I don’t know if it’s the chicken or the egg. People have always asked me through the years whether the words come first or the painting. I guess my only answer is that the story arrives, and it can take the shape of letters or landscape or limb, but it’s always in the shape of love.
I suppose it’s all a practice. The more I see, the more I see. The same with memory. The most with love. What’s taught is what’s known.
The fields are especially golden now in the south of France. But they aren’t the destination. No, people travel miles, continents even to gather at the feet of lavender. And it can’t be denied, it is lovely. But wasn’t it my grandfather’s hand that gave me the gold? That first waved my hand over wheat, and in that swoop, painted me in? And it can’t be unseen. Unfelt. All that beauty. All that love. And in that same brush of the hand, my fields, my story, arrives on canvas.
And maybe you see it. Maybe it tickles your palm, and you remember your grandpa, your neighbor, your teacher, or youth, and you wave it on, and on, and again, all the while humanity becomes a little more golden.
He was always doing the “walk back” from the field. In need of a certain tool. Not because he forgot, but because of a new situation. And selfishly, I must say, I loved those times. I didn’t wish him any problems — and I knew that’s why he had to walk back from the field to the shed, to the barn, to the house, but selfishly, I also knew he would be a captive audience.
It’s no surprise I still feel the same. It’s why I fall in love with a pencil. It is my wrench in an open field of pages. It can start my day, or finish it. When not in my hand, I know exactly where it is. In any situation, any walk back of the day, I can get to it. Hold it. Let it help me to become again.
There were no cell phones. Nothing but wide open spaces and my two steps to his one. It’s possible he was merely thinking about the task at hand, but he seemed like such a good listener, which made me want to talk all the more. Jumping over cow pies, I told him everything I knew for sure, and asked him everything I didn’t. The latter outweighed the former.
I was certain my grandpa knew everything. And this was confirmed by how he never looked for a tool, but walked directly to it. He wasn’t the kind to say it, (not that he could get a word in) but I knew he loved those tools. He took care of them. Respected them. In my head, this is why they always worked for him.
Is it a lot to say about a pencil? Maybe. But at this moment, it’s what I know for sure, and it’s enough, to run along beside you, to tell you, we have everything we need.
I guess somewhere between Washington Elementary and my grandparents’ farm I must have learned it. It does sound like something my grandpa would have said, between sparring cousins or in front of an unyielding field — that life simply wasn’t fair. But I suppose it was the luxury of being loved enough that allowed me not to think about it that much. I knew what I had, what I have, and it was more than enough.
I mention it only because I saw them yesterday, the cows at the beach. The most gorgeous views in front of them. 77 degrees and sunny. It made me laugh, wondering if my grandpa’s cows ever knew, ever gave them a thought, shook a hoof in the air and thought, “those Pacific coast cows….!!!!!” As ridiculous as it sounds, we humans do that every day. Fisted hooves! Shaking.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the answer seems to still be — love. If you are loved enough — and I mean both giving and receiving it — then maybe someone’s extra five minutes taken at lunch time won’t really matter to you. Maybe someone’s good fortune could be celebrated instead of envied. Someone’s win wouldn’t be your loss. I don’t know. I suppose you could say, well, it isn’t fair, your mother loved you… and that would be true. I am still heart-deep in that luxury. When it comes to my husband, my family, my friends, I am wandering in a grassy field beside the ocean. I know this. All I can do is give thanks and return the love.
It wasn’t everyone, but one could say more than plenty, to make you feel unwelcome. And that’s a strange thing to feel in your hometown. I loved to golf. I got a starter set of clubs from my mom for my birthday. The two drivers had heads of turquoise blue. When I practiced driving from our back yard into Hugo’s field, using the sliced and abandoned balls my mom found in the rough of the local golf club, I felt powerful. A streak of blue seemed to follow the damaged ball, the damaged ball that was still able to fly after a crack from the sweet spot of my inexpensive, but priceless, golf clubs.
Under a certain age in the summertime, you didn’t have to be a member to play. My mom would drop me off and I would golf all day. I didn’t know it until I was grouped with the vacationing members, but I was in the wrong shoes. The wrong clothes. I only knew it because they told me. I had a choice to cry, or swing harder. I often did both.
