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.
I have always written straight from my heart, ever since Mrs. Bergstrom first began scattering the letters to us in my first grade classroom of Washington Elementary. I looked around at the others hunched over in their desks. Didn’t they see it? The gift that she was giving us??? I just couldn’t imagine my good fortune. She wasn’t just giving me a language, she was giving me my voice.
I began writing poems for my mother. Poems for baby dolls. I penciled them in my Big Chief notebook. I painted them on scraps of material. On my pants. As the need arose to go deeper, I found my brother’s wood burning kit hidden in the back of the garage. I plugged it in by the open door. The dust that had gathered began to smoke. I watched the trail of it go down the driveway, then I burned the words slowly into the plywood. I traced the words that said go deeper, still.
All of my suspicions were confirmed when I went to college. In my first creative writing class, I hinted at my heart. Did I dare? The paper came back with a response — “You can never be too personal.” All gates and garage doors to my heart were open wide.
I’m not saying that it’s always easy. Sometimes it’s terrifying to expose your heart. But that’s what courage means. The actual root comes from the Latin word meaning heart. To have courage meant to share the stories of your heart. The act of being vulnerable. This, by definition, is what it means to have courage. Somewhere along the line it got mixed up with wielding weapons, or soaring great heights. It became entangled with go higher, go faster, go further…when all it meant to say was go deeper.
I suppose it’s much bigger now, this classroom I wander, but still, I look around, wondering, “Do you see it? The gifts we have been given?”
We weren’t related, but they were older and nice, so it seemed natural to call them Grandma and Grandpa Dynda. And even though we didn’t share the same blood, there was an intimacy with these elders that anchored Van Dyke Road. Once you’ve run like the wind through your neighbor’s laundry on the line, I suppose there’s no turning back. You become a part of each other’s world.
Laundry day at the Dyndas was my version of the Douglas County Fair. I never liked carnival rides. All that spinning made me dizzy — lose my lunch kind of dizzy. But the wind I could ride. The white of sheets and t-shirts, house-dresses and towels, that flapped on Monday’s line in Dynda’s side yard waved to me. And my ticket was Grandma Dynda nodding from the open screen door. Her smiling hand wave said “go ahead, run through.” Arms above my head, I raced through the cleanest breezes in Alexandria, Minnesota. I thought if a hug could fly, this is what it would feel like. I danced and tumbled. It was all so fresh. This neighborhood. This laundry. This summer. This youth.
I walk past our neighbor’s laundry each day. Rain or shine, they have something on the line. I can’t get close enough to touch, for more reasons than just the gate. Time will take away many things. That’s just life. But I, we, can decide what remains. I stay connected to the world around me. I still believe that hope and possibility, even love, flaps fresh on the line — and permission signals from the screen door, “Go on! Run through!”
She was so popular. We used that word a lot in high school. I guess you can add it to the list of things we said and did without any real knowledge or permission. Even typing it now, I question the meaning. We said it like it was a good thing. Something to be desired. But why really? I looked up the definition. It gave a little of the what, but not much in the form of why or explanation.
I’m questioning it because I recently found out how little she thought she fit in. How could it be? She even wore the official uniform of fitting in each Friday night as she led the team in cheers.
I suppose we never really know. We can get so consumed with thinking of ourselves as the lone pear in a gathering of apples, that we forget we are in a constant rotation in position and place. And it’s funny, because it’s actually quite appealing. I can honestly say I like her so much more because of it, this one time pear. It’s what brings us together.
These differences that we’re so afraid of, so determined to hide or shake, they really are what connect us after all. Maybe if we just spent a little more time being grateful for even having a place at this glorious table, this life, we could all be a little more gentle with each other, even ourselves.
It happens every time we visit a museum or castle. The pristine grounds will be marked with “keep off the grass” signs (in multiple languages). With the large crowds navigating on sidewalks or paths, inevitably, there is always one person, grinning from ear to ear, certain they are the only person who was smart enough to get this camera perspective. So proud as they stand firm, unknowingly, next to the warning sign. Now I get it, sometimes the language barrier can be tricky, and I never blame children, but most of us possess the awareness to in fact “keep off the grass.”
The thing is, we learned it right from the start, didn’t we? I remember Mrs. Strand was the first — our kindergarten teacher. And even when Mrs. Podolski replaced her mid year so she could go have her twins, it continued — this identifying the child seated in the next desk as a “neighbor.” Papers were hung next to our neighbors’. Our cubby holes were kept clean out of respect for our neighbors’. We stood in line at the drinking fountain with our neighbors. Marched out calmly in fire drills. Went to lunch. Whispered in the library. Climbed through times tables. Always beside our neighbor.
Maybe I noticed it because I loved our house neighborhood on VanDyke Road. I loved the people. I loved knowing whose screen door was always open. Whose house wouldn’t mind an extra bike abandoned in the driveway. I even loved Mrs. Muzik’s yard with the pristine grass that we weren’t allowed to run through — because she, too, was our neighbor. And that meant something.
Today, we have the possibility to connect with more people around the world. And I am grateful for these connections. Truly. But I see how some communicate with each other. Trampling over each other. It shocks me still. I understand that things change. Washington School is filled with condos. They paved over the familiar gravel of VanDyke Road. But aren’t we still neighbors? I’d like to think so. I will go on thinking so, as I navigate the pristine.
