Before Herberger’s anchored the mall, it reigned supreme on Broadway. A perfect Saturday was riding shotgun in the Chevy Impala with my mother. I twirled the quarter in my sweaty palm. (No time would be wasted loading the parking meter.) Through the double glass doors, even the gumball machines were not a distraction. I walked, almost skipping, looking back to hurry her along. I reached the grand staircase first. She nodded me to go ahead. I waved, passing the women at the office on the left, then turned to go up the second flight. The fluorescent lights shown brightly over the racks at my height. I was lured to the girls’ dresses along the wall. I can’t explain why, but the clothing in my size even smelled sweeter.
I can’t say how long it lasted, but there was a time when I thought the reward was not to own the dress, but simply to try it on. To play fashion show behind the curtains, in front of the three-way mirrors, was what I longed for while desked at school on a Wednesday.
Holding the painting in my hand, creating the young girl who dreams of wearing the yellow dress, I am in France, but also on Broadway.
What happens next, may be hard to believe, but it is true. I was nearly finished with the painting. I could sense movement from my iPad that sat on the easel keeping time. I stopped and watched the photo app open, flashing through several pictures, then stopping on my mother. My heart caught in mid smile. Some magic is real. Somehow, some way, she had made it up the stairs before me, waiting in the sweet smell of just what I needed, of just my size. And I was saved.
If my mother resembled my grandfather, it was mostly in the length of their strides. My first memories were three to one, counting mine as I raced behind them. I marveled at their strength and purposeful speed. But it wasn’t an angry pace, I could tell by the loose swinging of arms, feeling that same joy as my own danced around my waist.
It’s a blur of how I went from three to two, to matching their strides completely. I can still feel the thrill of reaching out to that hand that swung back. Did it rest a little longer? Did I reach a littler farther? Didn’t all time stop as I clasped my sweaty palm into the certainty of love followed? Somehow I knew, it was also mine to carry. A joyful duty of continuing love’s long stride.
It’s funny how I had focused so on their feet, when it was their hands all along. The reaching out, the reaching back, the reaching out again. The sun is coming up. My heart tells my arms to swing.
I remember watching America’s Next Top Model (Yes, I did. Don’t judge me.) There was one specific moment that stuck with me all of these years. The host Tyra Banks, became frustrated with this certain model. Of course she was a beautiful woman, but she was coming off “dead” in the photographs. Tyra pleaded with her, “Think of something! Anything!”
While it makes me laugh, there is so much truth behind it. We are at our most beautiful when we show who we are.
The paintings I love the most, that I consider the most successful, are those that evoke a feeling. The story that comes to life when you view it. The story that you then share back to me. This exchange brings life to the painting, but most importantly, to all of us.
I don’t know what the day will bring. It could be something! It could be anything! Isn’t that beautiful?
Some days it took as little as wearing an LBD to feel like a superhero. While some may write this off as shallow, I say it is the brilliant understanding of your own power. Finding it wherever you can.
It’s no mistake that my mother found it in her lipstick. I continued her evangelism in a book and on my face. Going to the Sephora here in France yesterday, I asked for assistance, and while she helped me in French, we both knew we were speaking the same language — The mother tongue. And it being one of those days, many applications were required.
In full make-up and my apron (a nod, I suppose, to both my mother and grandmother), I went to the studio to paint. Completing this study in oils, the last thing was to give her clothing. I had already supplied her with the rouge, but just to be sure, I painted a little black dress. And in saving her, I more than saved myself.
It’s ironic, I suppose, that in my daily efforts to absorb the French culture, I can often appear (although you wouldn’t know it to look at me) somewhat German. They have a saying, “nah am Wasser gebaut sein,” which literally means “to be built close to the water.” It describes someone who cries easily, gets teary-eyed quickly, or is very sensitive. Even with all of my grandmother’s “Swede,” I, being born in the land of 10,000 lakes of Minnesota, clearly resemble that remark, both literally and figuratively. I like having the words for it now, even in German.
I was never afraid of the water, neither wave nor tear. My mother saw to that. She drove me to swimming lessons in the dead of winter at the community indoor pool. And she dried my long blonde hair afterwards, somewhat frozen waiting only briefly for her in the parking lot. And just as important, she taught me the strength of being able to show my emotions. Tears of tenderness she called them. Never weakness. So much strength. Even joy. She saw me through the winters of all living.
I’m proud of where I “was built.” No matter where I am, it is where I will be, close to the tender water.
This was not my grandfather’s field. Hugo didn’t wear the assurance of overalls. We weren’t supposed to cut across his field to get to our house, even though it would save a good five to ten minutes. And coming from the fairgrounds, it was a straight shot. Still dizzy from the last spin on the tilt-a-whirl, and a little bit of sick on my t-shirt, I hadn’t the strength nor the will to go around. I stepped into the stalks. With tassels reaching over my pony tail, I relied on my feet and not my eyes. Less sure and more hot with each step, I began to slow down and question each decision made that day. Experience had taught me not to go on the rides, but with only a series of “c’mon”s I boarded. As I stomped through the dirt, it was this that bothered me the most. Even more than throwing up in public, I hadn’t the strength to say no. Which led me here, in the middle of a field that I promised the last time not to cut through, and yet, when my heart asked my feet to go the long way, they refused. And now here we were again. Sick.
