Before any sketching. Any building of canvas or panel. Before even touching a brush, I have begun the painting.
Currently three are circling. Traversing the ribs from heart to brain. Laying a path that says, remember me, remember this.
I suppose I’ve always been laying that path. Trying to prepare myself for the unpreparable. Maybe we all do. And the saints and poets smile, knowing we can never really be prepared. We can only live.
And with all my thinking and plotting, the paintings will come to life when they choose. How they choose. I will follow the strokes and within them, inside of them, we all will find the breath to see it through. And by through, I don’t mean finished. Oh, sure, I will stop painting, but when hung, and seen, again and again, new life will come from new eyes. Even my own.
Maybe it’s true about love. Maybe that’s all I ever write about. Paint upon. This love. I’m smiling now too. Unprepared, but ready to live this day.
My favorite underpants are proudly tagged with the notion that if you buy three pairs you will save a significant amount of money. I have yet to find three in my size, in one location at the same time, but I love them, so I buy them one at a time, ever hopeful.
Maybe it’s because I love the smooth fit. Or the way they stay on while wearing a summer dress (like if you suddenly have to burst into a run at an airport — if you know you know). Or the undeniable comfort it gives me, just after a wash, having a full drawer of clean underpants. Whatever the reason, I find myself patient with my underpants. And whether or not they can give it to me in a batch of three, I will love them. Would that I were so patient with everything and everyone, even myself.
I know that patience is a virtue. I also know the furious speed at which I have tried to get through things. I suppose there are a million ways to learn it. And I’ve tried close that many. And as unconventional as it may be, today I’m going to try the underpants method. Surely, if I can travel from Target to Target, bundle, head down, bracing the cold, the wind, find a clerk, ask for the brand, thumb through countless pairs, sliding the wrongly placed items along the rack, with little success, then yes, certainly I could be a little more patient with myself. With others. And if nothing else, it does make me smile. Laugh even. And in “a moment of grin” is always a good place to catch yourself.
I have no ownership of it. Still, I feel connected to the Mississippi River. Living in Minneapolis all those years, we got to know each other. Understand each other. The secrets and concerns I told over bridge rails. It promising not to erase them, but carry them down. Easing worry and weight. Turning flounder into flow.
I’d like to think I thanked it, this river, for carrying my precious cargo, but I’m not sure I did. Not well enough. Perhaps it is the way with all those we love. We get used to them sharing the weight beside us. Expect it. Rely on it.
My mother was alive the last time I stood on the banks of the river between Louisiana and Mississippi. Yesterday evening in the setting sun, she still was. The love had been carried, just as promised. Ever flowing.
Some might explain it away, saying it was only the moon…but when I looked up in the sky, there was the smile. My mother’s smile. Telling me she knew. She always knew. I smiled back. The river blushed, telling me the same.
It was the first thing we always checked — the lighting in the bathroom. Whether hotel or apartment, this was the most important thing, my mother taught me. After all, she explained, a lady had to get her face on in the proper light. And she always did. I watched her do it. Even on her darkest days, she began each morning in the bathroom light. Transferring it to her face. Going to work with a heavy heart, and a well-lit smile. In my younger years, I imagined the corners of her mouth attached like pulleys, lifting her heart into that same light. Just typing it now, mine did the same.
When traveling to different art shows across the United States, I would call her when arriving, and the first thing she would ask was “How is the lighting?” I only just realized, maybe it had always been code for “how is your heart?”
Even in the last apartment she lived in, we checked it first. She used her walker to get into the light. It was perfect, she said. She had already decided. Maybe this is what I loved about her the most — this decision to find the light. To become it. Smile by heart.
She could get her face on in here, she said. She filled the adjacent cupboard with the finest make-up. Moisturizers. Creams. She put them on each morning. Her lip-lined corners once again pulling up her heart.
Missing her now, I’m asked to do the same. And I do. Morning by morning. Smile by smile. My heart gets lifted. Into the light.
We never had a big rainy season in autumn. We often moved from summer to a short, but spectacular wave of reds, oranges and yellows in the trees. Sometimes it seemed that the anxious snow was daring the leaves to fall so it could follow suit. So a foggy, rainy day seemed rather special to me.
I stood by the mailboxes across from the end of our driveway, just at the top of the hill. Blanketed in white. Not warm. Not cold. Just hovering. First I saw the lights. Then the golden yellow of the school bus as it released its air brakes. Although the bus driver/law enforcement tech school student didn’t seem surprised that I stepped out of the low hanging cloud, I still felt dreamy. I plopped down immediately in the front seat by the door so I could get the best view. I knew it would be the most foggy at the bottom of the hill. At Norton’s. I wanted to be the first to see which one of the five girls would appear like magic out of the white. I guessed by height, as I could only make out a silhouette. Was it Shari? Or Lynn? I could see the movement of long hair. I went with Shari. The brakes gasped. The door opened. And she stepped out of the dream. Wet hair flinging. It was Shari. I refrained from clapping, but I smiled out loud.
When I stepped outside to open the morning shutters, I could feel the air around me. It took me a minute. My first thought was I hope it doesn’t rain. I made my way around the house. By the time I reached the front door I could feel it. “It was dreamy, wasn’t it?” my heart asked my brain. “Yes,” I said, stepping out of the fog, and into my smile.