I had already seen it several times, The Wizard of Oz. I had it almost memorized. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say it changed from black and white to color. We were about to leave my grandma’s house when it came on the large console tv set in the living room. Recognizing the music I ran in and plopped directly in front of the television. “Not too close,” my grandma urged. We were still of the belief that the screen could make you go blind. “We’re leaving anyway,” my mom said as she tapped on my shoulder, reminding me it was a school night. I knew it was a Sunday evening. All the good shows were on Sunday night. “I just want to watch a little…” I said, staying cross-legged on the floor. “It’s getting late,” my mom continued, purse in hand. “You know I’ve never really watched it before,” my grandma said. “Oh, look,” she continued, “it’s in black and white.” “She doesn’t even know,” I screamed to my mother. “We have to stay until it turns (I then whispered the rest behind my cupped hand) to color. Or else she’ll be afraid.” That is what sealed it for my mom — this not wanting anyone to be afraid. My grandma sat down in the recliner. I backed away from the tv and leaned against her legs. My mom put her purse down and sat on the organ bench. It was only a moment, I suppose, but a rare one, where three generations sat together, waiting for the change to come.
I mention it only because I’m afraid we’re losing it. These moments. The changes never stop, but we often forget to. Maybe it would be better if we faced them together. Leaned against one another, in the Sunday evening of all that is to come.
It was the most delightful combination of comfort and brand new.
I made a book of photographs for Dominique’s mother. Each visit we would go through the book, again, for the first time. Her short term memory collapsed upon itself within just a few minutes, but the long term — the love of her family — this recognition remained until the end. So we turned, page by page, holding.
Maybe it’s the heart that takes over, when the brain has had enough. The brain that has warned us, urged us. Shot the warning signs again and again. But thankfully the heart seems to win — turning the the brain’s fears of “remember when…” into the heart’s gathering of “aaaah, but remember when…”
They say memory is unreliable. I suppose if you’re using the brain, that’s true. So I write the stories from my heart, where they seem to be holding, strong. Each day turning the page, saying the “I love you’s” again, and for the first time.
She was sitting just a table away from the band. Was it a wedding? In between the ceremony and the dance? To see her sitting there at the table, my not-yet mother, early twenties, I know her. One eye on the other woman at the table. One ear on the music. Size tens slightly tapping under the table. Ready for the dance.
It wouldn’t have been “old time” dancing then. Just dancing. Surely there would have been a polka — I see the tuba. But she was good at the in betweens, my mother. Teaching me that what we had, was exactly enough. It was easy as a child to get caught up in the next of it all. Rushing through Halloween. Making a path with the candy to lead to Thanksgiving. Clear the table. Get the dishes done so we can decorate. Wrap the gifts. Shake the gifts. Unwrap them. Happy New Year! But she taught me to enjoy the middle.
We both loved to read, so she compared it all to a book. Those center pages, when you are so immersed in the story, you don’t want to stop reading, but you don’t want it to end. This was the glorious part of living. This is where I want to live. Still.
It’s still easy for me to get caught up in the what ifs and whens of it all, but then I look at the photo. And I sit in the moment just before the dance. Breathe in the music. I will be happy. Right here. Right now.
In Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class at Washington Elementary, there wasn’t a problem that sitting still couldn’t solve. If we were too hot, “Sit still,” she would say softly. Too excited. Too nervous. Too tired. Too anything. We solved it all by sitting quietly at our desks. In the saving grace of her whisper, we knew everything would be ok.
I listen for her voice, still, and still. Those calming words that told us not to run away from it, but just be in it. I think we often get afraid to feel. We want to fight it. Push it away. Outrun it on the playground. It’s a lesson I’m still learning. Even knowing it. Living it. Creating it on the canvas, I still have to keep learning. But she was right, Mrs. Strand. And when I allow myself to just feel it, calmly, trusting the words that my five year old self found to be true, it is then that I can breathe, recover and become. I can love, still, and again.
I sit in this morning whisper, and know everything will be ok.
It was only out of complete desperation that I ate the semi-sweet chocolate chips in the upper cupboard of our kitchen. We didn’t have a continuous stock of candy in our house like my grandma. I stockpiled from each holiday and saved a bit from the Ben Franklin run before the Saturday matinee, so I was able to keep a small stash for afterschool snacks. On the rare occasion that I ran out, I frantically searched the house. Checking first the milk glass candy dish in the living room, but it only contained what my friends called “grandma candy” – usually mints. (Which I never understood, because no one had better candy than my grandma.) Only one other option remained. I pulled the wooden dining chair in front of the corner cupboards. Climbed up. Standing on the orange formica, I spun the lazy susan to the baking goods. Found the chocolate chips. Prayed for the off chance that we also had butterscotch chips to mix with the semisweet. We rarely did. Sitting on the counter’s edge, I poured a handful of the dark chocolate, still hoping for something sweet.
I mention it only because I marvel at my youthful expectation. After countless climbs, it was always the same result — bittersweet — yet I remained ever hopeful. I suppose believers always believe.
I don’t know what today will bring, but there’s a part of me that wakes, ready to push the chair, make the climb, hoist my feet and heart, in search of something sweet. I still believe.
