Working between two screens, sometimes my cursor gets stuck in the opposite one that I want. (Like my brain doesn’t do that all the time.)
It’s so easy to think, “Well, I always did it this way…” Whether I’m talking about different countries, different languages, loves, relationships, even my hairdresser. And I catch myself swiping madly on the wrong screen.
Change is never easy. Neither growth. But both are so necessary. And it doesn’t mean you have to give up everything in the letting go, the moving on…You keep the lightest of things, like joy and hope and love — none of these will ever weigh you down.
Too often I’m unaware. It’s barely more than air, the little birdie that tells me things. But when I’m paying attention, really paying attention, all the truths that move between who I am and who I want to be, chirp seamlessly between my heart and my brain, and I am saved.
Even when I scrub it, there is proof that it is used, loved, every morning. The handle knows my palm. I open and tap out yesterday’s grounds through the kitchen window to fertilize Trini Lopez — the wintering lemon tree. I know how much water to add by the sound. The coffee is sprinkled gently by heart, along with the scrambled reciting of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, (often forgetting his last name, but always remembering “coffee spoons.”) I twist on the top and place it on the stove. The gas click click clicks in perfect rhythm and my morning’s measure is complete.
It’s never just coffee. Nor the rising sun. It’s the accounting of love’s measure. No matter the night. This morning will be measured beginning with my coffee pot. Life will offer you all kinds of starts. Recalling “what he said,” or “what she did,” or “how I should have,” or “when will I,”…. And I can easily get caught up in them all, until I realize I need an empty hand to pick up the handle that holds the coffee that starts my day, and I let everything else go. And so it begins….
I suppose we all gravitate toward the accessible… which makes me think, are we paying enough attention to being that. Being welcoming. A gentle place to land.
I mention it, sitting it beside my pocket series book of Lunch Poems, by Frank O’Hara. What could be less threatening than lunch?
My grandma used the term all the time. It could be 10am, or noon, 2pm or 4, and though she framed it as a question, she was never really asking when she said, “Should we have a little lunch?” That could mean anything from a root beer float, to a sandwich, to a bag of toasted marshmallows while shopping at Jerry’s Jack and Jill. (How could it be shoplifting if we were just having a little lunch?)
Who doesn’t love a soft place to land? A welcoming of kindness. That was my Grandma Elsie. Nothing, no one was shooed away. Even before dishes were cleared from noontime’s feeding, a neighbor would stop by and be offered a plate of coloches or, as luck would have it, lunch sticks. She was, and is still, my swinging door.
My mother’s table was filled less with food, and more with books. She opened me to pages and poetry. She made them “lunch poems” decades before I had even heard the term.
How different they were in their offerings, my mother and grandmother. But how similar they were in letting you in. Each, with the best of what they had said, “Come in, you and your heart sit down.”
These words I offer daily. These paintings. For you, the lunch I was taught to share.
When they asked Muhammad Ali to give them a poem, he offered up two words. “Me. We.” Just two simple words. But oh, how much they said. ‘Me We’ is a poem about one man’s transition from one to the many, singularity to plurality, and selfishness to altruism.
It’s a reminder to me, how little it actually takes. To make someone’s day. To let them know they are not alone. To give them hope. A smile. It’s a small space from me to we, easily traveled, if we simply remember to take the step.
When I think of my best moments. They’ve always been with someone. It makes me wonder, does anything really happen unless we share it? I’m not sure. I’m not willing to take the chance.
I remember early on, speaking to a group of young school children. I was humbled that they knew the answers to their own questions. After a reading, one student asked why I didn’t use any names, just he, she, they… Without missing a beat a little girl raised her hand and said, “Because it could be anyone.” I’m still smiling. The answer remains the same, this movement from singularity to plurality. We can all do it, take the path, from Me to We.
“I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
I had been living in the poem, long before I had even heard of Robert Frost. I had never been one to blend. Even the love of poetry itself seemed somewhere off the beaten path. But all the treasures I have found have never been by pushing my way through a crowd.
Yesterday, as folks made their way to lake and fair, we went to the museum. I started my grin when we parked with ease. Then a full blown smile as we walked through the entrance. The halls were empty. We talked about paintings in our normal voices without struggle. Walked right up to our favorites. Took photos without obstruction. I could only giggle, as it seemed to be open just for us.
I can’t waste time worrying that it probably will never happen again, because it did happen. And that’s more than enough.
I bought a pencil in the gift shop. Gift shop pencils always seem to work better for me. I think the wood absorbs all the creations of what was and flows into my creations of what will be. I suppose the same is true for love and life. The halls of the day are wide open. I can only giggle.
Every year the month of July writes a poem that can only be read from my upstairs bathroom window. My breath — that leaps from heart to smile — gives thanks to my brain for not memorizing, but allowing it to be a surprise each time.
Certainly there are other trees in the area, we live in the south of France after all. Paintings and poems are bursting into view as I walk my daily route. But this one feels just for us. Our little private firework popping in rhyme. I, we, don’t strain our necks to look past the blooming white tree beneath the pink. The hedge blocks the view from foot and car. Framed perfectly by the window sill, it knows we will come. And it waits. And when I hear it speak in rose, I don’t dismay the temporary, but give thanks for it. If it were ever, if I heard the words again and again throughout the year, would I be breathless? Maybe not. So I give thanks for the gift of July. The passing moment. The brief and beautiful poem outside my window.
