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?
I was just scaling the edge of my teens when my grandfather died. Too big to be carried, too small not to want to be. Of course I had seen them before. The processions after the funeral. But I can’t say I gave them any thought. No emotion anyway. Maybe we can’t, until we’ve sat in the line, the slow line that travels at the speed of grief. Each block a memory. Each intersection another line on his overalls, pinstriping the years, like colonies on the flag. My brain could only rewind the chorus from Amazing Grace. Perhaps because it was the last thing I heard, or the thing I wanted the most.
I’d like to think I thought about empathy. About how this changed everything. I’d like to think I made plans for patience in the future — patience when paused at the green light because grief was passing. Patience to know that we are all part of the procession. It is happening to all of us. I’m not sure I did. I think I do more. I hope I do more.
I try to remind myself. One of his portraits is the first thing I see in the morning. And even out of uniform. Even free from the furrows, he is leaning in. And I think I have to do the same.
It doesn’t matter how many times I see it. It always fills me. The Gold Medal Flour. The Guthrie. The Stone Arch Bridge. Anything downtown Minneapolis. Maybe it’s the case for any place you begin, but here, I will always keep beginning.
I never baked bread before moving to France. Flour was merely the golden sign that lit a Minneapolis summer night. Bare shouldered in the warmth of evening, nothing could tire us. Nature’s season of laugher (and youth’s season as well) we could go all night. It’s funny, so many years later, I can still feel it. Not throughout my whole body, but in my heart’s mill, where I keep such pressure things.
Waking this morning after the long flight back home, from home, it’s always a little disorienting. Neither time, nor yesterday seem real. But I make sense of it, mixing flour and yeast, water and salt. Fueled by the sweet light of what was and what will be. Nothing lost. All grist for the mill. Dough rising. And a new day begins.
In my daily quest to swim away my summer days, I never thought of the green lillied lakes as beautiful. How easily I would have furrowed my brow and crinkled my nose, labeled it as a swamp, and pedaled with fury to a clearer body of water. I’d like to think I gave thanks for the abundance of lakes — that when blessed without weed or worry, I stopped crawl stroking long enough, even for just a moment, to simply marvel. Filled with it now, from green to blue, I struggle to explain to my French family and friends. I say Minneapolis, and they hear Indianapolis, and they say racing, and I say no, but racing on my bicycle to the any one of the 10,000, and they can’t imagine even 10, so I name two, Latoka and L’homme Dieu, and they say I’m saying it wrong (my own lake, imagine that), and they’re right actually, but I can’t say it like that, not after this many pedals, and they say but look the sea is so big, and I say there was romance in the small and we realize we are comparing gratitude, and have to laugh, because we’re old enough now to stop spinning and simply marvel.
They renamed (or gave it back its original name) one of my favorites. Lake Calhoun is now officially Bde Maka Ska. When I first heard of it, I’m not proud that I heart stumbled. Did I crinkle my nose. I hope not, but I can’t be sure. I don’t now. The water. The blue. The sun dance upon. It’s all there. Still abundant. And the runners run. And the bikers bike. And the swimmers swim. I see the thanks in it all. And it is marvel-ous!
Visiting new museums, one can often suffer fatigue from the pressure to see it all and document it. Overwhelmed and under pressure to put yourself in front of all the masterpieces, capturing every photo and all of the proof.
But yesterday was different. I can feel myself exhale, just in the typing now. I have been to the Minneapolis Institute of Art countless times. I know where to park. Where the bathrooms are. The steps to the Impressionists. And it can still make my heart jimbly in the most delightful way, without all the pressure. I can wander France in front of the Cezanne. Laugh in front of the painting that my friend’s husband says looks like the two of us, though neither of us thinks the same. I circle the portrait room and imagine one of mine just beside the Alice Neel or the Andrew Wyeth. I view the skyline. Levitate through the shop. Never a photo taken. The gift is, I don’t have to prove that I’ve been here, I just get to be.
I suppose that’s home, isn’t it? Where your heart can rest, and your mind can wander. Thank you, Minneapolis. We’ll be back.
All of my friends that lived there have moved away. I haven’t experienced the North Loop life for a long time, but you couldn’t tell that to my gerbil heart, or my jimbly tummy. Driving into the familiar, no time had passed. Everything was still possible. We always thought “it might happen” here on these streets of Minneapolis. And oh, what might we found in that “might…” What joyful strength!
From the Mitre Box to the Mississippi, the Grain Belt to the Guthrie, I was lifted. And the excitement could only be matched by the comfort. I suppose Glenda had it right, “you’ve always had the power within you.” To say it is the same with people, with cities, is to say that it is love. Sometimes we just need a little nudge, to tap into the feeling. To access it — all that joyful strength. Driving past the bowling alley, I made a quick u-turn and parked in front to get my nudge. It’s not just any bowling alley, it’s Elsie’s. Elsie’s of Minneapolis. When two great loves collide, how can you be anything but lifted!
