I’m currently reading Theo of Golden. It wasn’t long in when I realized I had seen the main character before — the elderly man with the gray hair, kind eyes, and green flat cap. I opened my sketchbook. There he was. Now with every word of the book, I can see his face. That’s the magic of not just reading, but living in the word.
I suppose we’d call that empathy. Maybe that’s what books are for. To give us the practice for real life. Oh, it comes so easily with the turning of the pages. How we can immerse ourselves into their lives. Really see them. Experience the journey. And if it’s a pleasure to do by the book, shouldn’t it be so face to face. Certainly everyone in literature is an other, ones that we can fascinate. Why do we fear them in real life? I wonder if we imagined their stories, gave them faces, what our world would, could become.
I think it’s worth the practice. So I dive in deeply. Gently. Amid the stories. Amid my own. And maybe we see each other a little more clearly. And we become…
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
I have almost no photographs of my grandparents, yet thousands of images live in my brain. To picture my grandpa in the living room, is to first hear the creak of overalls against the lounger. Then the crack of the foot rest locked in place by the side lever, making just enough room for me to crawl beneath. The trust had to have been palpable, as I arched between the space that could have cut me in half were he to pull the lever again. He emptied a pinch of tobacco and tamped it into his pipe. I played with the rice filled cushion that rest beneath the ash tray, and waved my hand through the cartoon waft of smoke that danced above me. Mixed with just a hint of sugar from grandma’s kitchen, the scent was warm and welcoming, and I tried to catch it on the tip of my tongue, like the first snowflake of the year.
He never rested long. A farm is impatient like that. He only had to give me the nod to signal his return to the field. I slipped between cushion and metal and he let down the foot rest. I ran off to nature’s imagination and he back to work.
I don’t know the name of his tobacco. I wasn’t yet confined by words. Nor was I caught in the pursuit of photography. It would be a handful of years before I ordered my plastic camera from Bazooka Joe gum wrappers and run over it with my own bicycle in three day’s time.
I mention it because I recently read something by the photographer Sally Mann in her memoir, Hold Still. “It is because of the many pictures I have of my father that he eludes me completely,” she writes. “In my outrageously disloyal memory he does not exist in three dimensions, or with associated smells or timbre of voice. He exists as a series of pictures…. It isn’t death that stole my father from me; it’s the photographs.”
I smile, knowing my images will never be torn, lost, yellowed, or stolen. They hold still, tucked safely in the ever of my heart.
The current book I’m reading, is delightfully entitled, “How to read a book,” by Monica Wood. It is set around a book club in prison. Harriet, the leader, gives the women a mantra, “I am a reader. I am intelligent. I have something worthy to contribute.”
I’m not yet finished, but already I’ve learned, or perhaps relearned this important lesson. (I don’t suppose we can ever stop learning this).
To those who think it silly to have a mantra, I say good for you — good for you because you probably had someone who told you of your worth. Good for you that those words must be so engrained inside of you, that you don’t need to bounce them off the mirror. I am one of the lucky ones. I had a mother who served as that mantra. That voice. That reassurance, no matter what the situation, win or loss, I was still worthy. Never to be mixed with entitled, that is not what her worthy meant. Not what our mirrors revealed. No, worthy was never about receiving, but about having something to give.
What would your world, our world, look like with this in mind? We are imprisoned by hate. By judgement. By fear. Which is really so ridiculous to be shouting from behind bars, while holding the key. So when I tell you, tell myself, that I, we, have something to contribute, something worthy, I mean it not only as a mantra, an incentive, but also a responsibility. We owe our mothers this. Ourselves. All.
We were surrounded by it — growth. Hugo’s field rich with grain. The swamps in the North End, ripe with thickened green. Marigolds lining driveways. Lawns under the hum of walked mowers. Discarded school books on abandoned summer shelves. Tennis shoes bursting out at the toes. Yet, it was imagination that surpassed it all on Van Dyke Road.
We were given space. An empty lot sat between our house and Dynda’s. An empty lot to do anything we imagined. What a gift this empty! What drew us to this nothing? Made us race our bikes over gravel and abandon them in the ditch just to be in this open lot? When I type it now, this “lot of possibility”, I have to smile, because I suppose that was it — so much — a lot! — of possibility. Here we had the freedom to imagine our way out of or into any situation. Balls and flashlights. Teams and cans and bases. Forts and races. Worlds away each day, but gently tethered by a mother’s front porch call.
The magic still holds. When Dominique asks me, “What do you want to do today?”— and I can answer, “nothing” — we both smile. And I race toward all things possible, knowing the lot.
It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming.
Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night. Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening.
In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!
I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons.
So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true.
For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry.
They tried to warn us, I suppose, with the pegs and the holes, so many years ago on the floors of Washington Elementary. And the real hint to how serious the lesson, was the absence of our mats. No, we sat on that unforgiving cement floor, cross legged, trying to rise above our sleepy, tingling thighs, to match the right peg with the right hole.
