I can honestly say I never knew the name of this song, even though for the better part of a decade it was an anthem for my mother. She, we, always referred to it as that “what a drag” song. The famous line goes, “I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You’d know what a drag it is to see you.” Play it again, she’d say. The empowerment given by this song that we couldn’t address by title, was palpable.
But that’s the thing, we don’t need to know or call things by name. We’re all going through something. We all have our “Fourth Street.” And we all have a choice. To cower, or to stand proudly. It was my mother who taught me to choose the song. To sing it out loud!
Yesterday in front of the large canvas, I stood strong and played the song over and over. All the moments of why we needed an anthem were gone, and the strength of having one remained. How could anything be more positive than that?
I looked up the title this morning — that makes sense I thought, and began making my way down the street. Positively fourth street.
Seeing the youthful paintings of Cezanne yesterday at the museum, I was reminded of the art of becoming. “Well, that doesn’t seem like him,” I thought, standing in front of a glossy-bright collage of color. Then I smiled, knowing that most of our travels to nearer ourselves, these roads are paved with exactly that.
It’s all in the framing, I suppose (pardon the pun). We can call it unseemly, or we can call it becoming. (I’m not sure how to have one without the other.) But didn’t we learn early on that “becoming” was a compliment? “Oh that’s so becoming on you!” And in hearing it, we’d clutch our imaginary pearls and will our hearts to keep on growing.
Looking through my own oeuvre, (entire body of work), oh, how my life has changed again and again. But it’s all me. From sketchbook to canvas. And I hope I allow myself the grace that I offer Cezanne — grace I hope to offer anyone — look at you becoming!
I’m not living in the country where I was born. Nor the “old country” that my grandparents frequently referenced. Of course they never called it by name, so I can’t be certain. Maybe farm tables knew. Or those that sat around them. (They absorbed so much.) And my young ears were eager to do the same. So I pressed my open face against all those tabled thoughts. Those directions. That knowledge of what was and what could be.
The wood whispered Uncle Wally’s stutter. Aunt Ellen’s worry. And captured some of my own thoughts, like why I didn’t call them “Great.” (I simply clumped them all into aunts and uncles.) Perhaps I was as unassuming as that table, soaking it all in too.
Like cracked wood I held on deeply. Suzan’s dream of becoming a movie star, or at least cleaning their pools. Cousin Chris wanting to be a Viking. The asthmatic breaths of Shawn and Pat. And would the weight of Aunt Kay’s husbands collapse the legs that I sturdied between my feet and beneath my head? And could I make it out the screen door, down the gravel driveway, past the fields, onto highways, into skies, all while the same?
Have they all become my “old country?” I wipe the lavender honey from our French breakfast table, being sure not to knock away the whispers.
Once she realized that “soon” was no more real than “a long time ago,” — that she could just be in it, this shouldered and weightless grace — there was no more worry of where it had flown, or if it would fly away, it just was…and she was… What a relief to be feathered this way. Not to be ready, but simply be, and know that it was ok.
She smiled at the slyness of this effortless grace, not asking for it to remain, (because certainly grace needed no request) but hoping that she could, that she would… Be.
As much as I was outside when I was young, I never enjoyed nor entertained the idea of getting dirty. I was saved by the outdoor hose on numerous occasions, as the lengthy trip through the garage, then down the stairs into the laundry room to wash would have been far too much to bear.
So when Mrs. Paulson first introduced us to the subject of empathy in the fourth grade as “walking around in someone else’s shoes,” you can imagine my despair. Shoeless after winter recess, our footwear neatly tucked into the cubbies along the wall, her introduction to this compassion seemed permission to one of the boys in the back, as he raced to cram his still damp-footed socks into a pair of the girly shoes. Amid the laughter, she ushered him firmly by the elbow back to his seat.
To my extraordinary relief, she went on to explain that the shoes were simply a metaphor. It was our stories, the history that we walked around in. This is what we were to share. Maybe it was the relief of this knowledge, or maybe I was just meant for this. Either way, I’ve been sharing my story ever since. And the greatest gift of all has been listening to yours.
Barefoot in the studio yesterday, I began painting this woman. Fueled by the new book that I’m reading, Kin, I had the need to put a face to the story. I wiggled my toes upon the cool floor as she came to life. And it was Mrs. Paulson, feathered and perched upon her shoulder, that told me again of this magical gift. This empathy.
