if she taught me anything, it was where to place all my expectations — within. As I struggled with art and easels from the car to the classroom, it was the newest addition to our class, the man from Cambodia, who spoke neither English nor French, who picked up the heaviest of what I had, and walked beside me. I smiled, knowing that without my knowledge or expectation, I had been lifted. I had been saved.
It was the gym teacher at Central Junior High who put us through the rigorous exercises — making us into ducks she said. Somehow she saw the difference between our regular teenage faces and our confusion and explained that a duck looks calm and cool on the surface of the water, but is paddling like crazy underneath. Still no change in our faces. So what we want, she continued, is to work so hard now, paddle like crazy, so when we’re in the actual game it comes easily, looks so graceful and simple, because we did all the hard work. We nodded slightly, and waddled around the gym.
Now I can’t say we often carried the information of one class to another, but on this instance, 50 minutes later, in math class, it was Mr. Farley who said, “be sure to show your work.” I stared at the scribblings on the blackboard and thought, “so don’t be a duck.”
The middlings of junior high were terribly confusing. All these choices and transformations. I pondered as I walked beside Lake Agnes on the way home. And there they were, waddling along, as if they knew all the answers.
Yesterday in my bird sketchbook, I decided to paint a duck. I hesitated for a moment, going through another saying, “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck.” Brush in hand, I laughed because I thought, “Is it a bird though?” Oh, my ever paddling brain was in full view.
It’s hard to know when to show all the work. When to just be quiet and do the job. Of course I get confused. We all do. But sometimes I think, the real victory is just to stay afloat. I may not always get it right, please pardon my paddling, but this duck can swim!
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…”. Joan Didion
As humans, I suppose, we are always looking for the narrative, to lessen the blow or to heighten the lift. And didn’t we start at the beginning, in our first class under the name of our first president at Washington Elementary. One by one, we stood alongside Mrs. Strand’s desk and told all of the other 5 and 6 year olds what we did over the summer. These were not tales of trips to Europe, nor even flights across state lines, but rather heads hanging out of station wagons and under lake waters. Feet racing on dirt roads and pedaling bikes. Balls hit. Candy bars frozen. Popsicles melted. And sunsets dared awaiting mothers’ calls.
With each story, hands raised up with ooohs and aaahs of remembering the same, the similar. The excitement of stories melding connected us all. That’s why I keep writing. I keep painting. The thrill when your memories return to you in an oooooooh, and you share them with me, and then with another, is like no other. We are alive! Living in the word, in the story.
I flank my sketchbook with boy and girl, facing forward. Ever grateful for what has been. Ever hopeful of what is to come.
When my mother was going through the hardest time of her life, I noticed it was then that she would often skip to the last page of the book she was reading. I suppose I was too young to understand, understand this need to get control over something, anything. Amid all the chaos and uncertainty, she just needed to know an ending.
When I was a little older, when my mother read books completely in order, we were sitting at the table with my grandma. I asked her if it all seemed so fast. She smiled, and we all knew there would be no jumping to the end. We each had to finish this life book on our own.
I suppose there are moments in all of our lives when we want to skip ahead. But the only way out is through. Step by step. Page by page. I hold it at heart level, this book of mine, and keep reading. What a story!
I find it thrilling, reading a book and entering a place I’ve already been. Like I’m in on the secret. Like the letters of the words are eyelashes in the wink that says, I see you.
I’m nearly finished with the book, “Geek Love.” It is perhaps the wildest ride I’ve encountered for quite some time. It couldn’t be further from my reality, and yet… yet, there it was, as clear as if I were en route on Highway 7, looking up at the green sign, “Hopkins, Minnesota.” Never have I read a book that mentioned it before. Minnesota, sure. Minneapolis, of course. But never Hopkins. And I was knee deep, no, heart deep, in the word.
Maybe it’s empathy. Validation. Or simply our need to be seen. But it got me thinking. If mere words can do that, simply on a page, couldn’t we do that for each other? Aren’t we supposed to? Having not only traveled through place, but emotion, don’t we have the responsibility to turn back and say, “I’ve been there. And I see you,”? I think so. So I gather the words and arrange them on this page, and maybe you see yourself, and maybe that gets you looking, and maybe you see someone else, and they find comfort in you having been there… and… and they see hope… and someone else…and the story never ends.
My mother never came empty handed. Whether it was for a week’s visit, or a long afternoon, her arms were filled with toilet paper, paper towel, Kleenex, or something frosted from the bakery. It wasn’t that I couldn’t purchase it. It was just another form of connection. And when I poked my finger through the plastic to carry the rolls up the stairs to my apartment, along with her suitcase, I knew that she thought of me, not just here, not just at the events, but on Tuesday afternoons at Cub while picking up some essentials. And I felt loved.
We have a chalkboard in our French kitchen to remind us of those very things. I guess Laetitia saw it when she came for lunch that day. Toilet paper written in white. I walked her out to her car. She opened the trunk. Reached in. Pulled out a multi-pack of toilet paper. I would never refuse a visit from my mother. I held it, her, in my arms at the top of my heart’s stairs. And I am loved.
Just imagining it, I can feel the tension leave my shoulders. My breathing slows. To lie in the folds of my grandma’s apron was as near as I came to where all hopes nested.
She possessed the most remarkable ability, to fall asleep at any given moment. Not narcolepsy. It was as if she stored the sleep beside the Kleenex up her sleeve, and when she needed five minutes, or twenty, she could pull it out and take the needed rest. And I truly mean it could be any time. During a telephone call. A commercial break during Days of Our Lives. Or as you struggled through your turn in a card game of which she neglected to explain to you the rules.
During one such game, I watched her apron fall and rise. I couldn’t take it anymore. I laid down my cards and gently folded myself silently from my chair. I wormed my way back up into her lap, and rode love’s ebb and flow. When I think of it now, I was not all that graceful. Surely my climbing must have awakened her. I looked up to see if an eye opened. I think I saw just the curve of her lip. I rested comfortably in the knowledge that it was still my turn.
