When I first understood that my Grandma had a name other than Grandma, I thought it was O’Elsie. Because that’s what I always heard. From my Grandpa’s mouth, the ladies at the kitchen table, or the faceless voices on the party line. What I came to learn was that they were all saying, “Oh, Elsie…” And always as a term of endearment. When she would make them laugh out loud. When she touched them with her kindness. When she surprised them (especially my grandpa) with a rootbeer float or a basement full of chinchillas. And it came to be my measurement for living, this need combine with the heart’s emission of simply – Oh!
I don’t want to live timidly. And I’m not talking about shock. To shock is simple. To wow is devine. Oh, and wasn’t she so! My Grandma Elsie.
I hear the birds singing from the morning window and I think, “Oh, it’s going to be a lovely day.” And my heart smiles.
It’s not that I assumed the garage doors had the sense of the birds, but it is made evident whenever the wind blows. (I suppose that’s when the truth of us is revealed.) And, oh, they’re built solid, these blocks of wood and iron, but never a match against the wind. Every time – it’s BANG! BANG! They beat against the garage, thrown from side to side. Always fighting it. Always losing. But then the birds, in that same wind, barely more than air themselves, they seem to dance. Each wing flaps with lessons learned, and risen above.
I’m not proud of it, but I have done my share of banging. Trying to fight off the new storm with all of my wooden might. But I’m learning. And learning again. What used to blow through me, now gives me wings.
Perhaps I’m more careful now of where I lay my expectations, knowing that often the people who rise up to the occasion aren’t the most expected. Like a gift without pressure of holiday they gloriously appear, and lift you higher than you could have ever imagined.
When I was a young girl, I found so much help in the school system. Teachers offered aid and solace. Encouragement and discipline. It was a structure that I depended on. Solid. When I first arrived in France, I had to attend a mandatory French school. Around the table, desperations were as vast as the countries we came from. Of course I looked to the teacher as I had always done. It didn’t take long for me to learn of my mistake. She would not save me. Nor any of us. She made fun of each nationality, as if she had an offensive handbook. And when the insults weren’t understood with language, she used gestures that could not be ignored.
After three months, without common language or permission, we began to stumble into something close to humanity. We found out more about each other. After learning that I paint and write, it was our teacher who asked me to be the teacher. To bring in art, books, and give a demonstration, in French on my final day of school. I agreed. For if she taught me anything, it was where to place all my expectations — within. As I struggled with art and easels from the car to the classroom, it was the newest addition to our class, the man from Cambodia, who spoke neither English nor French, who picked up the heaviest of what I had, and walked beside me. I smiled, knowing that without my knowledge or expectation, I had been lifted. I had been saved.
It was the gym teacher at Central Junior High who put us through the rigorous exercises — making us into ducks she said. Somehow she saw the difference between our regular teenage faces and our confusion and explained that a duck looks calm and cool on the surface of the water, but is paddling like crazy underneath. Still no change in our faces. So what we want, she continued, is to work so hard now, paddle like crazy, so when we’re in the actual game it comes easily, looks so graceful and simple, because we did all the hard work. We nodded slightly, and waddled around the gym.
Now I can’t say we often carried the information of one class to another, but on this instance, 50 minutes later, in math class, it was Mr. Farley who said, “be sure to show your work.” I stared at the scribblings on the blackboard and thought, “so don’t be a duck.”
The middlings of junior high were terribly confusing. All these choices and transformations. I pondered as I walked beside Lake Agnes on the way home. And there they were, waddling along, as if they knew all the answers.
Yesterday in my bird sketchbook, I decided to paint a duck. I hesitated for a moment, going through another saying, “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck.” Brush in hand, I laughed because I thought, “Is it a bird though?” Oh, my ever paddling brain was in full view.
It’s hard to know when to show all the work. When to just be quiet and do the job. Of course I get confused. We all do. But sometimes I think, the real victory is just to stay afloat. I may not always get it right, please pardon my paddling, but this duck can swim!
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…”. Joan Didion
As humans, I suppose, we are always looking for the narrative, to lessen the blow or to heighten the lift. And didn’t we start at the beginning, in our first class under the name of our first president at Washington Elementary. One by one, we stood alongside Mrs. Strand’s desk and told all of the other 5 and 6 year olds what we did over the summer. These were not tales of trips to Europe, nor even flights across state lines, but rather heads hanging out of station wagons and under lake waters. Feet racing on dirt roads and pedaling bikes. Balls hit. Candy bars frozen. Popsicles melted. And sunsets dared awaiting mothers’ calls.