I washed my brushes with the summer hose outside the door. And I was saved.
Ever since Erma Bombeck told my mother (along with her million other readers) to burn the candles, I, too, have tried not to “save for something special,” but instead see it in the very moment.
As a practice, it has become so much easier through the years. Trying to remove the judgement of “deserving,” — because this is an impossible standard. Taking out the worthiness, and exchanging it for gratitude, works a little better for me. Maybe I deserve the two new brushes I bought the other day, but thinking that way makes me hesitate. Should I wait for the special painting? Is my panel worth? Am I worthy? That’s dangerous territory, especially if the answer is yes. Instead, yesterday, I pulled off the plastic cover, felt the new smooth of ready, and smiled, feeling lucky that I did indeed have a new brush and a free afternoon — this in itself was “something special!”
I began Erma-ing my way across the panel. Is it newsworthy? Again, not for me to decide. I only mention it because it felt, you know, kind of special.
I suppose you could track everything back. Starting with sketches in my bedside Big Chief notebook. To Mr. Opsahl’s art class in Washington Elementary. But to be honest. I didn’t have grandiose plans for it all. I was just trying to stave off a Sunday night homework worry. Or brighten a school day afternoon. But that’s the thing about steps, the smallest of ones, even when you’re not aware, they’re still lifting you.
This little pink bird was the first in my sketchbook. I had no idea how many it would lead to. How they would transform into something larger. But the intent was there — Noting here I can’t rise above. And somewhere, within this attempt to rise, I was gracefully being lifted.
And that little pink bird crescendoed into this 5’ portrait of a woman ready, willing, to take flight. And I’d like to think, if this tiny little bird could do that, that maybe I, we, could do the same. I guess it all comes down to taking that first step.
It has happened twice in the last week. Women seemingly from my imagination arrive on canvas, only to be recognized and loved by complete strangers.
I posted her on TikTok yesterday when I finished painting her. The reply came from another country. She said she loved my art and thought my portraits were very elegant. But she loved this woman more than any other because she saw her best friend’s mother. She said it looked exactly like her. She missed her and “it made her heart feel so warm.”
The thing is, we just don’t know. We don’t know who is going through what. We can’t know what everyone needs. But I think if we keep putting things out there — smiles, waves, kind words, thoughts, flowers from the garden, portraits from our imaginations, love from our hearts — it will be good for someone at some point, and in turn, better for all of us.
With my also warmed heart, I will return to the canvas today, and it will arrive, right on time.
After learning they had actual names other than grandma and grandpa, nothing really surprised me. And Hvezda, no less. Other than our family, no one could spell it or even say it properly. The H was silent. The most confusing part, I suppose, was that my last name also began with an H — Hills. My grandma had the best answer. When I asked her why her H didn’t have a sound and mine did she simply said, “I was saving it for you.”
It’s all those silent sacrifices of those that come before us. Those who lay the path so that we can travel a little easier. Are we still doing it? Holding the light so that others can shine? I hope so.
I mention it because I’m living in a country where they say neither H nor S, and half my name disappears. But when I paint the portraits of Charles and Margaux, I think, I guess I was saving it for you.
By my best estimation, I would say there was a hundred degree span (0 – 100°F) in which we were told to go outside. A span which could in fact lengthen depending on our attitudes.
Before the last bit of Captain Crunch was slurped from the bowl. Long before the school bus was to arrive. Or the sun of summer’s vacation. My mother would say “Goodbye. I love you. Have a nice day,” and it was clear that I was the one meant to leave. And for the next twelve hours or so, I spent the day outside. We all did.
Perhaps we had been sold on the fact that all good things were outside. They used it as a reward in school, so of course it worked at home. We lived it. We loved it. It was the great reveal of the sun. There were no boundaries. Imagination, even love, couldn’t reach a limit. And believe me, we dared it — with the pedaling of bikes on gravel, the abandonment of those same bikes in ditches, barefooted and unsure of what lay beneath, we raced, willing sunburned legs to spin one more time around bases or vacant lots.
It’s self imposed now. But I can still hear the call, the direction. You could label it as discipline, give it the fancy words of adulthood. But what brings me to the door each morning, what carries me to test the day’s limits are still the same words, “Goodbye. I love you. Have a nice day.”
