It isn’t that I have to make the bread…I get to. It’s just a simple change of one word. A rich exchange that stripes my shirt and hands over the flour. That gives me wings, not to leave the ground (that will all come when the work has been done) but to roll the pin. The turning of drudgery into joy.
Who would I be without the work? Without the baking of bread? The gathering of words and paint. The constant craving of input and output. This exchange we’re making, with the world of AI, I fear, is not a rich one.
Every story of my grandparents is covered in dirt and flour. A marching out to field. An apron dusted. A coat hung with the weight of earth and earthly demand. Each shoe tracking the same. And if the living lies in the work, then so to the loving — the richest exchange of all.
Easy has never meant full. I remind myself on the hard days. Tuck the rolling pin beneath my wing. Flight will come soon enough. Merci.
I’m not sure where it comes from. I suppose it has to be lived. Seen. Maybe it was my grandfather walking out to the field. My mother standing in front of the morning mirror. But I always felt it. This hope. It’s why, I suppose, a rainy day never stopped me from riding my banana seat bike to the summer youth ball field. Soaked and hooded, I arrived in my navy blue windbreaker. It was right in the name, being for the wind, I don’t why I imagined it would stop the rain. And who needed protection from the wind?
With no alerts available, no cell phones, or internet, I sat in the empty dugout. The navy sleeves stuck to my skin like another layer, still full of hope that the rain would stop, the others would show, and we would play. I don’t know how long I would sit. Because of course, I didn’t own a watch either. I was saving for one from Bazooka Joe comics, but I had spent my wad on a plastic camera that I accidentally rode over with my own bicycle, so timeless, I waited.
The rain eventually stopped. It’s ironic, I suppose, I stood outside the dugout hoping the very wind that I was to be protected from, would dry my jacket. I rode as fast as I could. No energy wasted from running bases, I imagined I rode faster than I ever had. My sleeves billowed. Puffing and drying. And when I had pedaled all the wet away up and down Broadway, I made my way past the railroad tracks and went home.
When my mother arrived home after work, she asked me as she did on every game day, not if I won, but if I had fun. Yes, I said, I had fun!
Had I picked up the bow instead of the painting brush, as Mr. Iverson suggested in my fifth grade music class, I suppose my life could have been different. One of those “Sliding Door” moments? I’m not sure. Maybe. But it seems, even on the most wayward of paths, I have always found a way, a way to me.
Out of the hundreds of decisions I make daily — this turn, that step, saying the thing, not saying it, I can stumble for hours. But before that stumble turns into a complete fumbling of sorts, I gather myself in, and go to the place where my heart can rest and my mind can wander. I guess that’s home. And haven’t I always known? From crayon to canvas, without the words to claim it, I have practiced the self care. Scribbling the Burnt Sienna of my heart, inside and outside the lines in the coloring books my mother gladly purchased from the bottom shelf of Olson’s Super Market. (And how graciously she helped me find my path, while still searching for her own.)
We can go over each decision. Play the what if game. But it’s hard to fool the heart — the core of our being, our earth. Perhaps the bow I didn’t pick up was meant for you. And it’s your music I hear as I wander the heart of my Sienna.
I never would have imagined from the floor of the supermarket, that I would be painting in the south of France. But here I am, a long way from, and always home.
They hovered on the wall at the museum just a few kilometers from our home. Somewhere between art and fashion. And in the three pieces I could see myself, my mom and my friend. Bloused from within, I walked out in the comfort, the beauty, the style, the glorious art of friendship.
And I suppose, that’s what it is, love, friendship, this ability to see yourself with someone. I wrote once, “I really like who I am with you.”
“I really like who I am with you…
I hope that doesn’t sound bad to say…
I mean it more as a compliment to you, more of a “thank you” really.
You free me to be this person who laughs and
cries and feels and enjoys and loves.
What a relief to be myself,
without performing, or worrying…
just being and becoming who I am…
That’s some gift…
I hope I’m returning it…
because you know what,
I really like who you are with me.”
It’s the opening of my “friend” book. And it wasn’t lost on me, as I stood in front of the three art pieces, there in black and white, that my book was as well. And maybe it can be that simple, a good hang, a good friendship, to simply like each other, to tell each other, often, it’s great to be your friend.
There was no turkey, nor stuffing. Certainly nothing pumpkin, but I was thankful. My friends brought napkins from Minnesota on their most recent visit. They didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me at all that they would go perfectly with my French plates. These little pieces of paper, barely more than air, had, have, the gravity to tumble into my heart, and fill it.
Before we were allowed to stir, or guard a heated pan, we were expected to set the table. I suppose it was years of practice, of placing knives and forks (silverware that wasn’t silver) and glasses (that weren’t really glass at all, but colored metal), before I realized that bringing some things to the table, was actually, what “I brought to the table.” Grandma Elsie knew that being a part of something was to participate. Gifts, however small, were gifts.
