Certainly with nine children, countless grandchildren and a farm, my grandma’s days were filled with purpose. People needed to be fed. Dishes cleaned. Clothes washed. Apples needed to be picked, along with garden weeds. Fruit canned. And the listening was never ending, neighbors, Hortons, party line, Paul Harvey, and the farm report. But somehow, within the din of activity, if you sheepishly whispered that you wanted to place dice, or cards, she wiped her hands briskly on her apron, shoved the Publisher’s Clearing House magazines from the table and sat down to beat you at any requested game with a girlish giggle, because she said, “Some things are just for fun.”
Yesterday was a full day. Two appointments. Two cities. And the usual “Elsie like tasks.” By 5pm, there wasn’t a lot of time to create something of great detail, like a portrait, but there was a little time. Enough time. So I took the decision to take the time, and have a bit of fun. It was only a tiny bird. A tiny French bird. The stripes of its snug t-shirt stretching over an “Elsie” belly made me laugh. Because it’s still supposed to be fun. The noises can be overwhelming, but so can the joy. And it’s usually just a hand wipe away.
Before school started, when days were measured in the shaded pink of shoulders, or the sand in shoes, I was friends with the neighbor boy down the road. Armed with only curiosity and imagination, we could spend the length of our day on a dirt pile. He could climb a tree, and more importantly, wanted to. And ever left a leg hanging low for me to climb like a ladder to the nearest branch. (Still my definition of friendship.)
It was only for a few summers before he moved away. But the percentage of that time was nearly the whole of my life. Maybe summers will always seem that way. I hope so. To live in the season of growth, the season of “I wonder if we could fly from there,” is perhaps what carries all of us through the winter.
Sometimes I feel my age, and then I empty my socks and my shoes of the day’s collective rubble, and I think, I know, my heart’s summer will never end.
I like to light candles when I get up. This morning’s illumination put up a fight. The first two matches burned themselves out so quickly, I had to abandon them to save my fingers. Next the wick broke off. Then again. By the fourth match I had to laugh, remembering this is exactly why I never volunteered to be an acolyte at Bethesda Lutheran, and was always more than relieved when Gail Kiltie raised her hand. What’s ironic, the very thing I feared and tried to avoid — their judgement — would eventually come to pass anyway the minute my mother got divorced and we were not pushed out the door, but conveniently shown where it was while being held open.
I don’t know what they expected the lesson to be (that’s the thing, we get to choose that). My take away — people are going to think what they think, do what they do, without your knowledge or permission. And you can decide whether you are going to blow around in all that wind, or simply fly. (I think the birds on the page, tell you what I did. What I do.)
I haven’t thought about them in years. I have no ill will. For didn’t they give me wings? And my faith is strong. My house and heart are well lit. I release myself into the morning flutter.
There’s not a lot of glory in the underpainting, but without it, there really is nothing. Time must be spent to prepare the canvas or panel. Gessoing. Sanding. Long before you get to the “garden.” And oh, how eager I am to jump to the flowers. But I take my time. I paint the shadow of black (one can’t go back later and expect to paint it in). Then the layering of stems and leaves. Creating depth. Perspective (that so often elusive perspective). Once I have put in the time, only then can I delight in the flowers. And having spent the time, oh what a delight they are!!!!! As if they bloom just for me.
It’s hard to remember this in the daily rush of things. The furious speed to get over, get beyond, to get through. But when I’m lucky, (which simply means when I’m paying attention), it’s my hands that remind my heart that tell my brain, “It’s only underpainting…the flowers are yet to come!”
I know the furious speed at which you are trying to get over and around. I have traveled that wind and hung on for dear life. But the dear life I found came only in the quiet slowing down. The letting go. No longer rushing to get past, but easing my way through. And the peace. Smiled. Knowing it had always been there, as I whirled. Peace, sitting quietly next to joy, and hope, and OK now. There, there.
I just finished reading The School for Good Mothers,by Jessamine Chan. For the last twenty four hours I have been thinking about the characters. It is not an easy read by any means. And yet it lives on inside of me. Words create their own heartbeats, and even when the book is closed, thump, thump… a chicken with its head chopped off, still running. Still running.
We have this idea that everything has to be so comfortable. That life is a lounge chair for the heart. On that same farm, where chickens ran, my grandfather showed me how to lean into the discomfort by picking the rocks in the field to prepare for planting. Not glamorizing the dirt, nor fighting the weight of it all.
So I embrace the words and paint the image of the girl that remains in my head. My way of moving the rocks.
Most lessons do not come with cushions. But I know, as always, something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
I was still riding my banana seat one speed when Lynn Norton graduated to her adult size bike. I could hear the gears click into place as she passed me going up the hill by Lord’s house, on the way to Van Dyke Road. Between huffs I marveled at her speed. I stood up on the pedals, fighting with all of my might, all of my heart. She was barely breathing hard. “Wait up,” I panted and hoped she not only heard, but somehow could pull me along if I stayed within reach. She stopped at the right hand gravel turn and waited. Her look back was the incentive I needed and I made it. “How did you go so fast?” I asked. “I know how to shift.” I suppose it was right then that I made it part of my life’s plan.
