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.
In my sketchbook, all the pages are almost absent of color. Not flesh, nor butter, it welcomes every image, and rests it gently, softly, without judgement. But for the flaps. The flaps are a vibrant red. Already set in tone, they present a different challenge. We call this an “underpainting.” The red cannot help but affect each color applied. And it can be tempting, this coming in hot. There is a vibrancy, a bit of excitement. And so it is with heart and mind.
Sometimes, seemingly without my knowledge or permission, I find myself in the flaps. But this! And that! And they! Should haves and could haves and supposed tos hovering in all that redness. And that’s ok, for a moment. I try not to add to the heat of the color by beating myself up. But rather create a space, where all are welcome. All.
We are living in a time of red. Perhaps an inhuman time. We’re not the first, nor the last, but It is our job to remain human. To love, to create, to inspire, to preserve the goodness. To be the pages that welcome, with all the gentle might of heart and mind.
I was just scaling the edge of my teens when my grandfather died. Too big to be carried, too small not to want to be. Of course I had seen them before. The processions after the funeral. But I can’t say I gave them any thought. No emotion anyway. Maybe we can’t, until we’ve sat in the line, the slow line that travels at the speed of grief. Each block a memory. Each intersection another line on his overalls, pinstriping the years, like colonies on the flag. My brain could only rewind the chorus from Amazing Grace. Perhaps because it was the last thing I heard, or the thing I wanted the most.
I’d like to think I thought about empathy. About how this changed everything. I’d like to think I made plans for patience in the future — patience when paused at the green light because grief was passing. Patience to know that we are all part of the procession. It is happening to all of us. I’m not sure I did. I think I do more. I hope I do more.
I try to remind myself. One of his portraits is the first thing I see in the morning. And even out of uniform. Even free from the furrows, he is leaning in. And I think I have to do the same.
Certainty rarely arrives on the first page. I started a new book yesterday. I was wafting in and around the wanting to continue, when the words tapped me on the shoulder once again and said, look, I know you’re struggling, but don’t give up on us yet, there’s a reason you’re here.
The tap came in the form of a Proust quote. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I have never studied Marcel Proust, but I am currently seven months deep into a daily practice of creating something in the sketchbook bearing his quote, “À la recherche du temps perdu.” (In search of lost time.) For me it began as way, not to get back old time, but to make sure that time wasn’t lost in worry, or woe, and replace it with creation. Joy. And pretty quickly on, he was referenced in a book, and it kept me on the journey.
Maybe the first time was for me, but receiving it again, this nod, makes me think I was meant to pass it on. I wrote this years ago, “I admire the lost who keep looking, and I am amazed by those who keep looking for the lost.” I think when we find our way, or even when we’re just on a pretty good path, we have an obligation to help others. To be like the words were for me, a simple reminder, to tell you, I know you’re struggling, but don’t give up, there’s a reason you’re here.
Playing the tourist, I’ve taken countless photos in back of them — The figures of what the town represents. How joyfully and eagerly becoming them. From Superman to the hatted women of Brittany, I have placed my head and heart behind. It’s just that simple, I suppose, to stand in someone’s shoes, so why do we find it so difficult to do?
Empathy. It takes some time to build. We see people as we label them. Grandma, then Grandma Elsie, she was a woman of this world. Not simply a soft belly for me to land upon. She was young and beautiful. Small in waist and big in dreams, she kissed the boy behind the Alexandria hotel. And carried those dreams from heels to Thom Mcann’s. Painting her, seeing her, now, she is not hidden behind apron.
I hear the conversations. Oh, how she loved to visit. From grocery store line, to card table, I can hear the smiling replies, “Oh, Elsie…” they would say in delight. They saw her, so I could see her, and now I can’t look away. She, they, taught me how to gently tourist in the hearts of others.
And isn’t that empathy — those who go out and see, first, so we all can see, ever.
“I just got off the phone with Phyllis Norton.” That was the subject of the email from my mother a few years ago, an email that I just can’t seem to erase. I have hundreds. Each one more special than the next. No large events. Mostly “I loved today’s post,” or “I miss you,” or “laughter and tears of tenderness,” and always, always, “I love you so much.”
