My mother loved to read by the window. Of course the light was better, but knowing her, always in search of more air to breathe, she no doubt wanted the same for her open book.
I suppose that’s why I crave it too — the crack of a window, or the spine of a book. I think that’s what reading does, opens up everything. Allows more information in, and lets go of preconceived ideas. A refreshing. Simply put, more air to breathe.
The first time I really understood was on the playground of Washington Elementary. I mean really on the playground, after falling from the railings where the teeter totters used to be. Landing flat on my back, my internal wind ran like a rat from a ship and left me gasping. Like a fish flopping on the dock’s edge. That’s all I had, metaphors, no air to breathe. So this is how she felt, my mother, I thought, in those uncomfortable situations that only adults knew. Being judged for status or money or anything else a small town could measure you by. And I knew I would hug her after school. I would take all the air that I had inside of me once again and use it to run from the bus, through the garage door, into her arms, and give her that much needed air.
Empathy. It only comes from being open. I sit by the window with my open book. There is so much more to learn. To love. And so I breathe.
She stood in front of the original painting. Tracing the movement from the woman’s feet to her hand. “She’s so light,” she said, “it’s like she’s being lifted.” I smiled and replied “That’s actually the name of the piece — Being Lifted.” Her pleasure doubled. It was not only the view, but that she could see it.
And isn’t it always the way. It’s what we bring to the situation. How we want to see things.
Knowing her, I’m aware of the weight she is wanting to release. And the fact that she can see it, right there in front of her, I know that she will.
It’s why I painted her in the first place. This release. This letting go. I suppose I’ve always wanted it. Ever since I swam out to the diving board on Lake Latoka, I have yearned to fly. Since I felt the weightlessness of springing from the board. The wind in my feathers. My momentary wings. They carry me still.
It’s why I stand before her each night, the woman in the painting. Because I see her. And I know, when morning comes, one way or another, I am going to fly.
It’s a bread baking morning. I’m still surprised at the act. How much I love the bread. How I adore that the house smells like home. And mostly that I’m someone who has the patience to wait for the rise.
And maybe that’s unfair. Perhaps we are way too quick to label people. To pull out the “never” cards. She never does that. He will never do this. How do we know when we are young, (or at any stage in our lives for that matter) what we will do, what we are capable of doing? So I’ve decided to try and replace never with not yet. Giving myself the opportunity to keep becoming. And the hardest part, having the patience to allow the transformations. To wait for the rise.
You’d think just the attempt to learn that in itself would serve as the reminder, but I must admit, I do need the bread. As I cover the half empty bowl, I smile and know that I’m not where I’ve been, I’m not where I’m going, but I am on my way.
The sun hits the towel that coddles the bowl that holds the dough. And so I rise.
It has happened twice in the last week. Women seemingly from my imagination arrive on canvas, only to be recognized and loved by complete strangers.
I posted her on TikTok yesterday when I finished painting her. The reply came from another country. She said she loved my art and thought my portraits were very elegant. But she loved this woman more than any other because she saw her best friend’s mother. She said it looked exactly like her. She missed her and “it made her heart feel so warm.”
The thing is, we just don’t know. We don’t know who is going through what. We can’t know what everyone needs. But I think if we keep putting things out there — smiles, waves, kind words, thoughts, flowers from the garden, portraits from our imaginations, love from our hearts — it will be good for someone at some point, and in turn, better for all of us.
With my also warmed heart, I will return to the canvas today, and it will arrive, right on time.
By my best estimation, I would say there was a hundred degree span (0 – 100°F) in which we were told to go outside. A span which could in fact lengthen depending on our attitudes.
Before the last bit of Captain Crunch was slurped from the bowl. Long before the school bus was to arrive. Or the sun of summer’s vacation. My mother would say “Goodbye. I love you. Have a nice day,” and it was clear that I was the one meant to leave. And for the next twelve hours or so, I spent the day outside. We all did.
Perhaps we had been sold on the fact that all good things were outside. They used it as a reward in school, so of course it worked at home. We lived it. We loved it. It was the great reveal of the sun. There were no boundaries. Imagination, even love, couldn’t reach a limit. And believe me, we dared it — with the pedaling of bikes on gravel, the abandonment of those same bikes in ditches, barefooted and unsure of what lay beneath, we raced, willing sunburned legs to spin one more time around bases or vacant lots.
It’s self imposed now. But I can still hear the call, the direction. You could label it as discipline, give it the fancy words of adulthood. But what brings me to the door each morning, what carries me to test the day’s limits are still the same words, “Goodbye. I love you. Have a nice day.”
