I’m currently reading Theo of Golden. It wasn’t long in when I realized I had seen the main character before — the elderly man with the gray hair, kind eyes, and green flat cap. I opened my sketchbook. There he was. Now with every word of the book, I can see his face. That’s the magic of not just reading, but living in the word.
I suppose we’d call that empathy. Maybe that’s what books are for. To give us the practice for real life. Oh, it comes so easily with the turning of the pages. How we can immerse ourselves into their lives. Really see them. Experience the journey. And if it’s a pleasure to do by the book, shouldn’t it be so face to face. Certainly everyone in literature is an other, ones that we can fascinate. Why do we fear them in real life? I wonder if we imagined their stories, gave them faces, what our world would, could become.
I think it’s worth the practice. So I dive in deeply. Gently. Amid the stories. Amid my own. And maybe we see each other a little more clearly. And we become…
We will never meet the owners of the VRBO we are staying at, but I think I like them, because of the birds. They are throughout the apartment. On plants. On the walls. A feather above the nightstand. Even a book beside, “Better living through birding.” Maybe it’s because I, too, love birds. To hear them sing on my walks. To paint them. Again and again to be feathered with a stroke of a brush. To give them a bit of my own song, my own words, knowing that no one can share it with a more widespread and gentle touch as they do.
Perhaps it’s even, “whatever you did for one of the least of these….”
I am at fault as anyone. As guilty as anyone. I can lose my patience. Become ungentle. And I don’t like it. So I paint them birds to tell you that I know better. That I can do better. And if you can see the love in that, in all those flutters, then, then I think, as I pull my shy and daring head from beneath my wing, I think we will soar.
I open the book beside me. There is a quote on the first page, and reading it, I know that I, we, were meant to be here. It reads — “I believe the best way to begin reconnecting humanity’s heart, mind, and soul to nature is for us to share our individual stories” — J. Drew Lanham, from The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.
I sit at the kitchen table of these birding people. I do like them. I, we, are nesting.
Getting to know each other, she asked me what books I had written. It was my publisher who had referred me to this hair stylist. As I listed them off, she said, twice, “Oh, I have that book!” Both delighted, we began to wander freely in each other’s story. I knew my hair was safe in her hands.
At any book event that my mom attended, people would say, “Oh, this is so me,” or “You must have written this about me,” or “It’s me!!!” — to which my mom would reply, “Actually it’s about me!” We would all laugh, knowing that everyone was actually right.
We all want to be seen. We need it to survive. There is the ineffective shortcut of shock, that so many want to rush into, but this is not sustainable, nor fulfilling. No, we need to be seen joyfully, gently, heartfully. With empathy and wonder. Kindness. Slowly.
I saw them on display as I made the coffee this morning at my friend’s house. My cups. My story. Resting next to the Lefse recipe of her mother — her story. I suppose that’s what friendship is, the combining of our stories. Newly coiffed and caffeined, I smile out the window, ready to write a new page. Will you join me?
I don’t know when it changed — the moment we dropped the word story and just started calling them books. A part of me wants to bring it back.
The story books were in the basement of the Alexandria Public Library. Maybe it was because we didn’t know how to use the card catalog yet, but so many were on display, not by spine, but full cover. I can still see the bright blue cover of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It was still above my reading grade, and sat perched on the very top shelf. I thought if I finished all the books on the lower shelves, read each and every story, worked my way upwards, that I too could fly.
My mom dropped me off every Saturday morning. I climbed up the outer steps, then climbed down the inside ones. I read for hours. Just before my mom picked me up, I checked out as many books as my orange book bag would hold, and the librarian would allow. She never complained about having to come in and get me. Most of my friends from school sat outside waiting for their rides. Running around in the grass, soon and easily fed up with the quiet words of the basement. But not me. I wanted every moment. And my mother, being an avid reader, understood. She parked the car behind the Ben Franklin store and walked over to get me.
I wasn’t thinking about it when I wrote the book Bird Song. Covered in the same blue, it is a collection of stories (a story book) told by the beautiful wings that carry them. But of course it lives within me. The days at the public library. Each word read. Each shelf climbed. I know they brought me to this place. They lifted me. Dared me. And faster than any childhood Saturday morning, I learned to fly.
The stories we create are not weights, but branches. Out on the morning limb, I heart gather all the words – of mother and love and youth and chance and choice and story — I spread my wings, and I fly.
I suppose one of the reasons I loved her the most was because she never tried to explain away the magic.
The first time I descended the stairs to my grandparents’ basement, I’ll admit I was a bit nervous. It was dark — even with the light on. Each step had a voice. My 5 year old imagination ran wild. But about halfway down, it started to smell familiar. Books, I thought. It smells just like the library. I raced the remaining steps. Wet, overworked overalls hung by the furnace.This was the army, I thought, that helped my grandfather in the fields. This one sized army, that was just his size alone. This pinstriped gathering of strength. These dampened blues and browns hung thick with the words that told his story. I ran my fingers across each page.
I wasn’t surprised to see my mother waiting at the top of the stairs. She was always the first to gather me in. Listen to me. To take whatever I had experienced and make it real. “It smells just like the library,” I said. “Pockets and pockets and pockets of stories! That’s where he keeps them, isn’t it?” “Yes,” she smiled. She always smiled, and I was home.
