The Christmas carcass became yesterday’s soup. Aproned and worry-free, I Grandma Elsied my way through the process. Adding everything. Measuring nothing. And it was delicious. Steeped with holiday and attention, it tasted rich and full, but for me, the added pleasure, satisfaction, joy, came with nothing being wasted.
I try to practice it — this making use. A scrap of metal turned into a frame. Discarded wood into panels. Yesterday’s still fresh oil paint into tomorrow’s tableau. And to me it’s all important, but I hope I pay the same attention to living. Using everything I have. Every speck of courage, because we’ll get more tomorrow. Loving with every piece of my heart, knowing it means nothing left inside. And perhaps it’s not as easy as pot to stove, but I was taught to attempt in Elsie’s kitchen. To abandon worry and just create.
She’s smiling over my soup bowls, but more over, my heart. Telling me daily to give it all, and just become.
If you look it up in the dictionary, it has two meanings. Opposite really. Nervy. It can mean bold, or nervous. Both are probably true. And for me, usually at the same time.
Months ago, in the middle of a situation in Marseille, feeling both, I decided to Wordle for distraction. I know there are certain starter words, almost mathematical, to give yourself the best chance, but I don’t play that way. I usually insert a word that says something about my current state of affairs, a way to insert myself in the game. It’s just more fun for me that way. So I chose the word with two meanings. Bold and nervous, because wouldn’t you have to be, I mean, are you really being bold if you’re not nervous? Is there any bravery without being afraid? I typed it in. N-E-R-V-Y. The letters turned over green. One by one. I beat Wordle. I chose the word in a single guess. It was about me.
I three and four my way through most days. Sometimes two. Not playing the odds, but always playing myself.
Last night, reading a new book, Apples Never Fall, there it was on the page, twice. Nervy. Had I not taken the big chance, the big swing, with my Wordle word, I would have just passed this page without great meaning. But I had taken the chance. I had bolded and nerved my way in, and found myself again, here in the words.
I don’t want to live timidly. I want to be bold in the attempt. When I love, when I live. So when my reflection is offered back to me, I can say proudly, I was nervy.
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
My mother took in ironing. Just being born, of course I didn’t have the words for it, or any words at all, but I think I knew. I could feel it, the warmth. Not the heat from the iron, nor the steam, but the balm of service done with grace.
It wasn’t humility. She wasn’t lowering herself. She loved clothes. She needed the money. She tested the quality of the fabric between thumb and forefinger. She knew how it would behave. How to make the collar and cuffs respond, not with rigidity, but a wantful desire to frame a face, release a hand. When finished, she didn’t just exchange it for cash, she showed them how to wear it — not as a mannequin, but a woman with style unpurchased. And they knew it. That’s why they came back. They could have gone to the local dry cleaner on Broadway, but they returned to my mother, in the white house, near the end of Van Dyke Road.
I watched her years later, doing it for herself, and I could still feel the hands that cupped the back of my head, marveling at the warmth against my resting spine. My mother took in ironing, and ever returned it with grace.
She was the first person I knew to wear a beret. She sang songs about Paris. When I say I knew her, well, we never actually met, but she, Joni Mitchell, was my babysitter. Alone (I suppose you could say “unfettered”) with a turntable my brother left behind, I played the Court and Spark album again and again. I had memorized the words to each song, long before I knew what a free man in Paris would look like, or where Paris even was on a map.
She was always there, the two hours between my hop off the yellow school bus and my mom’s return from work. Music never lets you be alone. Nor poetry, or any of the arts. Maybe that’s why I love them all so. For me, all a form of grace — it sits with you, until you can walk in it again.
Maybe you’ll think it strange, but one of the first things I purchased at the Galleria in Edina was a green beret, made in France. But I think it’s perfect. This spinning of my worlds together, round and round, like the very music of my soul.
We outgrow our babysitters, but not our need for care. I try to give it to myself, still. I hope you can do the same. Find your grace. In the right tempo. Walk in it. And then one day, “unfettered and alive” you find yourself in the dance.
It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming.
Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night. Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening.
In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!
I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons.
So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true.
For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry.
