I have had this canvas for about 15 years. It has transitioned and traveled with me through abstraction and country. The last painting was here in France, a seascape of sorts. But I can’t tell you exactly what came before that. I know it’s still there. Underneath. Behind, within this woman.
If you ask me who she is, prepare yourself for the underpainting. She is the curve of every woman.
She is my grandmother whose hands never stopped. Hands that I watched in amazement and wrote, “If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.”
She is my mother. The posture of grace. In an apartment kitchen filled with more worry than nourishment, she lifted a hand, and gently directed me in the dance.
She is my friend, long past her days of professional dance, who still walks in the garage as if onto the stage.
She is another friend, deep in grief, (a depth that only comes with love) who dares the dance of my mother, and releases, again, and again, with the curve of a woman.
When I look at the sides of the canvas, I see these bright and dark colors. Not who she is now. Not who I am now. But I see the lines of the underpainting — the embossing and debossing of all that paint (the experience) that has come before. And it adds pattern to her dress. Movement to her hands. Strength to her feet. And opens the sky. Opens her heart. My heart. Your heart. Wide open.
“If you opened people up we’d find landscapes.” Agnès Varda
When I fell from my training bicycle, riding down the hill on Van Dyke Road (at my brother’s urging) I was opened up from chin to knuckles to knees to shins. I was certain that if I weren’t bandaged from head to toe, the neighbors would be able to see directly inside of me, revealing every thought, hope and broken promise.
Right from the start, all of my feelings were worn close to the surface, and without skin, well, wasn’t it obvious? Having survived this grand opening, perhaps I never saw the need to hide myself away ever again. Each day when I write, when I paint, a little credit must be given to the gravel of Van Dyke Road, the first to offer, demand even, my vulnerability.
This landscape that I carry, I must admit has often gone uncelebrated through the years. Buried beneath the dazzle of mountain and beach, of lavender field and golden grain. Can you even ask a gravel road to outshine the Champs-Élysées? And yet, when called upon, when skinned to my very core, or delighted to the same, it is there. To hold me. To lift me. To be my solid ground.
My husband often laughs that I always have something in my shoe. It just occurred to me, perhaps it simply fell from heart.
I think I get it now. What he saw. What wasn’t yet there.
The commitment of painting flowers begins in the shadows. In the black. I suppose the desire will always be there, to begin with the popping of the petals, but it’s impossible to paint that way, backwards. They, like all of us I suppose, have to come through.
Finishing the larger of the two paintings, I was there. Not just in the shadows, but in the dirt. The black dirt. The empty field, with my grandfather.
I was always amazed at what he could do. Taking the black, turning it to green, and then gold. What I thought was magic, was maybe artistry. Or maybe they are one and the same. Maybe that’s humanity itself. Being able to see beyond. To sit what isn’t yet there.
Could I be painting the flowers without his vision? Or my grandmother’s in the kitchen. Or my mother’s in her closet? Maybe I only see, because I was seen. I awake from the shadows, because of them.
For five days I read the book. Eagerly returning. Thinking about the characters in between. On the last page, I flipped for another. That was it? The ending? Huh.
It’s not the first time I’ve enjoyed a book without loving the ending. And still, I had to remind myself that time wasn’t wasted. Time was enjoyed, no matter how it ended, or didn’t.
How do we respond when there’s nothing at the end? It’s never promised. And it occurs almost daily. How do we react when the response is underwhelming? When the email goes unanswered. The post lacks response. Even worse the love.
We’ve all felt it, I suppose, the arms drop mid hug when you yourself are not finished.
It’s then I have to think, why do I do what I do? I paint because I have to. Writing — the same. Loving, just as with both, it has to come out. And with it all, it is joyfully terrifying.
And would I spend hours getting the reflection in her eyes, the soul that can’t remain ruffled in the dress…would I do each leaf, each flower, each stone, any differently if you cartwheeled or simply walked away? Singing as I paint, I’m reminded of the words of K.D. Lang, “I gave my love, didn’t I? And I gave it big sometimes!”
So there’s my answer. I will reach for the words and the paint. Without knowing the length of hug, I offer these arms.
