A painting will dictate what it wants for a frame. Or some will not need one at all. But once in a while, the sequence reverses, and I will paint an image for a frame. That’s what happened with this little one. It was alone in the thrift store. Empty. But not for long.
To see a need and fill it, before the asking, it’s nice within my artistic world, but my sincere hope is that I can do it in real life. With real people.
I was told once that when someone near you is going through a difficult time, you should never ask them “What can I do?” Of course it is well intended, but now you’ve only added to the situation – given them another problem to solve – how you can help. It’s never easy, or a sure thing, but I suppose the best thing is to just do something. It may not be the thing to solve the problem, but doing something nice can never be wrong. And you can always do another thing.
In that spirit, I’ve painted several small pieces for this frame. They can always be switched out. Mostly it serves as a reminder for me to just keep doing. Keep trying. And I’m not going to lie, it simply feels good. It fills me at the same time as the frame. So I smile and point the question, not outwardly, but inwardly, “What can I do?” And I do something. And that should be celebrated.
It’s Grandma Elsie’s voice I hear. When I sold my first original painting, I told her about the gallery, the people, the price. She clapped her hands in front of her heart and said, “Isn’t that something?!!!!!!”
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.
We didn’t have phones or iPad covers to decorate. I’m not sure I even knew what graffiti was at the time. If I had, I still wouldn’t have done it. The closest I ever wanted to get to the police department was walking past its corner location to get to the public library. But the need to be creative and declarative continued to hover all around. So I, we, took to the front of our spiral notebooks and two flap paper folders. We wrote down our BFFs and our future marriage names. We put hearts with arrows and who liked whom. We drew our school mascots and tic-tac-toe. Highlighted the years we would graduate, which seemed a lifetime away. (It’s funny how quickly that “lifetime” came and passed, but never the desire to create, become, and stop for a moment and say, this is who I can be, this is who I am.
I mention it because I’m still doing it. With new stickers in hand, I cover my iPad. I place one on the front of The Paris Review, and I am as joyful as that seven year old scribbling of all that could be. Creating it with my own hands.
Is it girlish to keep dreaming? I hope so. Childish? – with any luck, ever! I want to find joy in everything that is, and hope in everything that could be — claiming it all by heart and by sticker.
“I meant no, but it came out yes.” — This was the first card in which my mother appeared. And then she began popping up with great frequency. “There are no operators standing by…” And of course, “I was so tired yesterday, I could hardly think — thank God I was at work.” Certainly the entire poem of “I saw the truth about you…” (because I did). And “Hit by a train…” (because she was). And she wore it like a badge of courage, a badge of grace. My greatest thrill was to watch her at an event, when someone would pick up a card, or print and say, “this is so me!” And she would clutch her imaginary pearls and say, “Well, actually…”
There’s only one way to the canvas or page, and that’s through my heart. Dominique stood in front of the portrait and said, “I feel like I know her…” And I had to smile, because surely he did, somehow. Certainly there are traces of all of his (now our) family, and friends, that pump through my veins. Love cannot unsee. And it can never stop growing, as it picks up the pieces of each other again and again.
Starting the new painting yesterday, I had to stop and smile, because I could see who was coming.
So if from time to time you see yourself here, then know that you too have been seen. You may clutch your pearls and say, “Well, actually… I have been loved.”
They aren’t that hard to spot, people who have been loved.
People who fear the supply of it, those hanging on for dear life, (hanging on for anything dear), these are the people that can’t let go. Of anything. And who could blame them really. Having not seen. Not felt. They dig fingertips into pad of thumb. To hang on? To feel anything?
It isn’t the absence of problems that let people love. The over abundance that encourages people to give. For me, it was always knowing my heart pockets were filled.
Needing the literal as a child, my mother would have me place my hand in my pocket. Whenever doubt or worry was creeping around, when fear or sadness hovered. Whatever I needed — hope, a dream, extra love — “just cup it in your hand,” passing it to me, what doubters would say was never there, what I say is still there.
This practice of painting birds, this daily ritual that has saved me throughout this last year, has kept my pocket full. Has allowed me to reach them back to you. I hope you can see it. Cup it. Pass it on. All this love. And then maybe, one day, we won’t stand out, we simply all will be loved.
I learned quickly on that you don’t tell a farmer, “I have nothing to do.”
We weren’t allowed to be bored on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. And truth be told, there really was no reason to be. Trees to climb and gardens to race. Barns to explore. Cows to annoy. Cupboards to climb into. Lazy Susans to spin. Party lines to listen in on. A balcony to jump off. An electric fence to dare. Flowers to make into dolls. Grass to stain knees. Gravel to collect in shoes. Stairs to count. Overalls to climb into. Dropped off for a summer day, my mother could leave me without prompts.
Writing my daily blog, I ignore the supplied suggestions. Why would I want to write what everyone else was writing? Live like everyone else was living?
Years ago I wrote, “It isn’t that something comes along and gives you a reason to get out of bed. You have to get out of bed and go find that reason, everyday.” It’s ever how I want to live.
I see my grandpa’s portrait on the wall in front of me as I write this. I smile and ready myself to race around today’s barn.
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.
Seeing the youthful paintings of Cezanne yesterday at the museum, I was reminded of the art of becoming. “Well, that doesn’t seem like him,” I thought, standing in front of a glossy-bright collage of color. Then I smiled, knowing that most of our travels to nearer ourselves, these roads are paved with exactly that.
It’s all in the framing, I suppose (pardon the pun). We can call it unseemly, or we can call it becoming. (I’m not sure how to have one without the other.) But didn’t we learn early on that “becoming” was a compliment? “Oh that’s so becoming on you!” And in hearing it, we’d clutch our imaginary pearls and will our hearts to keep on growing.
Looking through my own oeuvre, (entire body of work), oh, how my life has changed again and again. But it’s all me. From sketchbook to canvas. And I hope I allow myself the grace that I offer Cezanne — grace I hope to offer anyone — look at you becoming!
I’m not living in the country where I was born. Nor the “old country” that my grandparents frequently referenced. Of course they never called it by name, so I can’t be certain. Maybe farm tables knew. Or those that sat around them. (They absorbed so much.) And my young ears were eager to do the same. So I pressed my open face against all those tabled thoughts. Those directions. That knowledge of what was and what could be.
The wood whispered Uncle Wally’s stutter. Aunt Ellen’s worry. And captured some of my own thoughts, like why I didn’t call them “Great.” (I simply clumped them all into aunts and uncles.) Perhaps I was as unassuming as that table, soaking it all in too.
Like cracked wood I held on deeply. Suzan’s dream of becoming a movie star, or at least cleaning their pools. Cousin Chris wanting to be a Viking. The asthmatic breaths of Shawn and Pat. And would the weight of Aunt Kay’s husbands collapse the legs that I sturdied between my feet and beneath my head? And could I make it out the screen door, down the gravel driveway, past the fields, onto highways, into skies, all while the same?
Have they all become my “old country?” I wipe the lavender honey from our French breakfast table, being sure not to knock away the whispers.
Once she realized that “soon” was no more real than “a long time ago,” — that she could just be in it, this shouldered and weightless grace — there was no more worry of where it had flown, or if it would fly away, it just was…and she was… What a relief to be feathered this way. Not to be ready, but simply be, and know that it was ok.
She smiled at the slyness of this effortless grace, not asking for it to remain, (because certainly grace needed no request) but hoping that she could, that she would… Be.