She could have explained that the smell was merely the dampness of the paper, the material, perhaps even mold under the collective weight of age and use. But she didn’t. She never would. Some of my older cousins would try — LaWanna said I was a baby, with baby thoughts. But not my mom. She never took the magic away. Maybe that’s why I still have it. Still believe in it. Still carry it. By the pocketful!
Returning from my walk yesterday I hit the button on the remote to open our gate. Nothing. I hit it again. Still nothing. I thought the battery died. I punched in the code on the backup panel. Nothing. I did take one split second to look around, as this had happened once before in my life.
It was on Jefferson Street. My mom and I lived in the white condos. There were three sets of four. Identical. We lived in the middle. A friend was dropping me off at night. In my defense, we were laughing, and I wasn’t paying attention. I got out of the car. Opened the door. Walked up the steps quietly, to not wake my mother, or Agnes who lived below us. I tried to turn the handle. She locked the door? She never locked the door. I had no key. (Of course there were no cell phones in these days.) I was about to knock when I saw a huge plant in the corner of the stairwell. “Did Agnes put out a…” My brain kicked into gear. Wait. Was this the right building? I stepped back into the driveway. I was in the first building. It was a little late to sneak, but I tiptoed to our driveway, and slipped into bed.
I went in those doors a million times, but this was the only instance we talked about. Laughed about. Exaggerated the outcome. What if someone had woken up? The ending changed again and again. The gift of imperfection!
Standing outside of our gate, I thought certainly I hadn’t made the same mistake again. After all, our houses here don’t even look the same. My friend texted me at that moment. She was having a stressful day. I told her I was locked out of my own house. We laughed. She said it sounded like a blog in the making. I called my husband. The electricity was off to install a water heater. He brought a ladder. I climbed up the gate. Pulled the ladder over. And climbed back down.
When we retell this story in years to come, it will be the day that Dominique helped me break into our own house.
My life is connected with a series of joyful imperfections. There would be no story if the path was always clear. If the doors were always open.
Our Wi-Fi is currently shut off because our provider had the wrong address on our account. They changed the address but took that as a “move” and shut off our service. It won’t be re-installed for days. I’m using the data from my cell phone to power my iPad to write today’s blog — once again being asked to hike up my skirt and climb over life’s gate!
I was reminded of a story yesterday. It seems as though I’ve told it so many times, but it was fresh to her — this woman purchasing my original painting of Brittany. Brand new. And as she got more excited to hear, I became more excited to tell. She had saved some of the first cards that I had ever sold, for over twenty years, one being “Mother’s Cloud.”
This particular poem I had written as a birthday gift for my mom. I wrote the words of my heart, and hers. Typeset them artistically. Printed. Framed. And it hung in her dining room. It was Rose Virnig who came into my mother’s dining room, looked at the picture, and said, “I’ll take that in mauve.” (As if I had some stock room filled with many colors.) I looked at my mom, and asked, without moving my lips, “Can I actually sell your birthday present?” Her response, in these exact words, “Take the money, Pea Brain.” It still makes me laugh these decades later.
It’s always been personal. Every sale. Every card. Every magnet. Every book. It’s my story. And yesterday, as I was sharing with this new customer (connection sounds better) some of the stories, they weren’t just fresh for her, they were fresh for me. And I shared them again with my mother, and they were fresh for her. Our stories are as real, as new, as powerful, as we allow them to be. They can transport us in time and space, and heart. They keep us living. They keep us alive.
The conversation with my mother switched from art to shopping, (as it often does.) What was the name of that store? The one where I bought that outfit? With shoulder pads? Oh, I got so many compliments on that outfit. You know the store – at Ridgedale – all the jewelry in front…It starts with a G. My brain kicked in after we ended the conversation and I had to call back immediately. It was Gantos. Oh, yes! Gantos. And we were young and in a dressing room in Minnetonka.
I will finish packing up the original painting today and send it off to California. It will carry with it a bit of France, a bit of my mother, a bit of Minnesota, a great deal of my heart. And it will gather in her stories, of why she saved the cards that she bought in Omaha. Why they gave her the courage to move to California. Why she bought the new painting. And the story will grow. Continue. Connecting us all.
As I look out the morning window, everything seems fresh, brand new, with just a hint of mauve.
It can’t be too personal. That’s what they taught me about writing at the University. The reader doesn’t want to know that anyone could have written it. They wanted to know that you wrote it. You knew it. You felt it. And you shared it with them. And so I did.
When I paint. When I write, it is never generic. It is specific. It is personal. When I write about a house, it is a big, yellow, house, with a yellow so inviting, that if you were to walk by, just being you, it would call to you, “come in, you and your heart sit down.” When I write about my mother, people say, “Oh, that’s my mother.” “That’s my sister.” “That’s so me.” When I write about my heart, being overwhelmed or overjoyed, people say, “How did you know exactly what I was feeling?” And the power of these words show me, every day, I am not alone. We are not alone.
I made a painting of my grandmother’s hands. It has been purchased from Chicago to San Francisco. And I know that a piece of my grandmother gets to go there. She gets to pass over Wrigley Field, through the Magnificent Mile, into the loving arms of Illinois. She crosses the largest bridge a girl from Minnesota could ever imagine. And she shows them her hands. These strong and beautiful hands. These hands that could raise nine children, could also build bridges and stadiums, and we were not that different. We were a part of it all. She was. I am.
Each painting holds a story. Each picture, each phrase, is me, with my nose pressed up against the window pane, on Van Dyke Road, nearly wearing the window through with wishes and plans and dreams. Connecting us all, they would take me farther than I even dared to dream.