I don’t know how long I stood. It was most confusing, I suppose, because there seemed to only be one answer. Not the normal conflict of good and evil argued between shoulders. No. Not good and evil. Only two farmers speaking in my ears. Hugo and my grandfather. Both telling me to go back. Go around. Oh, my feet had a few things to say, but still I turned. When I got to the road near the cemetery in front of the fairgrounds, I saw her. Cindy. Not my best Cindy, but the third one I knew from our school. Had she been one of the c’mons? I wasn’t sure. She waved and ran towards me. Reached out her hand. “You dropped this,” she said. The plastic wagon wheel key chain that I had won at the ring toss, just before I tossed my belly on the tilt-a-whirl. It was worth maybe pennies. But the fact that she walked in the heated summer sun to find me, being not even my best Cindy, this was priceless. She asked if I was ok, never mentioning my shirt. We hugged like the schoolgirls we were. I joyfully walked around.
I didn’t paint them at the same time. Nor did I even think they belonged together, that is, until I randomly placed her portrait next to the bird already on the shelf. Now I can’t imagine them apart. She, in need of being lifted, and the bird, so ready to take flight. I don’t know anymore if everything is random, or nothing is random, (or if there is even a difference), but for some reason, I’ve always believed that we are given the tools needed.
My first book of real significance was The Little China Pig. My mother gave it to me when I was six years old in the hospital. They wouldn’t let her stay overnight with me. This seemed impossible to survive. I couldn’t be that little china pig, alone on the shelf. Waiting. But we read it again, and again. All afternoon. Heart pounding, every time we reached that last page, the little china pig was found by the boy and taken home. Safe. Loved. You will never be left alone on that shelf, she assured me. She would be back in the morning. There when I opened my eyes. I had everything I needed.
Research on living arrangements (such as dorms or housing blocks) and group pairings (like NASA astronaut assignments) shows that people frequently become friends simply because they are placed near one another. My mother and I were friends. We were astronauts (fashion astronauts). Even in different countries, we were shelved, together. Still.
Sometimes it takes just a simple placing to remind me. Even through the seemingly impossible, I open my eyes, and I have everything I need.
It was such a contrast. My grandma’s kitchen table had legs that stuck out beyond the range of feet passing. Having only one other kitchen table so far in my short life, it’s funny how quickly I adapted to the thought that all would be the same — an easy pass. Clinging to the assumption, I repeatedly tripped on her table.
It didn’t seem to bother her, nor my grandpa. I had yet to learn of “the grand scheme” of things, as they often said, explaining away how simple table legs didn’t really matter. At first I scowled. Then I marveled. And I wanted to do the same. I wanted to get past the table legs to the joys of the kitchen. To the Kellogg’s cereal variety packs. To the Lazy Susan filled with Sugar Babies, Daddies and Black Cows. Did I still trip? Sometimes. Sometimes not. I suppose I began to let it go. And as I let it go, I imagined the struggle releasing as puffs of cartoon smoke, floating above my head, and finally disappearing into what I could only explain as the grand scheme.
To display one of my newer paintings, I had to put up an old easel. Not my favorite. Its spindly legs need to extend out quite far in order to balance. (Some days I resemble that more than others.) Tripping on it, as I often do, I simply adjust the painting that has been slightly rattled, smile, and release my “cartoon puff” and go back to painting.
I said, “I know.” But I didn’t know. I wonder why I thought that knowing would dull the information given. As if this claiming to almost be in on it, would make it hurt less.
“The house sold,” my mom said. Not “we sold the house,” like we were a part of the decision making. Like we wanted to leave the comfort of Van Dyke Road and move to a small apartment in town. “I know,” I said, after nearly falling from my bike when I saw the real estate sign in the yard. That cold metal sign with the big “sold” sticker placed across, almost like a smile, like it was laughing at us…so I said I know, not because I did, but simply not to give that smiling vacate notice any more power than it already had.
With the last boxes packed, she said, “It’s going to be ok…good…you can decorate your room.” “I know,” I said. (Neither of us did.)
But the defense of this “I know” gradually turned into reality. A certainty of trusting in each other’s heart. It was no longer for the metal sign, but for us. And with each other, there were so many things that we did know, mostly love, some tears shared, but soon laughter, and the joy of really being anywhere together.
I walk by her picture now. Photographs. Paintings. I can hear her say, “I’m still here.” I smile and whisper, “I know.” (And I do.)
My mother and grandmother knew the difference. What most considered as shy they understood as being quiet. When the teachers would report, “She’s very shy, my mother would say, “She’s just not loud.”
Maybe it was because there were so many of us at my grandma’s house. It didn’t seem possible to get on top of the noise, so I went under. With a whisper. And my grandmother responded, not with a voice, but a gentle thumb that slid across my rouge cheeks, and I was saved.
It was the same in my mother’s apartment. Worry was not met with a bang. A poem rang volumes over the din of trouble. And quietly we moved, tip-toed gently, into heart’s joyful noise.
In our current world, where we exchange volume for truth, can we still hear the difference between right and wrong? Between hurt and kindness? I wonder what would happen if we just took the time to listen…