We all tanned quickly under the summer sun. We hadn’t been taught about sunscreen. There were so many things we hadn’t been taught — like how to get along with others who weren’t in your group. Like how to welcome members who weren’t really members at all. But don’t feel sorry for me. That’s not the point. I outdrove every one of those girls because I could go home to a mother who loved me — a mother who “teed me up” behind the garage, and whooped and hollered, arms raised to the sky, as I cracked the imperfect balls into the field. No membership required.
I suppose you could think that I was so afraid of belonging that I never joined anything. That’s not true at all. I don’t have membership cards or passes. But I do join in every day. I step outside the door and I am a part of it all. Here and everywhere. With an open heart, an open field. I belong. I keep swinging!
In the springtime, when Hugo’s field began to turn golden behind our house on Van Dyke Road, and when the sun reflected off my winter white thighs, my eyes could barely adjust to the brightness of it all. For a few brief moments, blinded in the growth, I didn’t know where I was going, but I felt certain that I was on my way.
He didn’t want us running through his field. To cut across would save only minutes in the short journey to town, and I can’t explain why we were in such a hurry, but it was so tempting. Maybe it was the promise of summer. The grain that brushed against our legs. The windowed storefronts that called to us. Come. Press against. See what’s inside. We’ve been waiting just for you. It was too much to resist, so we ran across his beautiful field toward the neverending promise.
I’d like to think we didn’t do any damage. And I apologize if we did. In this fever to outrun time — this time measured so clearly by the color of the changing field.
It’s springtime in Provence. Purples and yellows bloom all around us, in a way that quickens the steps. My lavender legs still feel like running. But there is a moment when the morning sun comes through the window with a light that is so bright you can only feel it, and it tells me to stop. Stop chasing. Just be. Maybe it’s nature Hugo-ing us to take the long way. I smile slowly. I’d like to tell you it lasts. But I cannot stop color, nor time. Or the need to travel through both. But I can tell you this, it’s in these brief moments, that I feel gratitude of peace, and the golden blur rests.
“…But who tells you what to do?” I asked this of my grandfather every summer before he walked out to the field alone. He smiled and went about doing it. At five years old, I thought he must be just about the smartest man in the world. Because whether he knew what to do or not, somehow he was doing it. Planting. Growing. Fixing tractors. Trucks. Harvesting. Selling. There was no google. No experts. No daily planners. Long before Nike encouraged us, or even thought of it, he “just did it.”
I suppose it was this knowledge that served for me, almost as permission, to forge my own path. To become an artist. People through the years have looked to me with those same questioning eyes…wondering how to do it. People want answers. Solutions. Guidelines. A reason to get up in the morning. But the thing is, you can’t wait for a reason to get up, you have to get up and go find that reason, that solution, every day.
And my five year old questioning self can sneak in from time to time. It happens for all of us. Receiving my new sketchbook, I hesitated to begin. The blank pages offer no outlines. No directions.
I saw the signs everywhere in Mississippi for their state bird — the Mockingbird. We learned about them from Harper Lee. Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. They don’t have sheet music. No back-ups. They just sing. I opened my sketchbook to the middle and started my song.
The sun is coming up today in New Orleans. We don’t have a plan. We smile, and go about doing it, singing, in the language of the Mockingbird.
The amount of reasons not to do it had to be plentiful. It could be too dry. Too wet. Too hot. Not warm enough. The tractor could fail. His body could fail. Grain prices out of his control. And yet, I never heard my grandfather complain.
Sitting on his overalled lap at the card table he only spoke of the current hand he was playing. He and the chosen three adults laughed, accused, pointed, shook heads in knowing victory, slapped losing cards on the table, and kept playing. Oh how they loved to play cards after a full day of farming. And when the sun came up the next day, he walked past the card table, pocketed his pipe, and went to the field that was given, worked it accordingly, without complaint. Each year turning it from brown, to green, to gold.
