Instead of lamenting over the hole-worn draped in my grandma’s sink, my mother started bringing her own dishrag when visiting the farm for a meal. Being the oldest and most responsible (and she’d throw in prettiest just to get herself from the table to the sink), my mother was always cleaning up, as easily as she wiped away my grandma’s words of “oh, just leave it…” (Like that would ever be possible.)
And she didn’t mind. She was good at it. But a proper dishrag…please. Let’s be serious, she wasn’t going to finger-wash what soaked before her. It was obvious that complaining wasn’t going to work. My grandma would just shrug and smile. Not because she didn’t care, but really, she just didn’t care. So my mother began bringing her own. Her beautiful dishrag that she purchased at the mall. And not in the discount section. Full price she paid, both to Herberger’s and everyone at Independent School District #206. Happy to do both. To give it all for something that mattered. Mattered to her, and maybe only her, but that was more than enough. Because hadn’t she earned it? Hadn’t she risen from Jefferson Street after little hope and less sleep, to will herself into a full heart, after someone she knew, she thought she knew, said, “I’m just leaving it, you.”
Giving our kitchen a proper cleaning yesterday (and I mean I paid full price, from the floor to the walls to the counters and burners) I finished by hanging a new towel sink side. No more walking and dripping across the floor to the rack on the wall. It was romantic. And maybe I felt pretty. Oh, my full and possible heart, I will never leave it.
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.
Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.
Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.
People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.
It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.
I can reach it through the tree line when I’m mowing the lawn, this portal to my childhood years. Pushing up, pulling back and pushing up again, I saw it — the outline, the invitation, of a small chair. I idled the lawnmower to peek through the leaves. There was a tiny table. Two abandoned plastic cups from the most recent party. One of the attendees, a small stuffed bear, obviously warn out from the festivities, was taking a nap in the shade of the table. Without unhandling the mower, my heart maneuvered through the thistled brush, and I, in my white flowered dress from my sixth birthday, sidled up to the table. Everyone came. All of my dolls and stuffed animals. My mom with her extra-frosting cake sat beside me. We clinked tiny cups of water disguised as tea and we spoke in the language of Alice, and danced behind the looking glass. Fueled by youth and love and the belief in all things possible, I finished cutting the grass.
I bake her cookies, the little neighbor girl. In exchange, I suppose, unknowingly perhaps, she keeps the door open.
I recently learned that when birds sleep in a row, the two on the outer edges keep one eye open to protect and allow those on the inside to fall asleep. It doesn’t surprise me, I have rested within that protective watch.
There is a big scientific name for it, which I’ve already forgotten, this act of being able to keep “one eye open” while being in a half sleep — we’ve always just called that “pulling an Elsie.” She had to have been doing the same thing — birding her way through every card and dice game played on her kitchen table. Able to sleep while we pondered over our next move, then waking at the exact moment to handily beat us with chirping joy! And I saw her do it everywhere. In the funeral home where she phone-sat. At the grocery store check-out line (she did indeed check out). Even once in the car. But I was never worried. The speed at which she could belly-jiggle herself awake allowed all of us to rest, to play, to run in a carefree summer, to sleep soundly under her watch.
I suppose you could just rule it all as nature. But I know not everyone was blessed with a Grandma Elsie. So I give thanks. And make my way to the outer edges.
You can’t tell me that they’re always trying to get somewhere. Most of the time, it looks like they’re playing in the wind. Dancing even. These birds so elegantly bouncing and bounding above. And why wouldn’t they dance, they already have the song.
She never wore a tutu, nor spandex dresses, but oh how my mother could dance. She would teach me on the carpet of the living room floor. It was slower. But when I had mastered the steps, she’d lead me to the kitchen floor, and I barely felt my stockinged feet touch the linoleum. She’d sing along to the boombox, pull me in and spin me out and I knew I was flying. I asked her if she had dance instructors? No, she said. In school? I asked. No. Did grandma teach you. She laughed (sure it was a bit of a dance maneuvering through all those people in the farm kitchen), but no. Then how did you know you could dance? I asked. I could always hear the song, she said, and pulled me in once again.
And wasn’t that belief? Wasn’t that the true art of living? Just listening for the music. Trusting your feet would follow. Believing, one way or another, you were going to fly!
To be so filled with life that it has to flush from your very pores. Cheeks ruddy and ever ready. I suppose we all think it will last forever — sure that our feet will keep the deal that youth has made. But maybe it’s the heart that takes over. (Or maybe it led all along.) Maybe it’s the heart that drags us from spring’s mud into summer’s bliss. Maybe it’s the heart that races through grass’s morning dew again and again, and lifts us up from green knees when we fall, ever promising to keep our cheeks flushed through autumn. Through winter.
Every time I paint a face, I feel the colors in my own, flowing through my hands. And the corners of my mouth rise up, smiling, so happy to be a part of youth’s reddening still.
What will you do today, to remain in the race of summer?
Yesterday I made both bread and cookies, so it’s not surprising that my daily sketch had her hands in the dough. My floured fingers were reminding my heart that it could always be a good day.
I guess that’s how I gauge them. For me they are good days, successful, as long as I do just that — “have my hands in the dough.” If I am in the attempt, covered in paint, or flour, or sweat, trying to make something, learn something, become something, then I’m ok.
And it’s usually the heart that gets most of the credit, and often well deserved. Follow your heart they say. Let your heart lead you. That’s always good advice. But I don’t want to forget the hands. The work. Sometimes the heart needs a little rest from all the heavy lifting. And sometimes, it’s the hands they say I’ve got this. I’ve got you, palms up.
I heard something recently. It was more about the tools you have in the garage, but it seems applicable — “Use what you have to get what you want.” And what I had yesterday, I had my hands. And the day was passed with effort and joy — exactly what I wanted.
And the beauty is, it’s nothing I have to wish for, I just have to do it. Every day. Put my “hands in the dough.”
The Christmas carcass became yesterday’s soup. Aproned and worry-free, I Grandma Elsied my way through the process. Adding everything. Measuring nothing. And it was delicious. Steeped with holiday and attention, it tasted rich and full, but for me, the added pleasure, satisfaction, joy, came with nothing being wasted.
I try to practice it — this making use. A scrap of metal turned into a frame. Discarded wood into panels. Yesterday’s still fresh oil paint into tomorrow’s tableau. And to me it’s all important, but I hope I pay the same attention to living. Using everything I have. Every speck of courage, because we’ll get more tomorrow. Loving with every piece of my heart, knowing it means nothing left inside. And perhaps it’s not as easy as pot to stove, but I was taught to attempt in Elsie’s kitchen. To abandon worry and just create.
She’s smiling over my soup bowls, but more over, my heart. Telling me daily to give it all, and just become.
It might surprise you to know that the best croissant we’ve ever had, was not in Aix en Provence, nor Paris, but San Francisco. We congratulated them. French butter, they said. It was perfection. Nothing added. No cookies or chocolate stuffed in the middle. No pistachio cream. Just a simple butter croissant. When things are done well, no additions are required.
And isn’t it the same with living? The best that we can offer is often without flare or fanfare. An open door. A seat at the table. An understanding that doesn’t require explanation, only a place, a presence.
We all know people who are struggling. Sometimes I think we imagine that we have to offer an answer. A solution. Most people really only want to know that you care — they want to taste the richness of your simple French butter — to step into the warmth of your heart’s kitchen, and simply sit down.