With each story, hands raised up with ooohs and aaahs of remembering the same, the similar. The excitement of stories melding connected us all. That’s why I keep writing. I keep painting. The thrill when your memories return to you in an oooooooh, and you share them with me, and then with another, is like no other. We are alive! Living in the word, in the story.
I flank my sketchbook with boy and girl, facing forward. Ever grateful for what has been. Ever hopeful of what is to come.
When my mother was going through the hardest time of her life, I noticed it was then that she would often skip to the last page of the book she was reading. I suppose I was too young to understand, understand this need to get control over something, anything. Amid all the chaos and uncertainty, she just needed to know an ending.
When I was a little older, when my mother read books completely in order, we were sitting at the table with my grandma. I asked her if it all seemed so fast. She smiled, and we all knew there would be no jumping to the end. We each had to finish this life book on our own.
I suppose there are moments in all of our lives when we want to skip ahead. But the only way out is through. Step by step. Page by page. I hold it at heart level, this book of mine, and keep reading. What a story!
My mother never came empty handed. Whether it was for a week’s visit, or a long afternoon, her arms were filled with toilet paper, paper towel, Kleenex, or something frosted from the bakery. It wasn’t that I couldn’t purchase it. It was just another form of connection. And when I poked my finger through the plastic to carry the rolls up the stairs to my apartment, along with her suitcase, I knew that she thought of me, not just here, not just at the events, but on Tuesday afternoons at Cub while picking up some essentials. And I felt loved.
We have a chalkboard in our French kitchen to remind us of those very things. I guess Laetitia saw it when she came for lunch that day. Toilet paper written in white. I walked her out to her car. She opened the trunk. Reached in. Pulled out a multi-pack of toilet paper. I would never refuse a visit from my mother. I held it, her, in my arms at the top of my heart’s stairs. And I am loved.
Certainly with nine children, countless grandchildren and a farm, my grandma’s days were filled with purpose. People needed to be fed. Dishes cleaned. Clothes washed. Apples needed to be picked, along with garden weeds. Fruit canned. And the listening was never ending, neighbors, Hortons, party line, Paul Harvey, and the farm report. But somehow, within the din of activity, if you sheepishly whispered that you wanted to place dice, or cards, she wiped her hands briskly on her apron, shoved the Publisher’s Clearing House magazines from the table and sat down to beat you at any requested game with a girlish giggle, because she said, “Some things are just for fun.”
Yesterday was a full day. Two appointments. Two cities. And the usual “Elsie like tasks.” By 5pm, there wasn’t a lot of time to create something of great detail, like a portrait, but there was a little time. Enough time. So I took the decision to take the time, and have a bit of fun. It was only a tiny bird. A tiny French bird. The stripes of its snug t-shirt stretching over an “Elsie” belly made me laugh. Because it’s still supposed to be fun. The noises can be overwhelming, but so can the joy. And it’s usually just a hand wipe away.
Before school started, when days were measured in the shaded pink of shoulders, or the sand in shoes, I was friends with the neighbor boy down the road. Armed with only curiosity and imagination, we could spend the length of our day on a dirt pile. He could climb a tree, and more importantly, wanted to. And ever left a leg hanging low for me to climb like a ladder to the nearest branch. (Still my definition of friendship.)
It was only for a few summers before he moved away. But the percentage of that time was nearly the whole of my life. Maybe summers will always seem that way. I hope so. To live in the season of growth, the season of “I wonder if we could fly from there,” is perhaps what carries all of us through the winter.
Sometimes I feel my age, and then I empty my socks and my shoes of the day’s collective rubble, and I think, I know, my heart’s summer will never end.
I just finished reading The School for Good Mothers,by Jessamine Chan. For the last twenty four hours I have been thinking about the characters. It is not an easy read by any means. And yet it lives on inside of me. Words create their own heartbeats, and even when the book is closed, thump, thump… a chicken with its head chopped off, still running. Still running.
We have this idea that everything has to be so comfortable. That life is a lounge chair for the heart. On that same farm, where chickens ran, my grandfather showed me how to lean into the discomfort by picking the rocks in the field to prepare for planting. Not glamorizing the dirt, nor fighting the weight of it all.
So I embrace the words and paint the image of the girl that remains in my head. My way of moving the rocks.
Most lessons do not come with cushions. But I know, as always, something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