Yesterday at our family gathering, (a multi-national event), I was speaking with my German niece in English in the French countryside. “I don’t have enough time,” she said. “And I’m sort of afraid,” she continued. “And I could fail…” She offered up reason after reason not to paint, even though she claimed she wanted to. She was looking so far ahead. Beyond canvases painted, sold and shipped. A business created, and what if that failed, all before a brush or tube was even purchased. “You could just paint a picture,” I said. I could hear my grandfather’s voice deep from within.
He never played next year’s hand. He farmed in the day that was given. What a lesson to be learned. I remind myself constantly. Because I, at times, can get way too far ahead of myself as well… with all the what ifs of tomorrow. But really, we only have this day. And I choose to make something of it.
It occurs to me as I’m typing this, the answer to one of her questions. I told her I was working in my favorite palette. Stroke by stroke in these moody, earthly colors. She asked why I loved it. It’s so clear to me today, it’s the hand I was given.
It’s not always easy to see it when you’re in it, but the challenge usually ends up being the gift.
Living in a country where you are learning the language, you notice everything. You have to. Even the simplest of things. The most mundane of tasks are brand new. Going to the grocery store. Asking directions. You have to humble yourself to the fact that you don’t know — a lot! “In the middle of nowhere” takes on a whole new meaning.
We were driving through this very “middle” the other day. I was fully prepared to admit that we were lost. Dominique on the other hand, was simply looking. We were trying to get to a place to picnic with friends. We were supposed to bring dessert. We wanted to wait to pick it up at a nearby place because of the heat. We were overestimating the opportunities of “nearby.” The GPS wasn’t working. In its defense, I’m not sure that there was anything to base directions on. We were running late, and later. Desperately in need of dessert and directions. And then we saw her. A human leaning against the car. In my best French I asked if there was a supermarket nearby. Dominique was mortified. She laughed — a supermarket! (We were basically in a field, a very big field. We were “time travel” away from a supermarket.) But still smiling, she did lead us to a boulangerie in a neighboring village. Which sacked us with cookies and directions.
I think about how fast life moved when I knew everything. (Or thought I did.) Which direction to turn. How long the drive would be. Where to get the best dessert. Where to buy the best paint. How to mail a package (not to mention just finding the post office.) Everything was easy. And time blurred by. This, perhaps, is more frightening than a little humility. Time moves more slowly when you have to stop and think. Stop to wonder, how in the world will I get this done.? Or what is the word for that??? Because in this stopping, you also get to see everything. In the middle of a lavender field, beside a small church built centuries before, Centuries!, eating the best cookies you ever tasted, you get to stop and say, “isn’t this something!”
We keep up the wander. The wonder. Dominique can hardly believe that I permanently have a rock in my shoe. Both literally and figuratively. I always have. I guess my whole life mother nature has been trying to get me to slow down. Here, in France, she’s found a pretty good way. I stop. Take off my shoe. Tip the gift from my sole and see where I am. Look at where I am! Isn’t this something?!
I can’t say that I ever really liked honey. Well, to be fair, I’m not certain that I had ever really tasted it. Sure, I had the occasional squeeze from a plastic bear, but I understand now that that was probably just manufactured liquid sugar.
I liked the sound of it – Le miel de lavande, and then I had a taste of it. Lavender honey. My shoes still covered in the lavender field’s morning dew, we purchased a jar from the local vendor. At home, I put a little (let’s not kid ourselves, a lot) on my homemade toasted bread. OH, so this is honey! Yes. Yes! I DO love honey. I guess you know when it is real.
I guess it’s the same with everything, not the least of which — love. We’re quick to label so many emotions, connections with the word love. I know I did. Because we don’t know – certainly I didn’t. A taste of this, that, even the other… maybe this was it? Could this be it? And squeezing from the “honey bear” I tried to convince myself that it was good. But was it? Not really. Not for me.
I suppose one could have stop searching, but my feet answered only to my heart, and it said “keep walking.” So I made my way, slowly, stumbling to the lavender fields. So this is it! This is love. Oui!
I don’t know all the answers, how the magic works, how our heart creates the most unlikely maps, but I do know this, if you can’t taste the honey, really taste it…keep walking. Love should be delicious!