Before I had finished the page in my sketchbook, it had become an Emily Dickinson poem. “In the name of the Bee,” — a poem that had been passed around between my mother, my ninth grade English teacher, my friend David, two books on my shelf, and the path that I walk daily.
It was another Emily who asked,
“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”
– Thornton Wilder, “Our Town”
Wanting to get to “some,” and realizing my limits for sainthood, I try to walk in the poem each day.
I said once, on the days that I can’t create something beautiful, at least give me the wisdom to see it. Yesterday was busied with a trip to Marseille. We had an appointment at the Hopital Conception. We were greeted at the entry with a poster of Rimbaud, the French poet. While others sat in the waiting room. I sat in the poetry. I looked around to see if others were held in the syntax, hoping, wishing, they could feel my Emily within their Rimbaud. That maybe we could all live together in the magic of the word, maybe not “every, every minute,” but for this moment, the magic of this collective poem.
Walking after rain, I am reminded of the Sylvia Plath poem, Mushrooms. I find the strength of these “nudgers and shovers” miraculous. When I see the dirt they have pushed through, pushed beyond, stand above, I think, surely, I too, could make it through this day.
As she describes them with “soft fists,” how could I not think of my mother? It was my grandfather who first brought it to my attention. I was only a child when he described the two daughters that looked most like him — my mother, and my aunt Kay. Both had suffered losses. Deep in the ground losses. But, as he explained, survived in their own ways. Fists were needed, but my mother chose soft. My aunt Kay, hard. He told me one day, before I was even ready, I would have to choose as well.
I suppose not even nature knows exactly when the rain is going to come. We’re not always ready before we’re asked to grow. My grandfather knew he couldn’t save me from hurt in this world. No one escapes. But what he could do, was lay out the choices. Make them clear. Give me a head start. I chose the path of my mother. And that, as another poem would tell me, has made all the difference.
Reminders are everywhere. In the poems. On the path. My mother was strong, but not without grace. So small I sat beside her. So tall, I walk with her even still. It is the morning now, again, so I rise. And I did indeed “inherit the earth.”
Mushrooms
Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly
Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding,
Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water, On crumbs of shadow, Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing. So many of us! So many of us!
We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door.
Sylvia Plath
Something will grow from all this…and it will be me.
It’s only Tuesday morning and I have already underestimated two significant projects this week. This unknowing plays a significant part in me actually getting things done.
I worked for nearly the whole day on our “catch-all’ closet, releasing a majority of the things that really didn’t need to be caught. I arranged plastic folders and papers. I went through all the Christmas decorations, taking out such items as broken ornaments, the BB gun targets, the grip strength tool and the sombrero. (I never would have imagined that the one thing my French husband and my Minnesota grandma had in common was the inability to throw out the closet sombrero.) I broke down and recycled the random boxes that seemed so useful while opening the gifts. I rearranged and dusted and vacuumed. Several hours and two full garbage bins later, the closet was clean. Voilà, as we say.
Fueled by the momentum, and a head full of “how hard could that be?”, I decided to paint my bathroom yesterday. By the time I finished cleaning, scrubbing and dusting, I was already tired, but there was no turning back. Were the ceilings always this high? With a ladder and extension rollers, and a brush I taped to some sort of pole I found next to the pool cue and hockey stick collection in the garage, I stretched and reached and sweated my way through coat one. Muscled my way through thoughts of, ironically, “what was I thinking!” Then struggled my way through coat two.
I love the results of both projects. I mention it only to remind myself of the real lesson here. I have been guilty through the years of praying for answers. Oh, how desperately we want to know the answers. When really, the thing that so often gets me through is just this blind, adorable, audacious hope. So I remind myself, again, and for the first time, this “unknowing” that you’re so afraid of, let it go…look around and begin…my heart whispering in both ears, “How hard could it be?”
It was the heaviest book I bought in college — The Riverside Shakespeare. Weighing in at about 6 pounds, it would have been a lot to carry across campus for any English major, but for me, who spent the majority of my college years slinged and on crutches, it was extraordinary. Yet, I loaded it, joyfully, in my backpack, and hopped on one foot from M5, our fifth floor walk-up dorm apartment, across the quad to the humanities building, sometimes over ice and snow. I never fell. You could argue that the weight of the 2000 pages kept me stable, glued to the ground, but I will tell you it was most probably the strength of the words that held me. Still do.
When moving to France, I let go of most possessions. And it wasn’t that hard. Furniture and shoes. Clothing and decorations. Dishes and beds. Table and tv. Trading it all in for love was an easy decision. I kept personal items. Paintings mostly, and a few books. It might surprise you, that this heaviest of books made the trip. Shakespeare rests on my shelf. Do I love the book? Yes. Do I love the words, the poems, the plays? Of course. But maybe most of all, I know that you can’t let go of what got you here — what held you, carried you, gave you strength. I suppose that’s why I have this heaviest of books beside me still. It’s why I write of my mother, my grandparents, my teachers and friends. I know what brought me here. What keeps me upright to this very day.
Walking yesterday, I was listening to a podcast of Dame Judi Dench. She rattled off the words written by Shakespeare, and they lifted me over rock and trail. The announcer was so surprised that she still had all of these words at the ready. I wasn’t. The heart takes on the carry, and allows the journey, still.