When he saw the painting of my grandfather he asked if we still had the farm. I paused, stuck in who the “we” would even be. I started passing it down in my head, from uncle to cousin, to second cousin, (none to whom I felt a collective we). It passed again in my head to I’m not sure, to finally, it didn’t really even matter, because, I told him, “I still have everything.” And I do.
Even a lifetime and country away, I can feel the warmth of the rock at the base of the driveway. The same steady of my grandfather. The gravel beneath my feet. The jolt of an electric fence. The smell of apples, on and off the trees. The sandy feel of a cow’s tongue. The bounce of a screen door. The scent of my grandma’s kitchen. My face against her sticky apron. The ever damp basement. Jesus on the cross upstairs. Prayed to from the kitchen table. The sewing room that stitched all nine children’s lives together. The front stoop that promised the scent of tobacco and hope. My mother laughing in that kitchen. Crying in that kitchen. Hands folded at that table. Driving away from the rock one last time, never really leaving.
So, yes, I still have the farm. And the we is all who listen to the stories. The we is you who remember your own grandmother’s apron. Who read the words and climb upon your grandfather’s lap. We still have it all. We have everthing.
Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
I don’t suppose the spaces left from loved ones passed can ever be completely filled. But maybe it’s wrong to think they ever were. These relationships weren’t beautiful, memorable, longed for even still, because of their solid perfection. Perhaps they were always stardust, flittering, fluttering, changing shape, with room always left for dancing, beneath the flickering light.
It’s the way I choose to think of it, my mother’s space, not as a hole left behind, but a dance floor. And all that magic that sprinkles from her still, lights up the people around me, and they step in, tap me on the shoulder, and ask me to dance. They are my new daily connections. My new last calls. My shared laughter and secrets. Hopes and challenges. Not replacements, but keepers of the dance.
We’re not all good at the same thing. Some are meant to pull you in, and simply sway. Other’s tap their feet and keep the beat alive. Some dizzy you into laughter. Dance you into breathless. And hold out the ladle of punch. I am grateful for them all. All of you, who keep my dance floor filled, my heart in motion, in sway, in the right tempo, under the stardust.
For some it’s the cardinal. Others a butterfly. Others still, a hummingbird, a dragonfly, a feather, a stone. All symbols, messages from a loved one who has passed. The beautiful thing is, the list can change and grow, and can never be wrong.
I suppose it has always been the case, we see what we want to see. And it has me thinking, if I can see the beauty of those in my life who have gone before me, if I can see their goodness still, feel their love still, in a random flutter, or a lifeless object, then certainly, wouldn’t it make sense that I, we, could see the goodness in each other? That we could see, before the flutter, mid-stumble, a beauty still, of all those around us.
Because certainly the ones we loved were never flawless. Never without mistake. But oh, how we love them still. How we would forgive any flaw to hold them again. I’m not saying it would be all that simple, but I’m thinking, I’m hoping, what if I could get to that point with everyone near and far? Give them the grace I allow my cardinals, my butterflies. Love them with all of my heart.
As they sing and say, “I suppose I’m a dreamer…” but I’m going to give it my humble attempt. And in my humble failings and flaws, maybe you will see the love in me as well, as I stumble before the flutter.
I met her for the first time yesterday. She asked if I was a dancer. I smiled, not because I am, but because I think she saw my friend Loie.
Loie was a professional dancer in Chicago. We went to visit her in California this year. And seeing her move with such grace between rooms, or simply standing in front of the garage door, I think, I hope, I took a bit of it on — like a French accent, or the joy of my grandma Elsie.
People have always asked me how I started as an artist. It may sound unusual, but I can honestly say that the two most important things in my career (probably just life) have been to surround myself with the best people, and to pay attention. And what a pleasure to know, as I’m standing in my ballet flats in the south of France, it’s still working.
I wrote a poem for my grandma at the end of her life. Telling her how much she meant to my mother, to me. Promising her that when people see me, really see me, on my very best of days, they will see her. I don’t always succeed, but on the days when you say, that this painting brought you joy, or these words touched your heart, I think, I hope, I know, that you saw her too!
And in all this joy, this friendship, this love, there’s nothing to do, I suppose, but dance.