Maybe it was to learn how to listen. To see. To love. She knew there would be singing again. The evidence perched ready on her shoulder. She knew that to raise her voice, her fists, would only scare that song away. She knew whatever she said about them would reveal more about her. So the heart gathered, not on sleeve, but on shoulder. Breathing in the words, the melody, the grace of all that she would sing.
I was able to varnish her yesterday, this woman reading. It’s always the most joyful magic, watching the colors of the painted and glorious self come to added life with this layer.
I guess it’s the same in real life. Under the varnishing of love’s protection, this is when we really shine. Unburdened by the fear of losing what we have. Being able to take the chance of the day’s exposure.
When I listened to her sing in front of her 15 year old peers, standing alone on the stage, the notes braving the audience, my second and third thoughts were, oh, she’s really good, and she looks really beautiful. My first thought was, she feels loved. She feels loved enough to risk it all. And I was happy to be a small part of that varnishing.
I had this idea. That all was forgiven. I don’t mean just with me, although that was a good start. I mean with everyone, the world. And I suppose it seems silly. It seems as unlikely as the bird atop my head that brought the thought of this peace. And yet, there it rested, tucked in tangles of hair and misbelief. And I closed my eyes to slow the doubt — nothing chases away the hope faster. Maybe it was the Peter Pan collar, bringing these youthful ideas, I thought. But my heart said, “Don’t laugh away the magic.” And I coudn’t see, well, only deep inside where the thoughts were taking root, where the thoughts thought, hoped, that maybe you felt it too, forgiven. Maybe it was messengered in. As easy and light as that. And my heart smiled, sending the confirmation of what had been given. Sending it through lengthened neck and blushing cheeks and all those hopeful tangles, and behind lid, I knew, I somehow knew, that even if it left, flew away with all that hope, all that forgiveness, it still was all possible.
It was almost a relief after the first scratch. Oh, the pressure of white tennies from Iverson’s shoes. I tiptoed from bus to class to preserve. And then maybe one day, guard down, laughing over a passed note from the back seat, leaning over a nothing that could be funnier, blocking the aisle of the bus, someone less interested in the joke and more concerned about getting off, stepped through the glee onto my new shoe and marked it with a rub of black urgency. Once the shock wore off, so did the pressure, and the outside rain no longer seemed a challenge.
When I hopped from the final step onto Van Dyke Road, I could see them — all the puddles that gravel will allow. Grownups complained, why wasn’t it paved already. But in this land of 10,000 lakes, our sweet dirt road added more than a few extra. And didn’t the name itself sound like an invitation — puddle…. And so I did, I puddled my way up the drive.
Not to be outdone, my socks were as wet as my shoes as I stripped my feet in the garage entry. There was a small line strung from the ceiling to hang the well traveled. I walked from the outlines of my damp bubble toes on the cement, and went victorious into the house.
I’m reading Gertrude Stein. She writes, “ You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle. ” I know I was brave on Van Dyke Road. I must be braver still. We all must be. This current murk that we find ourselves in, more than a puddle for sure, we must brave our way through. Daily. The moral compass is strong. It calls to the heart well traveled, “Come.”
Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.
Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.
People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.
It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.
Of course I had seen my grandma in a chair before. Witnessed the quick cat naps. But the first time I saw her sitting, really sitting, was in the grief of my grandpa’s passing. It wasn’t in the church. I suppose there, she was still being lifted. It was in the church basement. On a folding chair. Next to an untouched plate and coffee cup. When I approached her, I could see the rising in her eyes, but her legs didn’t offer the Elsie spring. Not today, they said. Something changed in me that day. Roles reversed. All the years of her heart bending down towards mine had taught me well, and I bent down towards her.
I added it to the list of the gifts she had given me.
For even grief was a gift of sorts, wasn’t it? Oh, this loving. It changes shape constantly. I we, can anger, be in fear, as love keeps changing, but it may be love’s greatest gift of all.
Sitting in front of their portraits this morning, I don’t really remember who leaned in…I haven’t the tally of the getting to, I only know that our hearts found a way to level, to come together. This love, sits forever well.
