“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…”. Joan Didion
As humans, I suppose, we are always looking for the narrative, to lessen the blow or to heighten the lift. And didn’t we start at the beginning, in our first class under the name of our first president at Washington Elementary. One by one, we stood alongside Mrs. Strand’s desk and told all of the other 5 and 6 year olds what we did over the summer. These were not tales of trips to Europe, nor even flights across state lines, but rather heads hanging out of station wagons and under lake waters. Feet racing on dirt roads and pedaling bikes. Balls hit. Candy bars frozen. Popsicles melted. And sunsets dared awaiting mothers’ calls.
With each story, hands raised up with ooohs and aaahs of remembering the same, the similar. The excitement of stories melding connected us all. That’s why I keep writing. I keep painting. The thrill when your memories return to you in an oooooooh, and you share them with me, and then with another, is like no other. We are alive! Living in the word, in the story.
I flank my sketchbook with boy and girl, facing forward. Ever grateful for what has been. Ever hopeful of what is to come.
When my mother was going through the hardest time of her life, I noticed it was then that she would often skip to the last page of the book she was reading. I suppose I was too young to understand, understand this need to get control over something, anything. Amid all the chaos and uncertainty, she just needed to know an ending.
When I was a little older, when my mother read books completely in order, we were sitting at the table with my grandma. I asked her if it all seemed so fast. She smiled, and we all knew there would be no jumping to the end. We each had to finish this life book on our own.
I suppose there are moments in all of our lives when we want to skip ahead. But the only way out is through. Step by step. Page by page. I hold it at heart level, this book of mine, and keep reading. What a story!
My mother never came empty handed. Whether it was for a week’s visit, or a long afternoon, her arms were filled with toilet paper, paper towel, Kleenex, or something frosted from the bakery. It wasn’t that I couldn’t purchase it. It was just another form of connection. And when I poked my finger through the plastic to carry the rolls up the stairs to my apartment, along with her suitcase, I knew that she thought of me, not just here, not just at the events, but on Tuesday afternoons at Cub while picking up some essentials. And I felt loved.
We have a chalkboard in our French kitchen to remind us of those very things. I guess Laetitia saw it when she came for lunch that day. Toilet paper written in white. I walked her out to her car. She opened the trunk. Reached in. Pulled out a multi-pack of toilet paper. I would never refuse a visit from my mother. I held it, her, in my arms at the top of my heart’s stairs. And I am loved.
Just imagining it, I can feel the tension leave my shoulders. My breathing slows. To lie in the folds of my grandma’s apron was as near as I came to where all hopes nested.
She possessed the most remarkable ability, to fall asleep at any given moment. Not narcolepsy. It was as if she stored the sleep beside the Kleenex up her sleeve, and when she needed five minutes, or twenty, she could pull it out and take the needed rest. And I truly mean it could be any time. During a telephone call. A commercial break during Days of Our Lives. Or as you struggled through your turn in a card game of which she neglected to explain to you the rules.
During one such game, I watched her apron fall and rise. I couldn’t take it anymore. I laid down my cards and gently folded myself silently from my chair. I wormed my way back up into her lap, and rode love’s ebb and flow. When I think of it now, I was not all that graceful. Surely my climbing must have awakened her. I looked up to see if an eye opened. I think I saw just the curve of her lip. I rested comfortably in the knowledge that it was still my turn.
Certainly with nine children, countless grandchildren and a farm, my grandma’s days were filled with purpose. People needed to be fed. Dishes cleaned. Clothes washed. Apples needed to be picked, along with garden weeds. Fruit canned. And the listening was never ending, neighbors, Hortons, party line, Paul Harvey, and the farm report. But somehow, within the din of activity, if you sheepishly whispered that you wanted to place dice, or cards, she wiped her hands briskly on her apron, shoved the Publisher’s Clearing House magazines from the table and sat down to beat you at any requested game with a girlish giggle, because she said, “Some things are just for fun.”
Yesterday was a full day. Two appointments. Two cities. And the usual “Elsie like tasks.” By 5pm, there wasn’t a lot of time to create something of great detail, like a portrait, but there was a little time. Enough time. So I took the decision to take the time, and have a bit of fun. It was only a tiny bird. A tiny French bird. The stripes of its snug t-shirt stretching over an “Elsie” belly made me laugh. Because it’s still supposed to be fun. The noises can be overwhelming, but so can the joy. And it’s usually just a hand wipe away.
I just finished reading The School for Good Mothers,by Jessamine Chan. For the last twenty four hours I have been thinking about the characters. It is not an easy read by any means. And yet it lives on inside of me. Words create their own heartbeats, and even when the book is closed, thump, thump… a chicken with its head chopped off, still running. Still running.
