To be so filled with life that it has to flush from your very pores. Cheeks ruddy and ever ready. I suppose we all think it will last forever — sure that our feet will keep the deal that youth has made. But maybe it’s the heart that takes over. (Or maybe it led all along.) Maybe it’s the heart that drags us from spring’s mud into summer’s bliss. Maybe it’s the heart that races through grass’s morning dew again and again, and lifts us up from green knees when we fall, ever promising to keep our cheeks flushed through autumn. Through winter.
Every time I paint a face, I feel the colors in my own, flowing through my hands. And the corners of my mouth rise up, smiling, so happy to be a part of youth’s reddening still.
What will you do today, to remain in the race of summer?
I sent my friend the picture of this newest bird. Still fresh from my hands, she traveled across the globe to gather in the best compliment. Her reply was, “She’s a fancy bird. Very Ivy-like.” And my heart is still beaming.
I had promised my grandmother that on my best of days, my very best, they would see her, and they would see her daughter. And I don’t always get it right — even in my “best” attempts, but I keep trying. And when you call it out by name, call them out by name, it is all the love that shines.
And isn’t that the best we can do, wear the pearls that we were given? The pearls of wisdom and strength. Of laughter and joy. Of survival and grace and courage. When we give it all a name, we have a responsibility, to witness and uphold. To generate and pass along. And with that, those very pearls are given wings. And I feel the fancy flutter about and I think, I know, how very Ivy-like indeed.
Certainly they were treasures. And I’m just as certain they weren’t expensive. But back then, (and I pray it’s still true today), I, we, didn’t associate value with money. I recognized beauty when I saw it, and these books were beautiful — these compilations of classics, bound in leather, blue, red and green, on my mother’s bookshelf. Too young yet to even sound out the words, I simply ran my fingers over the titles and somehow they got in. And this love of words has never left me.
The most likely scenario is that she got the books through a fidelity program in the grocery store. Just like we got our set of encyclopedias. And didn’t it make perfect sense, this feeding of body and soul. I devour them to this day. I can’t get enough. My fingers are currently tasting the appetizer of my newest book’s embossed title. My mother taught me that. About value. Beauty. She got in. And I know she will never leave me.
After a very confusing day in the library at Washington Elementary, I went home for some much needed clarification from my mother. Hovering between fiction and non-fiction, I asked her if Grandma Dynda, (who lived two lots down on Van Dyke Road) was real. “She’s a real person, of course, but not your real grandma.” So is she fiction or non-fiction? Eyebrows up, and mouth partly open, the words didn’t come, so she just smiled at me. I think we both know we would spent much of our lives hovering in this magical place.
My brain would come to understand most of the difference, but it’s my heart that’s still bouncing around the in-between.
When we first got our cherry tree, and I was searching for a name, (because that’s what I do, name our trees and plants), something worthy and pure and sweet, I hopped the whitewash fence of Mark Twain and found Little Becky Thatcher. In bloom now in the spring of our front yard, she’s as real to me as any written word. As real as any love given two lots down.
It will be a race between us and the magpies when the cherries come. And I like not knowing. Being mid-page. Hovering daily in the smile of this magical place.
It’s not like I forget that I’m in France, but sometimes, I’m more reminded than others. Yesterday, sitting in on Dominique’s appointment, for a good five to ten minutes, I listened to him and his doctor talk about their extraordinary love of cheese. It was quite obvious I was no longer in Minnesota.
I suppose it was at that moment that the bird in my brain took flight.
If we’re lucky, we’re told quite often in our younger years that “you could be anything.” But maybe not so much with the “anywhere.” Perhaps that stems from the human fear of “others.” But I’ve never been sure why that’s so frightening. Because it’s only in the labeling of them being other that we in fact become one.
And as my bird fluttered above all things cheese, I thought, I really like butter. I wondered if they could hear the laughter in my head above the flapping.
Looking for a free page in my sketchbook, I came across the bird in flight that I had sketched in pencil. It could have been anyone’s dream, but it was hers. I don’t have to know her story, to celebrate the fact that she has a story. Be it butter or cheese, I just had to see her. See the hope disguised as the glint of light that reflects from the used-to-be tear. See the dream of flight not long perched on her beautiful head, soon to be mid-flap. And know that we belong. We. All.
“And if you did, see not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…”
I’ve started a new project. Each time I do, there are always things to be learned. Computer programs change so quickly. The paths to incorporate my artwork from page to printer are constantly changing course. And armed with my mother’s sense of direction, (she who thought the map at the mall should be on the ground so you could just step into it), I can’t say that I find my way quickly, but joyfully, I always find my way. I suppose it’s because I’m never traveling alone.
My first step was to get photos of all the new images. I was stumbling about. Turning pages. Checking lighting. It all felt so clunky. And then I got the tap on my brain’s shoulder that said, “get the sticky notes.” It was my friend Deb who gave me the little notebook of multi-colored tabs. We first used them to mark our favorite outfits in the Sundance catalog, sipping lattes, and reading the cover letter from Robert Redford, as if he had addressed it to us personally. We had colors to mark “maybe,” “yes,” and “why am I not wearing it right now.” Hours of entertainment with just a stick of a color.
Smiling, I used those notes to mark the pages of my artwork. It all began to make sense. I found my direction. Even using the new programs on my computer became easier.
I keep moving forward, but not without those who got me here.
There’s an expression that people use when someone dies that I’ve never liked — “She’s no longer with us.” It couldn’t be further from the truth. While the Sundance store has closed, my friend Deb sits right beside me. And I am saved.
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 had a saying in Minnesota — “If you don’t like the weather, stick around, it will change…” My mother and I, during our times of discontent, winter or not, we made it our own.
I found her mid tears one day, sitting on the edge of her bed. Nose red. Eyes puffy. Kleenex in hand. Catching me, catching her (and weren’t we always doing that for each other) she breathed in deeply, wiped her face, stood tall, creased her pants legs with her palms, and simply said, “Stick around…” We both smiled. It was ours from then on.
Oh, I can still get myself lost in the seemingly forever of things. But I give myself reminders. A gratitude clicker. A new page in the sketchbook. An alternate recipe. Perhaps it’s too literal, but I’ve even recently made stickers. As I placed the first one next to the actual painting, I thought, “Stick around…” It still makes me smile.
I know the speed of time. I know how foolish it is to waste it with worry. So I place the stickers in sight. Even the stickers won’t last forever. Only another moment. But I look at them and smile, because in a moment of happiness is always a good place to catch yourself.
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.
