It means Endless stories — the name of this French vintage store. (And what would be more fitting for me.) We visited it for the first time last week. It won’t surprise you to learn that I bought a canvas to paint over, and an old frame. Both, I suppose, in the attempt to keep the stories alive.
Maybe it was in Miss Green’s fifth grade class that I began the practice. Each week we took a “field trip” simply by writing a story about visiting a new area. To determine the destination, we spun around and placed a tack randomly on the large map. (Our version of discovery was somewhere between Pin the tail on the Donkey and today’s Google.)
We wrote weekly of our adventures. Our stories. I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped.
And even though Washington Elementary is now a collection of condominiums, and Miss Green goes by her married name, these stories for me have no end. I tell you my stories, and you tell me yours. And all the versions in between, including playgrounds and grandparents and main streets and penny candy. Bike ride and softball games. And the names may change, but the spirit of each story lives on. And on. (Sans fin.)
Today’s sun begins handing out the letters and I find myself somewhere between Donkey and Google, ready to write, ready to paint, to frame a new and endless story.
The bag of Twizzlers they brought from the US could easily fit into a small bassinet, and I coddle it to my breast with a love worthy of the same. It’s not just because I love the taste of the candy. Or that I can’t get Twizzlers in France. Not just because I know they love it too. Or that I know the drawer where they keep a rotating bag in their home. I suppose it’s all of these things that make up the language of friendship.
And now, just as I know how far it is from recliner to licorice in their home, they will be able to picture me enjoying it in every room here in France. The great exchange.
People always say, “no strings attached,” — but I don’t think it applies to red licorice vines.
When I go to the studio today, on a bit of a sugar high, everything will seem fresh and new, because yesterday, love walked through.
Standing in front of the bird in the hand, he asked me what was the English word for perspective. Perspective, I said. He smiled, not having to learn another word. I smiled because not only was he speaking in my mother tongue, we were talking about art — my love language.
We are meant to connect. I believe it.
So many things can divide us. Learning a new language, I suppose, is like opening yourself up to a whole new perspective. You can focus on all the differences, but the weight of that can be unbearable. Nothing is lighter than joy. And landing on a word, a phrase, focusing on the common, the similar, the connection — this, weighing almost nothing at all, can lift us, higher than we ever imagined alone.
Sometimes the “bird in the hand” (the gift) is simply the fact that we’re reaching out at all. Just a thought from this bird brain.
It’s funny to me that we don’t all turn the clocks at the same time. We did in France this morning. The US will do it next weekend. It probably shouldn’t seem strange, after all if I really think about it, when did any of us change at the same time?
I remember once at the Office Depot in Minneapolis, the morning after the time change, we were discussing it at the counter while waiting to ship out packages. A few liked the extra hour of sleep. One dismayed over the upset to her sleep pattern. Another, and the most surprising, said, “Oh, I don’t do it.” Well, what do you mean? We all asked. She explained, with complete certainty, “Oh, I just change my watch a few minutes throughout the year, so when the time to change actually comes, it doesn’t seem that drastic.” But then you’re never, ever, at the right time, we questioned still. “No,” she smiled, as if that were completely fine with her.
I guess we all find a way to navigate through this world.
My mother always loved to dance in the kitchen. In our second house on Van Dyke Road, there was a large, heavy light fixture overhead the “dance floor.” I was downstairs when I heard the call of the music. Peeking around the corner, my delight turned to horror, as I saw one of her long arms rising to the beat and knocking the weighted glass. It tumbled, just missing her head, and came crashing to the floor. Without missing a beat of the music, (the music always continues to play), she looked at the fear on my face and said, “But did you see me dance though…”.
So we fell back a little, we still have to, get to, rise up!
While most of the kids on Van Dyke Road were told each morning to “get dressed,” it was my mother who told me simply, quietly, to “dress.” I learned the difference quite early on. To get dressed was merely to cover. Anyone can do that, she said. We were dressing. Completing an ensemble. A package of self-esteem and self fulfilling prophecy. I watched from bathroom to closet to full length mirror. Proof that what she was saying was true, as it carried her with style and grace daily to Independent School district #206.
I dressed to go into Aix yesterday. We just had a few errands, but I made sure I was belted, smoothed and scarved. Approaching the other side at the first crossing into the city, she smiled at me and said that I was “Très Élégant.” I clutched my imaginary pearls and thanked her, feet no longer touching the ground. I’m not sure how long I floated, (I’ll tell you if I stop). Of course a compliment feels wonderful, and it will always lift you. (Never underestimate the power of a compliment.) But it was more than that. The smiling woman, the complimenting woman, she was wearing a ruffled blouse, a crisp, white ruffling Ivy blouse. Proof, once again.
