It is certainly too big and too heavy for my suitcase, but there was no way that I wasn’t going to bring it from France.
They watched eagerly as I opened the Christmas present. A beautiful sketchbook. Watching my face react, certain they had gotten it right, sure that they knew me, they asked if I would bring it with me to the US. When you are offered love, the only answer is yes.
I don’t expect to see her in France, my mom. She was never there. But here, in all of our sacred spaces, from mall to museum, coffee shops to cuisine, I look around every corner of Minneapolis. I touch the blouse that she would have tried on. Pick up the candle in our shared signature fragrance. Think to double the coffee order. And a smile weighs at my heart. Is it heavy? Indeed. But it is not a burden. It is the weight of love. A joyful weight. One that I will carry forever. Without question.
I begin to fill it. I start by sketching a weightless bird with the French pencil I bought at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Each feather answers yes and I proudly carry it with me, all of this love.
It was the heaviest book I bought in college — The Riverside Shakespeare. Weighing in at about 6 pounds, it would have been a lot to carry across campus for any English major, but for me, who spent the majority of my college years slinged and on crutches, it was extraordinary. Yet, I loaded it, joyfully, in my backpack, and hopped on one foot from M5, our fifth floor walk-up dorm apartment, across the quad to the humanities building, sometimes over ice and snow. I never fell. You could argue that the weight of the 2000 pages kept me stable, glued to the ground, but I will tell you it was most probably the strength of the words that held me. Still do.
When moving to France, I let go of most possessions. And it wasn’t that hard. Furniture and shoes. Clothing and decorations. Dishes and beds. Table and tv. Trading it all in for love was an easy decision. I kept personal items. Paintings mostly, and a few books. It might surprise you, that this heaviest of books made the trip. Shakespeare rests on my shelf. Do I love the book? Yes. Do I love the words, the poems, the plays? Of course. But maybe most of all, I know that you can’t let go of what got you here — what held you, carried you, gave you strength. I suppose that’s why I have this heaviest of books beside me still. It’s why I write of my mother, my grandparents, my teachers and friends. I know what brought me here. What keeps me upright to this very day.
Walking yesterday, I was listening to a podcast of Dame Judi Dench. She rattled off the words written by Shakespeare, and they lifted me over rock and trail. The announcer was so surprised that she still had all of these words at the ready. I wasn’t. The heart takes on the carry, and allows the journey, still.
Hours before I knew it would actually be possible, I responded to a friend’s message. She was struggling with the “letting go.” I had this thought – telling her to give them to me. Hand them all over, these feelings of hurt and anger, and I would take them and place them in a field of lavender, to be swallowed up in all that purple. Nothing bad can survive that much beauty, I thought. And then, if a few stray negative thoughts tried to creep back into her heart and brain, at least they would smell of sweet lavender.
As I said, I didn’t know that only a few hours later, we would be passing countless fields of lavender on the way to see friends near the mountains. An endless sea of purple. “Ooooooooh,” I exclaimed, looking out the window. “Do you want to stop and take a photo?” Dominique asked. “Yes,” I said, but thought, not only that. I had some things to release. Not only hers, but mine as well. It’s funny how easily it all rolled down the ditch into the lap of scented color. I took the photos. The field grinned, exposing the lines of purple teeth, and I smiled in return.
Maybe we don’t all get the fields of lavender, but it is then we look to the friends that do. I suppose that’s what we’re all here for — to take turns carrying the load on our way to something beautiful. Because the world IS beautiful. Still and ever.
Pull over today. Take it in. Let it go. The breath of lavender — nothing bad can survive this much beauty.
“Don’t touch them,” I heard him say, while I was touching them. It was my grandfather’s voice in my head. He had said it when I found a fallen bird’s nest on his farm. The little bird beaks seemed to be crying out for me, but he said no, if I touched them, the mother would never come back. But surely it couldn’t be the same for bunnies I thought. Not the same for these beautiful cuddly little bunnies that I found on this day in the field next to our house. Bunnies were meant to be touched. To be held. They were accessible. Not like birds. Why, there was the Easter Bunny, and Bugs Bunny… chocolate bunnies, stuffed bunnies… Yes, I told myself, bunnies were meant to be held. There were three of them. No mother in sight. I placed one from each hand, back with the other. They squirmed and nestled and smiled. See, I told myself, they were just fine. The mother would come back.
I told my brother that afternoon what I had found. How I had picked them up. “Now you have to kill them,” he said.
“What?????? Noooooo! I would never!”
“Well, they are going to die anyway. Starve to death. Because the mother doesn’t like your smell.” And he walked away.
I stood motionless. How could he deliver this news and just leave me standing there. I was a murderer, and apparantly, I smelled.
I thought about getting my bow and arrow. The plastic one my aunt had purchased for me at Target. I could “do the right thing” (according to my brother) and kill them. I went into the garage to find my bow and arrow. I touched the string. Slid my finger along the faux feathers of the arrow. There was no way I could kill them. No way. I sat in the gravel at the end of the driveway, now not even certain that my own mother would return to me from work. Why would she? I was a smelly murderer.
When she finally pulled in, she didn’t even put the car in the garage. She stopped beside me. Opened the car door. I told her everything. She assured me that I was nothing of the sort, that mothers do come back. And as I sat on her lap next to the steering wheel, I could only believe her. She was proof.
The next day I searched for the bunnies. Praying for their mother’s return, as the weeds scratched my legs. I searched for hours, or maybe ten minutes, but there was no sign of any of them. No babies. No mother. My own mother went straight to the happily ever after…. “See, she said, “the mother came back and brought them to a new house and they are all just fine.” I believed her.
Years later, the first grown-up book we were assigned in middle school was “Of mice and men.” Lennie, the rabbits. It was all so sad. I wept for the story. For them. And I wept because I felt it all slipping away. I knew now. How could I go forward with this knowledge of unhappy endings? How did they carry it? I wept for my brother. My grandfather. How long had they carried this knowledge? I wept for my mother, who had to have known, but still lived on as proof — still passed on the possibility of happy endings. They all carried it, as best they could.
John Steinbeck says, “In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men (humans), if you understand each other you will be kind to each other.” I would have to choose my own path. Walk in my own truth. I suppose we all have to do that. And with each word that I write, maybe I understand them, and myself, just a little bit more. See the beauty of it all, just a little bit more. This I can carry. I smile, and walk on.
