There were rare occasions when I saw adults cry. Gathered snuggly around my grandparent’s kitchen table. Perhaps to confine the news that came in the letter. Or the heartache of a loved one lost. To give it open space was to let it catch up to us in the summers of our youth. But sometimes, with the need for a Sugar Daddy, or a Slowpoke, I would sneak through the screen door and see it, them, dampened eyes and heads down, and my heart would sink. The ground seemed to shake beneath my bumper tennis shoes. I backed out the door.
It was my grandfather who caught up to me. Dazed and darkened under the largest tree near the road. He could see I didn’t want to be dazzled by false comfort. And he was never one to do it. “It’s like the Magpie,” he said. He was never much for small talk. He got right to the point. “What is?” I said. “The color. So black that it’s blue.” “I don’t get it.” He told me to get up. He led me back to the kitchen. Dishes had already begun clanking. There was the scent of coffee in the air. Chairs being pushed aside. Knees unbending. Even a few laughters of relief. Life. He looked down at me. “Blue,” he said. I smiled and nodded.
I have carried it for years. This knowledge, even when things are so black, they are also blue. You have to get up. You have to want to see it. But it’s always there.
I look out the morning window. He’s still right. I smile into the blue.
It turns out my mother is currently living under the assumed name of “animal prints” on TikTok. I know this to be true, because yesterday when I posted this video, she was the first to respond saying “I love that striped top. I need to be wearing it.” That is so my mother.
We had a shared language. From ruffles to stripes. One developed through years of shopping malls and our own closets. Playing dress up. Fashion show. The joy flowed like well draped fabric. And I understood completely. For her to say she was “scouring the catalogs for that blouse” after seeing a recent painting, was the best compliment she could give to me.
So how could I doubt that heaven has TikTok?
I suppose believers will always believe. And I do. And if you needed any more evidence, there’s this — while typing today’s post, I checked google to make sure I was spelling “scouring” correctly — here’s the sample definition that appeared — “I scoured the mall for a blue and white shirt, but couldn’t find it anywhere.” Feel free to say hello to my mother on TikTok.
She’s held this pose for over a week, my lovely tulip. Just like me, no one ever told her she wasn’t a dancer, and most likely (just like me) she wouldn’t have believed them if they had. And who could blame her? Donned in that lovely yellow. Gathered in and matched by the strength of the sun. How could she not keep reaching, moving, believing in all things morning as she opened each day. She did feel it! With each rising. From her very stem. And so she would dance.
A writer writes. A painter paints. A baker bakes. Not because someone pays them. Tells them that’s what they are. We decide. For ourselves. The same is true for happy. For love. You get to decide. You get to feel what you feel. No restrictions or limits. If the yellow calls to you, wakes you with a joy that not only can be, but must be, released back to the blue of the sky, then, dance, I say, simply, joyfully, rise up and dance.
Happy Easter! There’s nothing here we can’t rise above.
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 sent my friend the picture of this newest bird. Still fresh from my hands, she traveled across the globe to gather in the best compliment. Her reply was, “She’s a fancy bird. Very Ivy-like.” And my heart is still beaming.
I had promised my grandmother that on my best of days, my very best, they would see her, and they would see her daughter. And I don’t always get it right — even in my “best” attempts, but I keep trying. And when you call it out by name, call them out by name, it is all the love that shines.
And isn’t that the best we can do, wear the pearls that we were given? The pearls of wisdom and strength. Of laughter and joy. Of survival and grace and courage. When we give it all a name, we have a responsibility, to witness and uphold. To generate and pass along. And with that, those very pearls are given wings. And I feel the fancy flutter about and I think, I know, how very Ivy-like indeed.
After a very confusing day in the library at Washington Elementary, I went home for some much needed clarification from my mother. Hovering between fiction and non-fiction, I asked her if Grandma Dynda, (who lived two lots down on Van Dyke Road) was real. “She’s a real person, of course, but not your real grandma.” So is she fiction or non-fiction? Eyebrows up, and mouth partly open, the words didn’t come, so she just smiled at me. I think we both know we would spent much of our lives hovering in this magical place.