I have to admit in the light of the events currently taking place, I struggle. Does it really matter if I write something positive? If I try to find some words to say that we have to be kind. That we have to be better. To find the words that convey hope. I don’t really know. But then I look through my emails. And every word that my mother typed finds its way into my heart and I know I have to try.
We used to hold many concerts in our car. My mother at the wheel, my fingers on the radio. She got off of work at 4pm. But wintertime in Minnesota meant it was already dark. She needed to go for a fitting. My grandma’s friend was tailoring some pants for her. She had lost so much weight after the divorce. The country roads were lampless. It all felt a little daunting until my fingers tuned in Barry Manilow. (Yes, we were Fanilows.) We even had the album. So timely, he was singing:
“It takes that one voice Just one voice, singing in the darkness All it takes is one voice Shout it out and let it ring Just one voice, it takes that one voice And everyone will sing.”
And it was true. That one voice became three, and every turn seemed a little brighter.
I mention it only because, while it does feel a little lampless right now, we still have a voice. We still have the ability to change things. It was Phyllis Norton who drove my mother to the hospital from Van Dyke Road when she was about to give birth. It all matters. The email remains.
When I saw the image of the man start to appear, it made me laugh. I had seen him before. Not this exact version, but certainly a handsome man, clad in something spectacular from the Sundance catalog, or Banana Republic.
It started when I was in college. We didn’t have email or texting. We had letters. My mother sent something to me weekly. Oh what a glorious day when I saw it in the mailbox. Maybe it began because there wasn’t a lot of news to be shared. Or maybe it was simply her glorious sense of humor. She cut out images of good looking men her age from catalogs and wrote, “Wouldn’t you like him for a stepfather?” The answer was always yes! And the jokes continued about ordering, sending away for, arriving in the mail… we could go on forever, until it switched to the outfits in the same catalog that she would wear to get said man, which turned into a fashion show of what we already had, an exchange of compliments, bent over belly laughs and hearts that were full.
Through the years, at gallery shows throughout the country, people would ask my mother if she too was an artist. She shyly said no, but we both knew the truth in the hesitation. She could, had, and continued, to create something out of nothing. Isn’t that exactly what an artist is? I think so.
I see him in my sketchbook and write stepfather. My mother’s art lives on.
I don’t know how many times I got lost in the North End of Van Dyke Road. It was my Grandma Elsie who told me not to count things like that. Returning from ice skating at Noonan’s Park with my two cousins, she asked how it went. “I fell six times,” I said. “Why would you count that?” She shook her head with tight lips, handed me a variety pack size of Kellogg’s cereal, and I knew not to do it again.
Wandering once again down the hill into the untamed North End, I found myself disoriented. When it happened, the only thing to do was to look up. Up was familiar. Up carried the sound of garage doors opening, bicycles popping wheels in the gravel. Up was familiar. Comforting. Home.
I suppose we always have a need to get to higher ground. I hope we do anyway. And we can’t get there by counting our failures, but striving to do better. It’s always up. “Things are looking up. Get your hopes up. Spirits are running high.”
It took a couple of hours to finish her — the woman in the sketchbook. Two hours of her looking up, telling me to keep looking up. I count on my sketchbook, my hands, my heart, for such things. I’m pretty sure Grandma Elsie would be ok with that.
When the world gets this overwhelming, I have to narrow the picture. From planet to country. Still too big. From city, to neighborhood. I can’t make sense of it all. Down to house. To room. To kitchen. To my own hands. I pull it out of the oven. And rest in the place of, “This bread is good.”
And maybe that’s all we can do. Be responsible for our own hand in it. Each day. Each minute. Forget the but they did this, they think that, how could they???? In order to breathe, I have to let go of “they,” in exchange for the reach of my own hands.
At the breakfast table, it’s hard not to go over the latest news. Of course we have to be informed. We must learn and grow and be aware. I can’t change what’s going on in my old neighborhood. And it would be easy to say it doesn’t make a difference at all. But I can’t believe that. And so I humbly paint and write. And connect with the random. We will never be rewarded with certainty. But we have to try. Who would we be if we didn’t even try?
So I rise from the morning table, knowing only two things for sure, this bread is delicious, and all we have to do is be good to each other.