I know, I know…we always carry it from within…but a little lift now again is always welcome. So when it is offered, on streets or memory, take it! Embrace it! Wrap yourself in all that might!
But for the scheduled softball games twice a week, in the summertime in Alexandria, Minnesota, no one was ever waiting for me. But it never stopped me from going. I had no destination. Certainly no plan. And yet, the basket on my banana seat bike was packed high with hopes, a thermos of water, a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup which I would have no way of opening, two quarters — in case I stopped in at Rexall Drug for a frozen Milky Way bar, a Golden Book, and one stuffed animal.
I didn’t have the word for it then, nor did I have the need for one, but I was wandering. Never thinking of the limitations of my travel. A mile from home was new in every direction. And who even knew if it was a mile or not. I didn’t measure my journey in distance, but flowers and four leaf clovers. Screen doors and unrelated grandmas welcoming me in. Rocks in shoes and grass stains on knees were better than souvenirs, they were proof of a day well spent.
As we travel now, of course we have to think of things like gas mileage and flight times, but the best moments really have very little movement at all. Mostly at the waist, when we are laughing we friends, struggling to catch our breath within the waves of joy. You can’t plan that, only experience. Stumble into it. Wander about.
So if you ask what is our plan, I will tell you, I’m filling the basket, leaving room for four leaf clovers.
Living in France, I hear it all the time, “Oh, that doesn’t translate…” Knowing how that makes me feel, I try not to use anything similar, for example – “If you know, you know…”
When she handed me the Dayton’s bag, I was knee-buckling happy. Dominique looked confused when I asked him to take my photo with it. “I need to send it to my friends!” “Will they know what Daytons is?” I laughed out loud. Of course they would know. IYKYK! But I couldn’t leave it with that. I can’t leave it with that. Dayton’s deserves the translation.
I’m reminded of the song, To Sir with Love, as she sang, “How do you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume? It isn’t easy, but I’ll try.” And I did grow up there. Right beside my mom. And not just “up.” I grew in confidence. In wonder. In joy. And so did she. We applied the make-up at the counter and found our smiles. We dressed in curtain flung rooms and felt worthy of life beyond the three-way mirror. We Cinderella-ed our feet in the shoe department, and stood tall. We received the compliments easily, and bounced them onward.
We knew the workers by name. Pauline was the first to take us into the Oval Room, like we belonged. We believed her. And so we did.
Dayton’s saw us through broken hearts. Broken bones. Birthdays. Holidays. Wounded egos. Proms and weddings. Job interviews and first dates. Frozen Sunday afternoons. And sweltering suns. Always constant. Always bright. So how do you thank someone for that? The only way I know is to tell the story. Keep it alive. Translate the words, and feelings, again and again.
I placed the bag on my heart-wearing sleeve, and stepped out into the sun. The feeling was pure joy – OHIHYK! (Oh, how I hope you know!)
I bought a Bat Girl t-shirt at Ragstock yesterday. I like to give myself super powers. Wearing my sunglasses, I summon my best Anna Wintour. My gloves, Ava Gardner. I know it’s all internal, but I like to give it a name. Maybe we all do.
We went to Down in the Valley, the record store near Ragstock. It felt like a Time Machine. I thumbed through stacks, just like I did when there was nothing but time stretched far ahead of us. When we bought full albums at full price. Played it on the stereo. Lying heads beside giant speakers, feeling each note, each lyric as if it were written just for us. Wondering if our lives were soundtrack worthy. Willing to believe they were, and would be ever.
My husband bought two Kris Kristoffersons. One for himself. One for his best friend from those days of lyrics and promise. I watched the man behind the counter place youth’s super power in the bag and hand it to Dominique.
The afternoon sun bounced off of Highway 55 and we drove, each a little lighter, armed with nothing shy of super.
Standing inside the Mill City Museum, you can see the Guthrie Theatre from the window, reflecting the history of all those who worked the mill, and never saw a play.
I learned more about the history of the Minneapolis flour mill in that ten minute Flour Tower ride, than I had bothered to learn in the decades I lived here. Oh sure, I had taken the photos, but never really the time. Hearing the voices of those who worked there — those who dared the danger of the whipping wide-open belts, those who never really got the white dust from their clothing or lungs, those who thought maybe, just maybe, if they could work long enough to climb the ladder to get to $25 a week pay, that they would live like kings, but never did — the history, the story, came to life. And it became so clear, that there would be no Guthrie theatre — a place that I did get to learn, to see, to love — without the people who created this city, day by day, hour by hour, milling it to life.
I suppose that’s why I tell you of my grandparents, my mother, my teachers. There will be no tour to visit, to learn, so I write. I show you their reflections as you look into my daily world. And you see them, in each word, in each stroke of paint. They are the ones that milled my world to life. Gave me the opportunity to do what I do, do what I love. A history that will never be erased from my hands. Nor my heart. Their love, a continuous grist for my life’s mill.