We have this idea that everything has to be so comfortable. That life is a lounge chair for the heart. On that same farm, where chickens ran, my grandfather showed me how to lean into the discomfort by picking the rocks in the field to prepare for planting. Not glamorizing the dirt, nor fighting the weight of it all.
So I embrace the words and paint the image of the girl that remains in my head. My way of moving the rocks.
Most lessons do not come with cushions. But I know, as always, something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
I was still riding my banana seat one speed when Lynn Norton graduated to her adult size bike. I could hear the gears click into place as she passed me going up the hill by Lord’s house, on the way to Van Dyke Road. Between huffs I marveled at her speed. I stood up on the pedals, fighting with all of my might, all of my heart. She was barely breathing hard. “Wait up,” I panted and hoped she not only heard, but somehow could pull me along if I stayed within reach. She stopped at the right hand gravel turn and waited. Her look back was the incentive I needed and I made it. “How did you go so fast?” I asked. “I know how to shift.” I suppose it was right then that I made it part of my life’s plan.
Being right handed, I have recently finished all the right hand pages of my very large sketch book. There was a choice to be made. Forget half the book, or shift. I purchased the vellum sheets to protect the completed work. Are they a guarantee? No. Of course there is risk. And part of my brain says that something bad could happen, but the loudest voice in the room, my pumping heart, says to go on. What if something great happens! What if on these left handed pages, you create a masterpiece?!!!!
Two summers after Lynn beat me up the hill, I too had an adult size bike. Three gears! Mastering those, I graduated to 10 speeds. Then twelve. It took all those gears and more for me to go to college. To take chances. To become an artist. To write books. To fall in love. To move to another country. To face today. I am not afraid. With the confidence of the oldest Norton girl, I look in the mirror and claim, “I know how to shift!”
Sometimes I have more patience with a batch of cookies than I do myself. That doesn’t seem right.
I was always amazed that my grandma never measured anything. A rule follower from Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class, I just didn’t understand. I put my head down on the desk when she asked. Raised my hand before speaking, and even drank the milk that made me gag. But then in Grandma Elsie’s kitchen, flour and sugar flew with wild abandon and I found myself caught up in the twirl. Still a bit uncertain, I would ask, “But what if it isn’t right?” “Then I’ll know soon enough,” she said.
I wanted it — whatever that was — confidence, experience, trust, or maybe a combination of all it. Making the cookies yesterday, I found myself once again in the twirl. I made a test cookie to get to my “soon enough.” It was perfect and I finished the batch.
The years have given me the strength to brave the twirl. To let go the worry of what if it’s not right, or good enough, but to simply try. I can feel the trust in my Elsie hands and kitchen heart. I feed my soul. And I taste this life.
It was mostly on the major holidays, special occasions like weddings or funerals, and then the random calling of summer’s sun on the front lawn of my grandparents’ farm. People wandered in, as if on a Hvezda pilgrimage. Separating from front room to garage. I would tug at my mother’s blouse, raising a tiny fist in the direction of the unknown, (told that it wasn’t polite to point) driven by the desire to find out who these people were. Some turned out to be cousins. Others with labels of “step” or “half.” Some just neighbors lost or hungry.
I learned fairly quickly the real story was not with the others, but the ones I thought I knew. I had seen most in their own environments. In the homes they had made since leaving this farm. But something changed as they gathered. I could see it in my aunts, even my own mother. I had yet to read Thomas Wolfe, so I still imagined you could walk through that swinging screen door unchanged.
But experience changes your laughter, the shape of your tears. Your gait through the gate.
I suppose I was always watching. Not afraid. Just interested. And wondering. How would I maneuver the doors ahead? It seemed to me, we were all on this constant journey home. All. Maybe I was able to watch because of the sturdiness of my grandma. She stood sink side, without judgement. And welcomed. Where I would go was, still is, uncertain, but it was always clear who I wanted to become.
I stand sink side, knowing we all make our way home differently.
I watched her pull it off the shelf in our basement apartment. She’d sit beneath the garden window to get the sliver of light offered, turning the pages of the Leo Buscaglia book, each word a simple prayer for courage. I knew she was always worried that she wasn’t brave enough, strong enough, but even in that tiny sliver, I could see differently. For hadn’t she written it herself on the sticky note, after reading the sentence over and over. Hadn’t she risen from the chair, gone to the drawer under the phone, tested three pens, and finally rewrote the words, “ Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.” She went back to reading. I pulled the kitchen chair in front of the cupboard and read the words that hung from the phone’s receiver (that hang in my heart still). Gentleness bounced from room to room on Jefferson Street.
I’m sure at some point she had learned it from her father. Didn’t he display that same gentle strength in farm light. But it’s good to be reminded. In book, on sticky notes, in the glance of the common good. So I write the words in different forms to remind myself. To maybe remind you, with a gentle bounce of kindness, a never ending prayer for strength.
