Running feral as I did, from sun up to sun down, on the equally untamed gravel of Van Dyke Road, it’s counterintuitive, (and yet true), to believe that I never wanted to get dirty. Of course dust gathered on my once-only-white gym socks, creating a permanent outline of my bumper tennis shoes. This was unavoidable. But I mean really dirty, purposefully dirty, like when the Norton girl added more water to yesterday’s rain soaked garden and scooped the mud by hand into discarded EasyBake oven tins scattered in their back yard. “The horror!” I exclaimed to my mother, “Mud pies!” She, being ever crisp in her white blouses, understood completely, as she tried to rub out the wayward splatters on my shorts and t-shirt.
I still find a way to run wild, mostly on canvas now. I have specific clothes just for that. Yesterday, in the studio, K.D. Lang was singing along with each stroke. It wasn’t lost on me that I noticed the brown oil on my sleeve as she sang, “Wash, wash me clean. Mend my wounded seams.” And isn’t that what love does? Accepts us. Gathers us, in all of our commonalities, all of our discrepancies, washes us clean.Maybe this is what allows me to dare the palette. To navigate this beautiful mess we’re in.
She left them in my care. Her most crisp and white. It’s healing for me. Tending, wearing, my mother’s blouses. It mends my wounded seam, and keeps her near, through wayward splatters.
She’ll be surprised when she sees her portrait. She’s doesn’t know it, but she’s wearing one of my mom’s blouses. I think she looks pretty in it — though she would back up a little, shrug her shoulders and shake her head at such a compliment. I remember the first time I told her she looked beautiful in her ensemble and she nearly backed herself into the garage door. It’s not really the culture here, to be so fast and loose with the compliments. And I don’t want to make people uncomfortable, but I do want them to know how good it feels, these words of admiration. My mother gave them to me, and they carry me still. How could I not pass them along? So I put her in my mom’s blouse on this canvas, hoping maybe she could feel it, maybe the words would gather in the slight ruffles around her face and heart. Surely the flow of such gentle fabric would cotton to her being, and she would know that it wasn’t just a compliment, it was the gift I have of greatest value — a welcome into my family, my heart. And if she felt that, my sister-in-law, within all of my ruffled and flawed attempts, she would have to feel good, and possibly even pretty, and the discomfort would fade the next time I saw her wearing a dress fresh from the line, and I told her “You look so lovely in that color.” And maybe we’ll all be smiling, just like my mother wanted.
We weren’t related, but they were older and nice, so it seemed natural to call them Grandma and Grandpa Dynda. And even though we didn’t share the same blood, there was an intimacy with these elders that anchored Van Dyke Road. Once you’ve run like the wind through your neighbor’s laundry on the line, I suppose there’s no turning back. You become a part of each other’s world.
Laundry day at the Dyndas was my version of the Douglas County Fair. I never liked carnival rides. All that spinning made me dizzy — lose my lunch kind of dizzy. But the wind I could ride. The white of sheets and t-shirts, house-dresses and towels, that flapped on Monday’s line in Dynda’s side yard waved to me. And my ticket was Grandma Dynda nodding from the open screen door. Her smiling hand wave said “go ahead, run through.” Arms above my head, I raced through the cleanest breezes in Alexandria, Minnesota. I thought if a hug could fly, this is what it would feel like. I danced and tumbled. It was all so fresh. This neighborhood. This laundry. This summer. This youth.
I walk past our neighbor’s laundry each day. Rain or shine, they have something on the line. I can’t get close enough to touch, for more reasons than just the gate. Time will take away many things. That’s just life. But I, we, can decide what remains. I stay connected to the world around me. I still believe that hope and possibility, even love, flaps fresh on the line — and permission signals from the screen door, “Go on! Run through!”