My brain would come to understand most of the difference, but it’s my heart that’s still bouncing around the in-between.
When we first got our cherry tree, and I was searching for a name, (because that’s what I do, name our trees and plants), something worthy and pure and sweet, I hopped the whitewash fence of Mark Twain and found Little Becky Thatcher. In bloom now in the spring of our front yard, she’s as real to me as any written word. As real as any love given two lots down.
It will be a race between us and the magpies when the cherries come. And I like not knowing. Being mid-page. Hovering daily in the smile of this magical place.
It’s not like I forget that I’m in France, but sometimes, I’m more reminded than others. Yesterday, sitting in on Dominique’s appointment, for a good five to ten minutes, I listened to him and his doctor talk about their extraordinary love of cheese. It was quite obvious I was no longer in Minnesota.
I suppose it was at that moment that the bird in my brain took flight.
If we’re lucky, we’re told quite often in our younger years that “you could be anything.” But maybe not so much with the “anywhere.” Perhaps that stems from the human fear of “others.” But I’ve never been sure why that’s so frightening. Because it’s only in the labeling of them being other that we in fact become one.
And as my bird fluttered above all things cheese, I thought, I really like butter. I wondered if they could hear the laughter in my head above the flapping.
Looking for a free page in my sketchbook, I came across the bird in flight that I had sketched in pencil. It could have been anyone’s dream, but it was hers. I don’t have to know her story, to celebrate the fact that she has a story. Be it butter or cheese, I just had to see her. See the hope disguised as the glint of light that reflects from the used-to-be tear. See the dream of flight not long perched on her beautiful head, soon to be mid-flap. And know that we belong. We. All.
“And if you did, see not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…”
She was not unlike most of the super powers that I watched on Saturday mornings. All were contained in the tightest of fashion. It’s why, I imagined they could move through the world so easily. And so it was with Mrs. Bergstrom. She stood in front of our first grade class at Washington Elementary. No loose ends. Her hair slicked back in a perfect bun. Her black pencil skirt smoothed without wrinkle, making it impossible to see where the chalkboard ended and her waist began. That’s how all the words got in, I thought. This seamless transition. And wasn’t that her superpower, all those words that she spelled out, sounded out, drew out. I wanted some of that power. Just to stand in all that “super” for even a moment. I leaned forward in my desk. Pulled up my neck. Straightened my back. Reached one leg behind the chair to make myself into the straightest line. To create a path for all that knowledge she was passing our way.
It’s easy to let a day go by. To let the passage of time slouch us over. To drape in the fray of worry and get caught in every dark moment. But that wasn’t how we were taught. Not how I was taught. So I wipe the chalk from my hands and smooth them down my skirt and I stand. I stand tall. “Gather it in,” my heart tells my brain — be taut — despair can only slide down, slide off. And it occurs to me how similar the words are. This taut and taught. And it straightens me. Lifts me. Letting go the fray, I Bergstrom to the front of the morning.
I still go to the mall with my mother. I don’t suppose we ever stop living with the ones we love. It’s only a matter of opening my closet door. Passing my hand along the draping of sleeves — each allowed the space to breathe as she taught me. We exchange silent ensemble ideas. I settle on the one where she clutches her imaginary pearls with more than approval. Pure excitement! And I am complete.
When it’s time to paint, I return the clothes to their rightful spaces and put on my splattered hoodie and pants, as if it were Sunday morning after sitting in my six year old’s white dress on a folding chair near the kitchen at Bethesda Lutheran. Smoothing out the drape with gloved hands long before and after Easter. Feeling to my very core the meaning of “good clothes.”
I read recently that memories are the handrail of the stairs we continue to navigate. So it’s no surprise as I made my ascent in yesterday’s sketchbook, that the ruffles appeared on the woman’s portrait. White ruffles. My mother’s favorite. And didn’t they suit her. So. I hear her saying, “Ooh, I need to find that blouse.” And I smile. Heart strong, I grab the rail and climb. Forever making ruffles.
