The French have an expression when someone passes away — “casser sa pipe” (to break your pipe). I only learned of this two days ago at a funeral. But somehow, my heart, not driven by language, already knew. The two portraits I painted of my pipe-smoking grandfather both have his pockets full — his pipe always in reach.
That’s the question I guess, is “how do we keep our loved ones alive?” And the answer lies directly in the question itself — love. I speak to my grandfather daily. My grandma. My mom. Nothing is broken. The love remains, so the heart’s conversation continues.
When you know someone, really know them with all of your heart, you can keep them present tense, keep their pockets filled with the love that you still have to give — a love always within reach.
If I were to play the percentages, the chances of me having a good dream are few and far between. And I remember all of them. The details especially clear in the early morning ones. Yet, 4:30am is too early for me to get up, so this morning, I dared the clarity and went back to sleep. This morning’s reward was worth beyond the years of risk.
In my dream —-
Dominique and I were visiting the Chicago Art Institute — one of my favorite places on this planet. The security was extra vigilant. Dominique was less patient than usual. He got through before me and was out of sight as I continued the struggle with my passport and the guard. Annoyed and alone, I climbed the large staircase to get a better view. Surely he hadn’t gotten far. I scanned the crowd. Nothing. No one. I turned to the sound of the elevator doors opening beside me. Every breath, every worry, every “every” left my body as I saw my mother standing there with Dominique. She wouldn’t have needed the balloons in her hand to complete the surprise, and she must have thought so too, because she released them instantly and grabbed me in her arms. I can feel her still. The same hug with skinned knees at five. The same hug on a Tuesday morning before a test at school. The same hug as boyfriends disappointed. As on weekend visits. As birthdays passed. As Christmases held. As springs promised. As love continued. Continues. I was held in the folds of her ruffled white blouse. And I was saved. The balloons kept rising. —-
Would I chance every bad dream for another moment. Of course. I do. I will. Because the love never dies. It lifts. It carries. And leads me. To books. To the page. To the canvas. To the path. To the living. To all the love around me, ballooned, and ever rising.
I was always aware of time when it came to the things I loved. I thought I could outrun all of it. Pumping my thighs just ahead of aging. If I got up early enough, made a pact with the summer sun not to waste a moment, ran beside Hugo’s golden fields, ate my self-packed lunch in the green of the yard, read books in lakes, rode bike on gravel, hit balls on fields…then summer, (even though deep in the back of my mind I knew it would end), somehow it would always last. The promise still holds.
My mother was that summer. Maybe that’s why I still get up early, to meet her in the promise. To gather in all that I love — the “Joie de vivre” (the joy of life).
Walking on the path yesterday morning here in France, I heard the slow pop of the gravel beneath the approaching car, and I was immediately on Van Dyke Road. I wondered if my new French friend recognized my chubby hand in the gathering heat. Her “Phyllis Norton-like” wave out her rolled-down window told me yes. We both smiled as the years disappeared with each pop under her wheel. We bounced our smiles into the blue of ever and spoke the language, the hope, of youth.
Love and summer make the same promise. So I keep my end and wake up early to gather it in, gather myself in…knowing with each gravelly step, I am home.
It’s only been a couple of days since our microwave died. It also served as the clock in our kitchen. I can’t tell you how often I look at the empty hole for the measure of the day. From the table, the stove, coming in the back door, I look. I “eye roll” my own eyes — how accustomed they were to this time.
So how could I not think of calling you? How could you not be my first thought when I finish a painting? When I start one for that matter. Wanting to send you my progress along the way. How does my brain not look for your email responding to the morning blog? My outfit. My hopes and dreams. My damaged pinky. Or bruised feelings. Because you were my measure of time. My measure of heart. And this I can’t forget. Won’t. Don’t want to. I suppose it’s only a change of direction. I can no longer look over, but I can look up, look up and know you are still there, Mom. Here.
Tomorrow they will deliver the new microwave. It will take a minute, but my eyes will adjust to the new normal. It will shine in the corner of our kitchen, and I will think to call you.
