Unlike her delicious pastries, most of my grandma’s ideas outside the kitchen were, as one might say, half-baked.
Even the successes that she served were a little hard to understand. They were given names that I didn’t realize were made up until in later years trying to Google a recipe. And if there were in fact recipes, they were never followed. When asked, she would laugh and puff the flour from hand to aproned belly and say, “Oh, I started in the middle.”
Not really understanding, I still found it unconventionally delightful. As were the chinchillas in the basement. The Publisher’s Clearing house magazines spread across the table. The various plots of land underwater or undeveloped purchased from a roadside gas station. The grab bags from Ben Franklin. The constant thrill of simply playing, neither winning nor losing, just in the game.
In front of my newest sketchbook, I understand. I never start at the first page. I always begin somewhere in the middle — where the pressure is off, only the joy of being in it. I’m trying to allow myself more of that freedom in my day to day. Not worrying about what was or what will be, just allowing, just being… aproning up and dancing in the kitchen.
They loved them for different reasons. My grandma’s a bit more practical. She needed her pockets for Kleenex and treats — we needed candy she said, you know, just to be sure. My mother kept her dreams in her pockets, be it skirt, coat or pants, needing a place to coddle them in hand, you know, just to be sure.
So maybe they weren’t that different after all. They just found their way to comfort through different pocketed resources. And after all, didn’t they both love the autumn candy at Walgreen’s.
We have no candy corn in France. No mellowcremes, or Autumn Mix by Brach’s. Yet, my pockets remain full, with the same magic as the heart, I suppose.
We get to decide the magic that we carry. The love we hold on to. The hopes and dreams and comforts that fill our pockets. Sometimes I find myself leaning up against a French wall, and rolling it all between my fingers, you know, just to be sure.
There was a rhythm to the gravel road we lived on. A popping of pebbles against the tires. The whirring of rubber in dust. It was the music of homecoming. I listened every day from our house on Van Dyke Road. Just after 4:30 my mother arrived within the soundtrack of return. All that music, all that joy, I simply had to dance.
Of course the neighborhood was often abuzz with complaint. When would they pave this road? All that music, to them was noise.
I thought of them yesterday. They would be the same people here who complain about the cicadas. To me, it sounds like home. It is the opening of windows and doors. Bare legged freedom. A studio that has no limits. A comfort that requires no bracing. My song of home.
I suppose it’s all a choice. Noise or music. Just a feeling. And if it feels like a song, if it feels like home, it probably is… So I choose happiness. Joy. And it moves me from heart to limb.
After all, if we’re not supposed to dance, why all this music?
There was never an event without my mother. Not a book signing. Nor exhibition. A keynote speech. She was there. And not because she showed up that particular day. No. Because she was there at the beginning. She was outside my bedroom door at five to gather in my latest drawing. She framed the earliest poems and hung them by the bathroom mirror for morning inspiration. She walked me through graduation. Helped me clean the first dirty apartment I could afford. Always with a smile, and the hint of Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door.
She wore it well. Never overpowering. A slightly floral hint of kindness. Of excitement. Of “I will always be there.”
I keep a bottle on hand. When I walk into my bathroom, there is the scent of possibility. Breathing it in, I can hear the clink of her make-up against the counter. Because in the sound of her getting ready, I could hear the promise of good things to come, and not only did she urge me to believe it, but to Get Ready!
Just a waft will lift me. Ever. Into all the goodness that is right in front of me. That is yet to come. With the smell of hope I feel it. I know it! And I’m ready!
A common criticism within the arts is that the piece is overworked. I suppose the same is true with most things. A poem can be too flowery. A batter over mixed. An outfit over accessorized.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned,” is a quote attributed to Leonardo DaVinci. It highlights the fact that perfection is unattainable and creative work is only completed when the artist chooses to stop and let it go.
So I stopped yesterday. On my large painting. And wasn’t it her hand itself that reminded me. You have to let go. It’s so easy to want to add a “but” in there, slip in a “maybe”… but maybe if I, or but I just wanted to… Here’s where I tell myself again and again… I don’t want to live a maybe life.
Sitting in front of the dancing woman, because letting go doesn’t mean you have to be alone, I picked up a small panel, and painted a duck. Some might say a small duck. But this was the duck that helped me move on, helped me feel accomplished in what I had done, satisfied, but not overworked. And as my mother used to say, “Nothing small could do that.”
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.