You’d think I would have learned it by now, but there are still times when instead of picking up a new peg, (actually being the peg that I am) I still try to force it. I hadn’t done it with my original family, this trying to blend, so I’m not sure why I thought it would work with my French family. Was I round, was I square? Did I even know the words for either one? It wasn’t until I got up off the floor, stretched my legs, and became what I had already become, myself, that I began to fit in.
We get caught up in the labels. What do they even mean? Wanting so much to belong, we blend ourselves into disappearing. And how do you become a part of something if you’re not even here? And I get it, sometimes the call of the soft mat, says just relax, forget about it, but that’s never really been my style. So I get up off the floor, wiggle the tingle out of my once bent legs, and with unmatched pegs in hand, I dance! I dance on the floor that had always given permission. And with each twirl, I let go of the who, and the what, and the why, and I just am. I joyfully am!
When he saw the painting of my grandfather he asked if we still had the farm. I paused, stuck in who the “we” would even be. I started passing it down in my head, from uncle to cousin, to second cousin, (none to whom I felt a collective we). It passed again in my head to I’m not sure, to finally, it didn’t really even matter, because, I told him, “I still have everything.” And I do.
Even a lifetime and country away, I can feel the warmth of the rock at the base of the driveway. The same steady of my grandfather. The gravel beneath my feet. The jolt of an electric fence. The smell of apples, on and off the trees. The sandy feel of a cow’s tongue. The bounce of a screen door. The scent of my grandma’s kitchen. My face against her sticky apron. The ever damp basement. Jesus on the cross upstairs. Prayed to from the kitchen table. The sewing room that stitched all nine children’s lives together. The front stoop that promised the scent of tobacco and hope. My mother laughing in that kitchen. Crying in that kitchen. Hands folded at that table. Driving away from the rock one last time, never really leaving.
So, yes, I still have the farm. And the we is all who listen to the stories. The we is you who remember your own grandmother’s apron. Who read the words and climb upon your grandfather’s lap. We still have it all. We have everthing.
Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
I don’t like clutter. When I take something out, I put it away. So it surprises me how my online mailboxes get so out of hand. And once they get built up, I don’t go back to remove the “junk,” but simply look at the present day. Even after dropping the warnings from 99% full to 98%, I push off the cleaning for another day.
The inevitable always arrives, and I have to clean them out. Hitting the select button until cramping. Trashing. Trashing. Trashing. All the while questioning, why didn’t I just deal with this in real time? But it does serve as a good reminder, for my own brain.
My mother used to call them “old tapes” — a sign of her times, I suppose. Those thoughts that can plague you again and again. The now junk mail of my mind. Call them what you will, oh, how they can clutter. And I can feel it. As I think about the “being wronged,” as it plays over and over in my brain, and the warning signs come, 98%, 99%, and then the real warning, “you won’t be able to continue…” — and never have truer words been spoken. So I start dumping. Taking out the brain trash. Letting it go. And what a relief. Such freedom. My heart applauds. Even my steps feel lighter. I think we all know it will get filled up again. But I hope with each lesson learned I get a little better. A little faster at the letting go. Weeding through life’s junk to get to the promised land of only 90% cluttered. And as I laugh, my load lessons, and I walk, spring even, into the day.
I barely remember the steps up the side of the mountain. I was so lost in the audible story I was listening to — my feet, as they so often do, went on autopilot and carried me to the top. I was actually surprised when the view had changed, but smiled and went back into the story. It was the voice, the farming vernacular, that drew me in. Although it was set in another country, the rhythm and economy of words were the same. How many times had I heard it at my grandparents’ kitchen table? “Won’t you stay for lunch,” “At least have a cup of coffee,” (which also meant kolaches, lunch sticks, or meat-stacked sandwiches.) The guests, neighbors usually, relatives, neighbors who thought they were relatives, always said, “oh, no, we couldn’t,” and yet somehow, they always did. I was certain I could hear the beeping, as they backed their way into a full afternoon, a card game, and eventually dinner.
Just as in the story I was listening to, the purpose of the visit was never revealed at the start. Hours could go by. I would look at my grandfather, pipe in hand, never anxious. Wasn’t he curious? Why didn’t my grandma ask them? I would tug at overalls and apron, trying to speed it along, only to be met by a shoo-ing hand that said, patience.
I had so many questions. I always wanted to know. Who, what, why. And they seemed so content to sip on egg coffee, brush the grounds from the bottom of the cup, and wait.
Did it come from the land, I wondered. This settling of time. This faith in the season. My feet, ever on the speed of concrete, needed, craved answers, that so often never arrived, but disappeared into a blur of afternoon pastries, and welcomed unnecessary gatherings.
I thought of it yesterday, pausing on the peaked view. Not recalling, or needing to, each step. I was here. I am here. Now. It doesn’t really require an explanation. Just being is good. I won’t ask what the day will bring. I’ll simply open the door, and see…
Sometimes, you have to let go of what was, stop worrying about what will be, and just see…