Being right handed, I have recently finished all the right hand pages of my very large sketch book. There was a choice to be made. Forget half the book, or shift. I purchased the vellum sheets to protect the completed work. Are they a guarantee? No. Of course there is risk. And part of my brain says that something bad could happen, but the loudest voice in the room, my pumping heart, says to go on. What if something great happens! What if on these left handed pages, you create a masterpiece?!!!!
Two summers after Lynn beat me up the hill, I too had an adult size bike. Three gears! Mastering those, I graduated to 10 speeds. Then twelve. It took all those gears and more for me to go to college. To take chances. To become an artist. To write books. To fall in love. To move to another country. To face today. I am not afraid. With the confidence of the oldest Norton girl, I look in the mirror and claim, “I know how to shift!”
We took out our tri-fold mats and were told to lie down. Most of us were tired from the morning at Washington Elementary, but there was always someone who wouldn’t go down without a fight. He began testing Mrs. Strand by beating his hands against the mat. I turned my head away. Then he began with his feet. I sighed heavily. Mrs. Strand turned from the chalkboard to give him the raised eyebrows look. Still he kept on. I suppose I was too tired, but my eyes were always the first to betray me. I wasn’t sad, yet the tears began to flow. She walked atop our sea of mats like a holy person, first picking up the boy by his t-shirt and then placing him in the corner, smirked face first. She tapped me on my dampened shoulder asking why the tears. “It’s just all too loud,” I said between breaths. She tapped me on my heart and said, this must always be the loudest voice in the room.
Chaos can still throw me, and I have to remind myself. I have the skills now. The self care. To quiet all the noises around us, I know I can paint. I can write. I can go for a walk. Read a book. Bake a batch of cookies. Play fashion show. Listen to my heart. Of all the things I learned in kindergarten, this has proven to be the most useful.
Other than being women I love, my grandma and my mom didn’t have a lot in common. “Mode” for my mother meant fashion, but for Grandma Elsie it would have been a scoop of ice cream on top. Perhaps because of this, my mother was long and lean, and my grandma short and rounded. They differed in the shoes they liked, the food they ate, all the way down to the dishrags they used, (which my mother often mentioned as she stood doing dishes at the farm sink while the others finished their dinner.)
It was years before I could reach into any sink, and years after that that I understood the love of a dishrag. How could it be important, I wondered. I know now, here in France. My friend Sue makes them. They feel wonderful in my hands. And when I reach for them, to clean the pan, still peppered from my new French dish learned, I smile and enjoy the task. Truly. Not only because they work so well. Nor because I have such a friend. But because I have found my dishrag. Different from my grandma. Not the same as my mother. All still lovable. And I am home.
There was a group of men helping my grandfather. I suppose neighbors. Being the sponge that I was, I listened to them during their break. I could still fit underneath the table, amid the smell of earth from boots and overalls. They drank the coffee and ate the kolaches, and spoke as if they were one of us, even though they said the name wrong. Hvezda. Yes, it began with an H, but we didn’t pronounce it. It was vee-ezda, not he-vezda, I shook my head and told the table leg. Still, they finished the plates and drank the coffee to the grounds. Joyfully. And they would come back, again and again.
I didn’t ask why. The answer, for my grandfather, was always nature. So I walked in it. I hope I still do.
They say that Redwoods are smart enough to share with neighboring trees the water that they collect. Knowing that to hoard it would put them at greater risk in a wildfire.
My grandparents were Redwoods. What am I? What are we?
It was mostly on the major holidays, special occasions like weddings or funerals, and then the random calling of summer’s sun on the front lawn of my grandparents’ farm. People wandered in, as if on a Hvezda pilgrimage. Separating from front room to garage. I would tug at my mother’s blouse, raising a tiny fist in the direction of the unknown, (told that it wasn’t polite to point) driven by the desire to find out who these people were. Some turned out to be cousins. Others with labels of “step” or “half.” Some just neighbors lost or hungry.
I learned fairly quickly the real story was not with the others, but the ones I thought I knew. I had seen most in their own environments. In the homes they had made since leaving this farm. But something changed as they gathered. I could see it in my aunts, even my own mother. I had yet to read Thomas Wolfe, so I still imagined you could walk through that swinging screen door unchanged.
But experience changes your laughter, the shape of your tears. Your gait through the gate.
I suppose I was always watching. Not afraid. Just interested. And wondering. How would I maneuver the doors ahead? It seemed to me, we were all on this constant journey home. All. Maybe I was able to watch because of the sturdiness of my grandma. She stood sink side, without judgement. And welcomed. Where I would go was, still is, uncertain, but it was always clear who I wanted to become.
I stand sink side, knowing we all make our way home differently.
