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.”
It means Endless stories — the name of this French vintage store. (And what would be more fitting for me.) We visited it for the first time last week. It won’t surprise you to learn that I bought a canvas to paint over, and an old frame. Both, I suppose, in the attempt to keep the stories alive.
Maybe it was in Miss Green’s fifth grade class that I began the practice. Each week we took a “field trip” simply by writing a story about visiting a new area. To determine the destination, we spun around and placed a tack randomly on the large map. (Our version of discovery was somewhere between Pin the tail on the Donkey and today’s Google.)
We wrote weekly of our adventures. Our stories. I’m not sure I’ve ever stopped.
And even though Washington Elementary is now a collection of condominiums, and Miss Green goes by her married name, these stories for me have no end. I tell you my stories, and you tell me yours. And all the versions in between, including playgrounds and grandparents and main streets and penny candy. Bike ride and softball games. And the names may change, but the spirit of each story lives on. And on. (Sans fin.)
Today’s sun begins handing out the letters and I find myself somewhere between Donkey and Google, ready to write, ready to paint, to frame a new and endless story.
I could print it here for you, a poem that I’ve recently discovered, but that wouldn’t be the same. I know this, because I grew up walking to the library, not holding it in my hand. And what a glorious lesson this was — having my whole body in search of the information. Feet trudging to get hands winging through card catalogs. Eyes searching. Arms carrying loads. Books spread on tables. Thumbs thumbing. Pencils scratching notes. Reading again. Scratching again. Re-reading. Hoping. Willing the information from toe to head.
And when the test came, (they always come), what a thrill it was to walk the answer through each step and write it down on the challenge of blank paper. Every inch of your being smiling with delight, knowing “I helped.”
As you wander today through “the ruthless furnace of this world,” I encourage you to be “stubborn” enough to “delight” in the search of this marvelous poem. Read it. Trace it with your fingertips and feel the wonder.
I know it’s just a googling of the quoted lines, but still, when it pops on your screen, when your hands type and your eyes wander, maybe you’ll feel the joy, the delight, of a library trudged, knowledge gained, and a heart expanded.
There is a moment after finishing a painting when my heart sits as empty as the easel. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, but I seem to have to learn the lesson again and again.
And it’s not an abandoning. I will still have a relationship with the painting finished. It will just be a new connection. No longer of the “going through,” but the “how far we’ve come.” A new beauty stirs inside and shifts the ending to a beginning.
I was so nervous, my first job after college. Caught in the ending of school and the beginning of work, I really had no idea which way to move. It was Ron Miller, over the intercom, that set me free. When a situation arose in his department, he always used the intercom to call for help. He never referred to it as a problem. Loud and clear, he summoned aid by saying, “We’ve got an opportunity!”
Ron Miller passed on this year. As it turns out, he lives on through my apron in the south of France. Hanging on my empty easel, I hear him calling, “We’ve got an opportunity.” And so it begins.
One of the best compliments I’ve received lately was from a woman who said, while looking at the paintings, “I’ve seen the photos, but these feel alive.” That is the true success of a painting, I think. When the love you breathe in travels from heart to hand and lands gently onto the canvas, it continues to breathe, to welcome, to live.
She used to crawl all over me, with an urgent need to be picked up. It didn’t seem to matter how. Within my arms, clutched in elbows. Balancing on top of my feet that pushed her toward the sky, almost into flight. And then one day, without my knowledge or permission, she passed me in height, but the need to be lifted remains. Now, I simply do it with a brush.
Each canvas marks a bit of time. Serving as reminders that even though time keeps passing, love never does. Never will. Love remains.
She asked me how long I’ve been living in France. I showed her the living timeline. I do not fear the passing of time. Love keeps lifting. (I am, however, going to need more paint.)
The bag of Twizzlers they brought from the US could easily fit into a small bassinet, and I coddle it to my breast with a love worthy of the same. It’s not just because I love the taste of the candy. Or that I can’t get Twizzlers in France. Not just because I know they love it too. Or that I know the drawer where they keep a rotating bag in their home. I suppose it’s all of these things that make up the language of friendship.
And now, just as I know how far it is from recliner to licorice in their home, they will be able to picture me enjoying it in every room here in France. The great exchange.
People always say, “no strings attached,” — but I don’t think it applies to red licorice vines.
When I go to the studio today, on a bit of a sugar high, everything will seem fresh and new, because yesterday, love walked through.
Standing in front of the bird in the hand, he asked me what was the English word for perspective. Perspective, I said. He smiled, not having to learn another word. I smiled because not only was he speaking in my mother tongue, we were talking about art — my love language.
We are meant to connect. I believe it.
So many things can divide us. Learning a new language, I suppose, is like opening yourself up to a whole new perspective. You can focus on all the differences, but the weight of that can be unbearable. Nothing is lighter than joy. And landing on a word, a phrase, focusing on the common, the similar, the connection — this, weighing almost nothing at all, can lift us, higher than we ever imagined alone.
Sometimes the “bird in the hand” (the gift) is simply the fact that we’re reaching out at all. Just a thought from this bird brain.
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 googled it. It turns out you don’t need a certain shape to your lips in order to play the flute. Maybe it was because we didn’t have Google in the fifth grade, or maybe they just needed to fill out the woodwind section, but I was told I didn’t have the proper lip for the flute that I so desired, and that I would be better suited for the clarinet. Upon Mr. Iverson’s authority in the Washington School gymnasium, I signed up to play the clarinet in the band.
Some decisions get made for you.
I learned to love the clarinet. I still have mine. It stands proudly in our library. (No flute could do that on its own.) I haven’t thought about that day in years. Decades even. But as I was painting her small portrait, focusing on the lips, I thought, “She can play the flute if she wants.”
I didn’t go on to play the clarinet after high school. I never made it past second chair. I’m not sure my life would have turned out much differently had I played the flute.
Playing the clarinet in the band at the basketball games, I sat next to Janie who played the flute. It was her father that would take out my appendix later that year. And after losing weight from said surgery, my mom would take me to Fleet Farm, and buy for me my first pair of painter’s pants. Was it all meant to be? Probably.
There are so many turns and twists and decisions that get us to WHERE we are, but with any luck, I suppose, we remain WHO we are. The music plays in the south of France, and I begin a new portrait. I am what I am.
