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.
Charles returned on his first break from university. He showed us pictures of his campus and classrooms. The problems written across the blackboards were nothing short of Good Will Hunting. My eyes rolled at my brain, which was challenged enough from translating English to French. These scribbles and tweeks and solve-fors seemed beyond language. Had this Matt Damon always sat so loosely on our sofa? What a smarty pants, I thought. And then I thought, people who are actually that smart wouldn’t say smarty pants, nor probably know the outline of this film playing in my head. And then I thought, stop thinking and pay attention, not unlike what I said to myself while taking my own classes long ago.
We all have our own currency. It’s foolish to measure against anyone else. It’s foolish not to use everything you have.
I stared at the photos he clicked through on the television. These giant tableaus were no longer “problems”, but works of art. Because this was his art. I could see how excited he was. To show them — these Pollacked masterpieces hanging in his museum of learning. Seeing his passion to solve, I understood. I relaxed into my chair, and finished the tour.
He was never going to stay this size. He was never meant to. But there was a moment, a joyful moment, in this living room, we all sat loosely.
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.
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.
I remember watching America’s Next Top Model (Yes, I did. Don’t judge me.) There was one specific moment that stuck with me all of these years. The host Tyra Banks, became frustrated with this certain model. Of course she was a beautiful woman, but she was coming off “dead” in the photographs. Tyra pleaded with her, “Think of something! Anything!”
While it makes me laugh, there is so much truth behind it. We are at our most beautiful when we show who we are.
The paintings I love the most, that I consider the most successful, are those that evoke a feeling. The story that comes to life when you view it. The story that you then share back to me. This exchange brings life to the painting, but most importantly, to all of us.
I don’t know what the day will bring. It could be something! It could be anything! Isn’t that beautiful?
Some days it took as little as wearing an LBD to feel like a superhero. While some may write this off as shallow, I say it is the brilliant understanding of your own power. Finding it wherever you can.
It’s no mistake that my mother found it in her lipstick. I continued her evangelism in a book and on my face. Going to the Sephora here in France yesterday, I asked for assistance, and while she helped me in French, we both knew we were speaking the same language — The mother tongue. And it being one of those days, many applications were required.
In full make-up and my apron (a nod, I suppose, to both my mother and grandmother), I went to the studio to paint. Completing this study in oils, the last thing was to give her clothing. I had already supplied her with the rouge, but just to be sure, I painted a little black dress. And in saving her, I more than saved myself.
I said, “I know.” But I didn’t know. I wonder why I thought that knowing would dull the information given. As if this claiming to almost be in on it, would make it hurt less.
“The house sold,” my mom said. Not “we sold the house,” like we were a part of the decision making. Like we wanted to leave the comfort of Van Dyke Road and move to a small apartment in town. “I know,” I said, after nearly falling from my bike when I saw the real estate sign in the yard. That cold metal sign with the big “sold” sticker placed across, almost like a smile, like it was laughing at us…so I said I know, not because I did, but simply not to give that smiling vacate notice any more power than it already had.
With the last boxes packed, she said, “It’s going to be ok…good…you can decorate your room.” “I know,” I said. (Neither of us did.)
But the defense of this “I know” gradually turned into reality. A certainty of trusting in each other’s heart. It was no longer for the metal sign, but for us. And with each other, there were so many things that we did know, mostly love, some tears shared, but soon laughter, and the joy of really being anywhere together.
I walk by her picture now. Photographs. Paintings. I can hear her say, “I’m still here.” I smile and whisper, “I know.” (And I do.)
What will they write about if it’s only Google? If there are no stairs to climb to get to the public library? Stairs that are just a little too big for five year knees to bend. Stairs that must be climbed with a mother’s hand not simply held, but used as a pulley. Stairs, that if said mother spent too much time checking her lipstick in the rear view mirror and locking the car door, could be traversed on all fours, like one of the lions cemented and perched next to the entry door.
And if they only use AI, how will they know the smell of the card catalog? Stumble through the Dewey Decimal system? Feel the victory of when your thumb lands on the searched-for book on the shelf? For there was nothing “artificial” about claiming the knowledge, owning the responsibility. Name proudly written on the check out card. Book clutched to heart before putting in homemade book bag.
How do we keep it all tangible? These actions of brain and heart and study? What will be the stairs to climb?
I begin a new small canvas. Not for sale or recognition, but simply to learn. Improve my craft. Pass along as a hand reaching down. A pulley to reach the lions.
She wrote to me, in French, that this portrait reminded her of her older sister who was no longer with them. She said she could see the sadness that she carried, (tristesse), but it also gave her hope (l’espoir).
One thing does not disappear the other. We live in between. And maybe that’s where all the beauty lies, if we choose to see it, in the transitions. In the state of becoming. I often have to remind myself, as I’m hurrying to “get through.” As if the furious speed held the answers.
There is no finishing. The woman wrote of her sister as “no longer with them,”…but yet, here we are, talking about her, in two languages. So isn’t she here, hovering between the sadness and hope, with just the slightest turn of head, turn of lip, her message ready to wing on, and on…
