There was no turkey, nor stuffing. Certainly nothing pumpkin, but I was thankful. My friends brought napkins from Minnesota on their most recent visit. They didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me at all that they would go perfectly with my French plates. These little pieces of paper, barely more than air, had, have, the gravity to tumble into my heart, and fill it.
Before we were allowed to stir, or guard a heated pan, we were expected to set the table. I suppose it was years of practice, of placing knives and forks (silverware that wasn’t silver) and glasses (that weren’t really glass at all, but colored metal), before I realized that bringing some things to the table, was actually, what “I brought to the table.” Grandma Elsie knew that being a part of something was to participate. Gifts, however small, were gifts.
When my stepdaughter came to dinner, she, being in need of nothing but the magic of time spent together, was welcomed with a Minnesota napkin on our French table. (A Minnesota nice.) A gift of love passed from home to home to home.
In a world of so much “haves”, I often wonder what I have to bring to the table. Then I paint a portrait. Offer the love that I have been given since my arms had to reach over my head to set a plate. A waft of Elsie smiling from a far away kitchen kisses my cheek. And I am home.
You could tell Grandma Elsie was a social being, by the amount of wrinkles on her apron — all those gathered in left a mark.
I used to think it meant only a bad thing – this leaving of a mark. I heard it on the playground daily. Falling off a monkey bar. Being pushed onto the cement. Scratched, pinched, horse-bit and sometimes with teeth. (We ran wild at Washington Elementary.) It’s funny we didn’t even mention the tears that ran down pinkened cheeks.
I was shy as shy could be back then. I didn’t speak without a broad opening. I suppose that’s what grandma laps are for. And in the softened safety of her welcoming apron, I let it all out. What I thought. What I worried. What I dreamed of and hoped for. And by the time I reached what I long imagined I had climbed and twisted and twirled in her flowery folds. Entangled, she looked at her apron, and said, “That’s going to leave a mark.”
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 imagine she can see me from the window as I begin a new painting. It’s a secret we’re keeping until the new canvas comes to life. It’s not her first time, so she knows that to talk about it would suck the magic right from the paints. She simply smiles and waits. Even the bird by her side remains perched.
We often think that we have to do something. Certainly some sort of action must be taken. When something bad happens, retaliation. With tears, the wiping away. With joy, a wild celebration! It was my mother that taught me differently. That often, the best reaction was just the sitting in, with, and along. In the darkest times, we’d lie quietly until the sun returned as promised. Together. When feelings or knees were hurt, a simple sitting on the front steps as quietly as grass growing would lead eventually to the tapping of shoes against cement, to the exhale, to the jumping off, into the green garden. In the happiest of times, after a book signing, a grand event, after the clapping and cheers, we’d marvel, shaking our heads and smiling in the glorious almost misbelief. Beginning sentences of joy and gratitude, never finished, but continued with hearts heaving.
I suppose it’s always the little things. The support of simply. Being. There. I look over my shoulder and see her watching quietly. I look above, and know the same.
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.
I have been typesetting for most of my adult life, but I just learned this recently — When a paragraph begins on the last line of the page, the isolated first sentence is called an orphan. It has no past, but it does have a future. When the paragraph’s final sentence carries onto the next page, it is called a widow. It has a past, but no future.
I’ve always known that paper has a memory. If you fold it, the fold remains. Dog-eared books don’t forget. Each page is alive.
I won’t be able to unsee it now, the orphans and the widows. And that makes me happy. When we know better, we do better. And if we can do this for pages in a book, certainly we can do this for each other. We must never forget to keep humanizing. When you take this away from people, take away their stories, they lose everything, and so do you.
We all want to be seen. To be dog-eared in hearts and minds. It matters, this setting of type. It decides if we have a future.
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.
I found it next to the trash bins on my walk yesterday. A small shelf made out of wooden slats — perfect for making a framing brace behind a painted panel. I walked it home. Took out the screws.. Pulled out the nails. Sanded each piece. And made my first frame for an existing panel.
Maybe it’s silly, but I feel like the wood is alive. Even after being cut. Even after supporting shoes in a French closet. Even after being discarded. Even after sitting by the bins, thinking there was still a chance to be of use. Didn’t it say, just take me home. Knowing that wasn’t back to the closet, or even the forest, but just somewhere to be valued. To be loved.
There has been a world of places where I’ve felt it. A variety of hands and hearts that have reached out, and taken me to places that I’ve never been, but walked me home all the same, with the gift of purpose, the familiar of heart.
We can do this for each other. Let go the forest, and be the pathway home.