There was never an event without my mother. Not a book signing. Nor exhibition. A keynote speech. She was there. And not because she showed up that particular day. No. Because she was there at the beginning. She was outside my bedroom door at five to gather in my latest drawing. She framed the earliest poems and hung them by the bathroom mirror for morning inspiration. She walked me through graduation. Helped me clean the first dirty apartment I could afford. Always with a smile, and the hint of Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door.
She wore it well. Never overpowering. A slightly floral hint of kindness. Of excitement. Of “I will always be there.”
I keep a bottle on hand. When I walk into my bathroom, there is the scent of possibility. Breathing it in, I can hear the clink of her make-up against the counter. Because in the sound of her getting ready, I could hear the promise of good things to come, and not only did she urge me to believe it, but to Get Ready!
Just a waft will lift me. Ever. Into all the goodness that is right in front of me. That is yet to come. With the smell of hope I feel it. I know it! And I’m ready!
A common criticism within the arts is that the piece is overworked. I suppose the same is true with most things. A poem can be too flowery. A batter over mixed. An outfit over accessorized.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned,” is a quote attributed to Leonardo DaVinci. It highlights the fact that perfection is unattainable and creative work is only completed when the artist chooses to stop and let it go.
So I stopped yesterday. On my large painting. And wasn’t it her hand itself that reminded me. You have to let go. It’s so easy to want to add a “but” in there, slip in a “maybe”… but maybe if I, or but I just wanted to… Here’s where I tell myself again and again… I don’t want to live a maybe life.
Sitting in front of the dancing woman, because letting go doesn’t mean you have to be alone, I picked up a small panel, and painted a duck. Some might say a small duck. But this was the duck that helped me move on, helped me feel accomplished in what I had done, satisfied, but not overworked. And as my mother used to say, “Nothing small could do that.”
I have had this canvas for about 15 years. It has transitioned and traveled with me through abstraction and country. The last painting was here in France, a seascape of sorts. But I can’t tell you exactly what came before that. I know it’s still there. Underneath. Behind, within this woman.
If you ask me who she is, prepare yourself for the underpainting. She is the curve of every woman.
She is my grandmother whose hands never stopped. Hands that I watched in amazement and wrote, “If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.”
She is my mother. The posture of grace. In an apartment kitchen filled with more worry than nourishment, she lifted a hand, and gently directed me in the dance.
She is my friend, long past her days of professional dance, who still walks in the garage as if onto the stage.
She is another friend, deep in grief, (a depth that only comes with love) who dares the dance of my mother, and releases, again, and again, with the curve of a woman.
When I look at the sides of the canvas, I see these bright and dark colors. Not who she is now. Not who I am now. But I see the lines of the underpainting — the embossing and debossing of all that paint (the experience) that has come before. And it adds pattern to her dress. Movement to her hands. Strength to her feet. And opens the sky. Opens her heart. My heart. Your heart. Wide open.
At the moment my two most popular pins on Pinterest are of young women reading. It warms my heart that neither are distracted by the thousands of views and likes. Nor by the news that we are becoming a post-literate world. They can’t be certain of what lies ahead, but they continue. Fighting back, not with fist nor fury, but by simply reading.
There is so much noise currently. But there are things that still give me hope. An open window. An open spine. The quiet exchange of knowledge. Of truth. That you will take the time to read my simple words. And we connect, not over a ranting rage, but a common calm.
I quietly open the morning window. Taking comfort in knowing that hope always whispers.
At first glance, you may have thought her superpowers came from her clothes. But I was witness “after the phone booth.”
I stared at the gravel road, waiting for her to come home from work. First came the puffs of gravel from Van Dyke Road. Then I could see her car. The blinker. And every schoolyard worry exhaled from my elementary body, as she pulled into the driveway. Her skirt and blouse were wrinkle free, just as she had left at 7am that morning. Not a scuff on her shoes as she sat on the side of her bed and placed them back in the box. She took off her run-free pantyhose. Washed them in the sink. Hung her clothes back in the closet. Sweeping down one last time, not to dewrinkle, but more I thought, in thanks of a day well served.
Donned now in her house clothes, her posture never changed. Shoulders back. Head high. Her size 10’s seem to glide across the kitchen floor. “You could be a dancer on the Lawrence Welk show,” I praised. She leaned into her smile and started dinner.
In my newest painting, I’m trying to convey the elegance. You might wonder when you see the curve of her hand, or the strength of her neck, how she could be in a simple house dress. But I know where she came from. I have witnessed the puff of smoke she rose through and above. The canvas is big. I have to stand. To reach. And I know it is the praise she deserves. I raise my chin. I raise my brush. And continue.