When my stepdaughter came to dinner, she, being in need of nothing but the magic of time spent together, was welcomed with a Minnesota napkin on our French table. (A Minnesota nice.) A gift of love passed from home to home to home.
In a world of so much “haves”, I often wonder what I have to bring to the table. Then I paint a portrait. Offer the love that I have been given since my arms had to reach over my head to set a plate. A waft of Elsie smiling from a far away kitchen kisses my cheek. And I am home.
You could tell Grandma Elsie was a social being, by the amount of wrinkles on her apron — all those gathered in left a mark.
I used to think it meant only a bad thing – this leaving of a mark. I heard it on the playground daily. Falling off a monkey bar. Being pushed onto the cement. Scratched, pinched, horse-bit and sometimes with teeth. (We ran wild at Washington Elementary.) It’s funny we didn’t even mention the tears that ran down pinkened cheeks.
I was shy as shy could be back then. I didn’t speak without a broad opening. I suppose that’s what grandma laps are for. And in the softened safety of her welcoming apron, I let it all out. What I thought. What I worried. What I dreamed of and hoped for. And by the time I reached what I long imagined I had climbed and twisted and twirled in her flowery folds. Entangled, she looked at her apron, and said, “That’s going to leave a mark.”
Mrs. Bergstrom surely had the patience of a saint. She wrote the words on the black board in a slow and strong cursive that, if you hung on to the chalk-ed endtails, it could carry you from seat to sentence to story. The chorus of the “sounding out” rang above our heads as she tried to reel us all in. With chalk pointing and pronunciations mouthed and exasperation released by hands smoothing out her pencil skirt and her perfectly bunned hair, she urged us, willed us, into being taught.
I thought of her yesterday, on hands and knees as I struggled to stretch the new canvas. Pulling with one hand. Willing with brain. Begging with heart. Stapling with the other hand. How hard I tried to make it taut. And I thanked her again. Not just for the letters. The words. The storytelling. But the patience. The work itself. The joy she would have felt in the comparison — the strength in being taught, the strength in being taut.
Tight as a drum, my new canvas awaits. I don’t know the subject yet, but I know it will come. I have the patience to wait. I have Mrs. Bergstrom to thank for that.
I could print it here for you, a poem that I’ve recently discovered, but that wouldn’t be the same. I know this, because I grew up walking to the library, not holding it in my hand. And what a glorious lesson this was — having my whole body in search of the information. Feet trudging to get hands winging through card catalogs. Eyes searching. Arms carrying loads. Books spread on tables. Thumbs thumbing. Pencils scratching notes. Reading again. Scratching again. Re-reading. Hoping. Willing the information from toe to head.
And when the test came, (they always come), what a thrill it was to walk the answer through each step and write it down on the challenge of blank paper. Every inch of your being smiling with delight, knowing “I helped.”
As you wander today through “the ruthless furnace of this world,” I encourage you to be “stubborn” enough to “delight” in the search of this marvelous poem. Read it. Trace it with your fingertips and feel the wonder.
I know it’s just a googling of the quoted lines, but still, when it pops on your screen, when your hands type and your eyes wander, maybe you’ll feel the joy, the delight, of a library trudged, knowledge gained, and a heart expanded.
There is a moment after finishing a painting when my heart sits as empty as the easel. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, but I seem to have to learn the lesson again and again.
And it’s not an abandoning. I will still have a relationship with the painting finished. It will just be a new connection. No longer of the “going through,” but the “how far we’ve come.” A new beauty stirs inside and shifts the ending to a beginning.
I was so nervous, my first job after college. Caught in the ending of school and the beginning of work, I really had no idea which way to move. It was Ron Miller, over the intercom, that set me free. When a situation arose in his department, he always used the intercom to call for help. He never referred to it as a problem. Loud and clear, he summoned aid by saying, “We’ve got an opportunity!”
Ron Miller passed on this year. As it turns out, he lives on through my apron in the south of France. Hanging on my empty easel, I hear him calling, “We’ve got an opportunity.” And so it begins.
One of the best compliments I’ve received lately was from a woman who said, while looking at the paintings, “I’ve seen the photos, but these feel alive.” That is the true success of a painting, I think. When the love you breathe in travels from heart to hand and lands gently onto the canvas, it continues to breathe, to welcome, to live.
She used to crawl all over me, with an urgent need to be picked up. It didn’t seem to matter how. Within my arms, clutched in elbows. Balancing on top of my feet that pushed her toward the sky, almost into flight. And then one day, without my knowledge or permission, she passed me in height, but the need to be lifted remains. Now, I simply do it with a brush.
Each canvas marks a bit of time. Serving as reminders that even though time keeps passing, love never does. Never will. Love remains.
She asked me how long I’ve been living in France. I showed her the living timeline. I do not fear the passing of time. Love keeps lifting. (I am, however, going to need more paint.)