I have spent my life daring the blue dress, long before I was ready to dance. I’m not sure I’ve ever really been ready for anything. (Can anyone be?) Mostly I think I’ve just started.
Uncertain, I have eased my head through. Let it drop over nervous shoulders. I have turned on the record player. Let the music travel from ears to fingers, as I slipped into the black hose. And I have braced my nervous heart with arms over ribs that simply couldn’t be trusted. And without my knowledge or permission, the blue begins to blur, and there is no more getting ready — I AM a dancer.
If we waited for the perfect time, we’d never do anything. There is no sure that gets us over the edge. No certainty. And if there were, would there be any reason to continue? This is what I tell myself in the jitters of it all. The nervousness is simply a dance.
And so I begin. I wiggle my shoulders. My toes. And I am move a little easier through the blue.
Before Herberger’s anchored the mall, it reigned supreme on Broadway. A perfect Saturday was riding shotgun in the Chevy Impala with my mother. I twirled the quarter in my sweaty palm. (No time would be wasted loading the parking meter.) Through the double glass doors, even the gumball machines were not a distraction. I walked, almost skipping, looking back to hurry her along. I reached the grand staircase first. She nodded me to go ahead. I waved, passing the women at the office on the left, then turned to go up the second flight. The fluorescent lights shown brightly over the racks at my height. I was lured to the girls’ dresses along the wall. I can’t explain why, but the clothing in my size even smelled sweeter.
I can’t say how long it lasted, but there was a time when I thought the reward was not to own the dress, but simply to try it on. To play fashion show behind the curtains, in front of the three-way mirrors, was what I longed for while desked at school on a Wednesday.
Holding the painting in my hand, creating the young girl who dreams of wearing the yellow dress, I am in France, but also on Broadway.
What happens next, may be hard to believe, but it is true. I was nearly finished with the painting. I could sense movement from my iPad that sat on the easel keeping time. I stopped and watched the photo app open, flashing through several pictures, then stopping on my mother. My heart caught in mid smile. Some magic is real. Somehow, some way, she had made it up the stairs before me, waiting in the sweet smell of just what I needed, of just my size. And I was saved.
If my mother resembled my grandfather, it was mostly in the length of their strides. My first memories were three to one, counting mine as I raced behind them. I marveled at their strength and purposeful speed. But it wasn’t an angry pace, I could tell by the loose swinging of arms, feeling that same joy as my own danced around my waist.
It’s a blur of how I went from three to two, to matching their strides completely. I can still feel the thrill of reaching out to that hand that swung back. Did it rest a little longer? Did I reach a littler farther? Didn’t all time stop as I clasped my sweaty palm into the certainty of love followed? Somehow I knew, it was also mine to carry. A joyful duty of continuing love’s long stride.
It’s funny how I had focused so on their feet, when it was their hands all along. The reaching out, the reaching back, the reaching out again. The sun is coming up. My heart tells my arms to swing.
She wrote to me, in French, that this portrait reminded her of her older sister who was no longer with them. She said she could see the sadness that she carried, (tristesse), but it also gave her hope (l’espoir).
One thing does not disappear the other. We live in between. And maybe that’s where all the beauty lies, if we choose to see it, in the transitions. In the state of becoming. I often have to remind myself, as I’m hurrying to “get through.” As if the furious speed held the answers.
There is no finishing. The woman wrote of her sister as “no longer with them,”…but yet, here we are, talking about her, in two languages. So isn’t she here, hovering between the sadness and hope, with just the slightest turn of head, turn of lip, her message ready to wing on, and on…
It doesn’t sound like a lot, 15 minutes, but the year they extended our bus route beyond the tanks, we had to get up earlier, or go to school with wet hair. (This was often my choice, and for most of the Norton girls at the end of Van Dyke Road.) I didn’t think of it then, but I’m sure it felt as invasive for the Frier’s as it was for us. Maybe they had been first on their route before. I’m sorry to say I didn’t ask, but merely wished that they would hurry up their own gravel driveway so we could get to school.
It’s funny how we claim things. Our bus. Our route. We were all just trying to get to our destination. To be with our friends. To swing our feet under desks while the teacher read aloud. To laugh at lunch without snorting milk out our noses. To learn, sure. To drop permission slips and backpacks with wild abandon and run into our mothers’ arms.
There will always be roads and worlds between us, but the road that runs beneath us, this remains the same.
I wait at the top of the hill. Mailboxes at my back. Gravel beneath my feet. Ready to share the ride.