When it comes to love, thankfully there doesn’t seem to be any “had I known at the time…”
I fell in love with my yellow bedroom almost immediately. It was the first time I got to pick out my own decor. Yellow! Everything was yellow. Carpeting and bedspread. Van Dyke Road shone a little brighter as the reflection jumped from youthful bed to the gravel. I could read at night without a light. It was so bright, but for the stairs, you never would have known I was in the basement.
Was it even a year? I don’t know how long it was before my father sold the house and my mom and I moved to an apartment. I guess it’s true that perfection knows no time constraints, because even in giving it up, I went on loving it. I still do. And the heart, as broken as it seems, isn’t. It fumbles, yes. Stumbles, sure. But it keeps on loving.
It’s not even the bathroom really. We have separate little rooms for our toilets. I give them flowers and paintings. Maybe a candle. Why? Because I love them. I wrote once, “this year, let’s love like no lessons have been learned…” — that’s how I decorate the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, with flowers and gratitude, and a love that stays as bright and hopeful as a child’s bedroom.
There are burners that I will no longer touch. And roads that I won’t take. But my heart climbs the stairs, and beats forever yellow.
It was my grandma Elsie who made quilts. We have them scattered throughout our home. Each one a hug waiting to be entered. (None of them wait long.)
My mother loved to sew. But she was more about fashion. Because it came as a surprise, (and also upon my bed in our Jefferson Street apartment), I remember exactly the time she decided to try her hand at making a quilt. I didn’t ask why. I knew pretty early on that life was a series of attempts to connect. So I joyfully slept on the side of my high school bed that was not covered in squares, resting under the watchful hands of both my mother and grandmother.
I have that quilt as well, here in France. It may be smaller in size, but it retains an equal amount of magic — this ability to draw me in, hold me, comfortably. But perhaps even more magically, it sets me free to try the things that aren’t necessarily in my skill set. To keep reaching out when connections fail. To keep believing this might be the thread that holds.
That’s a lot to expect, you might say, of a heart’s thread, but as I step from inside a quilt’s embrace, I know, it’s not too much to ask.
In the arts of love and endurance, gratitude, forgiveness, strength and pure joy, the heart is mighty, for sure! But it’s never been all that good at math.
Of the nine children my grandparents had, only two remain. This two of Rueben and Elsie changed its numbers so many times, and continues still. Only once, with the twins, did it jump by two. The eleven held, and grew even more rapidly, as the nine paired off and tested all of our addition skills. Children turned into grands and then greats, and just as we got used to all of the plus signs, the painful subtractions began.
But the arithmetic of the heart is nothing like we learned at Washington Elementary. Here they taught us that the value changed when subtracting. But they didn’t warn us about the heart. Because for the heart, it never does. The numbers will forever change — it’s a guarantee that life will do that — but the value remains. Love cannot, will not, do the math.
I mention it today because my dear friends lost their beloved dog. She said she was missing her family of three. I, we, struggle to add comfort in times of loss. I don’t know if it helps, I hope it helps, it often does for me…this letting go of the math. Letting the heart decide what remains. True love does. So, I tell her, you ARE still three. Forever three.
I can’t say I ever followed boxing. Of course I had heard of him, Muhammad Ali. But my limited impression was mostly bravado. But then in 1996, when he appeared on the Olympic stage, fragile, all in white, I took notice. Arms trembling, he moved gingerly across the stage. No “floating” or “stinging”…but what I saw, what we all saw, was pure strength. I held my breath as the shaking flame tried to grab hold. Seconds passed. And then it took. The flame shot up to the official grand torch, and the sky lit with the power of vulnerability.
We have a tendency to ooooh and aaaah at the fantastic — at human feats of strength. And we should. But the truth is, they are happening all around us, all the time. I suppose the only real difference is the lighting. Not engulfed under an Olympic size flame, but rather within the subtle glowing of grace. Not emboldened by uniform or flag, but inner strength. Those who dare to brave the challenges of heart and body, and face the day with kindness still.
In a couple of days, the Olympic torch will pass through our French city. A grand event, for sure, but it makes me smile, as I look at the pictures of my mother on the wall…my grandfather, my grandmother…the torch has already been passed.
I’m not sure it’s statistically possible, but it would seem that 90% of the time I’m at the end of the roll of toilet paper. Perhaps, like all bounty, it is hard to see until it begins to end.
I don’t know how my grandma did it. With eleven people in the house, just to maintain the necessary products must have been a constant challenge. And yet, I never saw it. And, like I’ve said before, I tried to memorize their house. I paid attention. I counted the number of steps. The paintings that hung in each bedroom. What was hidden in the closets. The sewing room. My grandma’s dresser. The damp coats hanging. The shoes leading down the basement stairs. Which cupboard held the candy. The six pack of cereal. I took it all in, so I thought. But it was only today, these many years later, it occurred to me that I don’t remember where she kept the toilet paper. And I don’t remember ever running out. Even on holidays when that house of 11 turned to 50 or more. We always had what we needed.
It may sound silly. I mention it only because what a thing! — to count on someone like this. And believe me, I did the math. With each grandchild that appeared. Each great grandchild. I wondered would it be possible for her to still love us all, and by that I mean me. Would it be possible for her to still see me among all these arms reaching up to be held. All these toes trampling and racing. Sticky fingers. And one cry louder than the next. Would it be statistically possible to have that much love?
She was almost 90 when we were sitting at her table. Drinking egg coffee made on the stove. Grounds clinging to the bottom of stained cups. My mom and I had just been at one of my gallery shows. We told her about what I had painted. What I had sold. Sitting in this tiny apartment which now contained a mere fraction of what her house had held. (I suppose all lives get reduced down to the necessary.) She made the silent oooooh with her mouth, a sound only hearts can hear. She told me to go to the nightstand beside her bed. It was only a couple feet from the kitchen table. It was there that I saw it. A small easeled piece of tree bark, with dried flowers glued in the cracks, with the words “Love, Jodi, 5th grade,” written in Sharpie on the back. It wasn’t possible, and yet, my heart’s sigh told me that it was — she saw me, she knew me, she loved me. Still.
It would have been so easy to get lost in the cracks of it all. But there I was. Flowered.
I had to hold both of her hands to lift her from her chair. Somewhere along the line we had reversed roles, she now cuddled shoulder high in the warmth of my embrace. If I didn’t know it before, I knew it then, love never runs out.
It’s odd to think of Christmas in this French summer heat, but there it was, along my daily gravel path. The color of the wild flowers against the sea of green — the same combination my friend Deb used for her Christmas decorations.
Lounging in our chairs at the Starbuck’s near my apartment, drinking extra-hot vanilla lattes in the still-welcomed air conditioning of the lingering September summer, we thumbed through the Jonathan Adler catalog, already dreaming of Christmas. We could never start too early. We both loved decorating for the holidays. It was here, eleven years ago, that she changed her color palette. And a bold palette it was. More pink than red. More yellow than green, but still a nod to the tradition. Each holiday piece that she put out was in this new palette. Right down to the candy purchased in Stillwater, Minnesota.
With French pebbles still in the soles of my shoes, I stepped directly into her apartment. The familiar scent of candles. The corner tree blinking. Shelled pistachios next to chocolate covered in a deep pink candy shell. (Ever in the palette.) And just like with the catalog, we went through her apartment and pointed out, praised, loved each and every detail.
If you think this all shallow, you would be wrong. Because I knew what this break from the traditional palette meant. I knew what not fitting into the norm of it all felt like for her, for me, (for so many). I knew the pain she had suffered losing her husband first to mental illness, then divorce. The jobs she had lost. The lifestyle she tried to regain. The navigating of keeping tradition for her son, creating a new life for herself. I knew her colors, inside and out. She was my friend.
And isn’t it just like a friend to show up with a wink and smile, lifting your heart and heat weary feet on a gravel path. I suppose that’s what real friends do, at any time, any distance, they show you their true colors, and allow you to walk in yours.
If you see a spring in my step, you know I had such a friend.
