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…
I am not supposing that my bird paintings will last for the next 700 years, but I feel a part of the history, the conversation, each time I paint one.
Yesterday, we visited the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It protects one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America, featuring designs and symbols carved onto volcanic rocks by Native Americans and Spanish settlers 400 to 700 years ago. These images are a valuable record of cultural expression.
We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time — recording our stories. From rocks to the sides of buildings. Paper to internet, we put out our experiences. Our feelings. Our hopes. Our lives. And maybe it’s all too impermanent now. Things are thrown out without thought. Without care. Maybe we think it will all be gone tomorrow. Throwing out insults and disparaging words. Maybe it’s all too easy. What if we really had to think? Sweat above each word? Carve them with heartfelt intent? Would we give our history it deserves?
I think about our legacy. How the future will regard what we did with our time.
Mine are not birds on rocks. But in my moment, I am nesting with the Natives, sitting beside a lamp lit Emily Dickinson, trying to find the hope on feathers. Trying to find the goodness in our stories, our time. And I am just as guilty of being impatient. I live in the “I want it right now” — the same time as you, but as I see the concerned expression on the rocks beneath my feet, beside my hands, I think, I hope, maybe we can take a little more time, a little more care in telling our stories. In listening to others. Because they are valuable — or they could be.
Maybe today, before we make the post, send the email, say the words, we give them a little more thought. Maybe we carve the stone, instead of throwing it.
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?
After five years of restoration, the Notre Dame cathedral reopened in Paris! I don’t know that one exclamation point can signify the extraordinary feat. While most agreed that five years would be nearly impossible, the greater consensus was — “not on my watch…” It wasn’t whether it could be done, but that it had to be done. And it wasn’t just Catholics, or Parisians, the world seemed to be invested. For it isn’t just architecture, it is a story of our humanity. Some will call that faith. Fortitude. Survival. Pride. Celebration. Maybe it’s all of those things. But this building, this evidence of our living, this story that has stood for nearly a thousand years, all agreed that it couldn’t be lost to something so banal as a dropped cigarette or a loose wire. Not a war, not a natural disaster, nothing in all this time had taken it down. No one wanted to be the ones that let it go.
Every detail was replicated. Details that most will never see, but all will feel. The voice of Notre Dame has been restored. Each rafter is aligned to the note. There is a sound that exits because of the building. It rings again. Still.
In my most humble of ways, I work each day on keeping my own “Notre Dame” alive. There is a voice to my Hvezdas. My Alexandria. My Van Dyke Road. My friends. My new French family. My Provence. My Paris. All rafters in the voice that is mine. Is ours. And I will do everything to keep that alive. It is my watch. It is my responsibility.
And don’t we all have that? Aren’t we all keepers of the story? Isn’t it our joyful duty to do the work? To pass on the love? To keep it alive? To be the exclamation point of this time? This place? “Yes! Yes!!!” I shout, we shout, over the sound of ringing bells.
There was nothing really “western” about it, this growing up in the Midwest. Maybe that’s why I remember them — the bookends my mother had — wooden cowboys riding wildly on horseback, not taming, but protecting each author in our living room on Van Dyke Road.
And surely it was my mother’s love for the written word and her wooden bookends that led me to the “Cowboy Sam” series on the bottom first and second grade shelves of the Washington Elementary library. We read together each night, a trail I won’t forget.
When the years roughened the edges of the metal bottoms that slid under the books, she lined them with green felt, and the words rode in comfort once again. She taught me that each story was precious, to be held, cared for — even hers, even mine.
I never would have imagined then that some of the plots we lived through could be gathered, softened… even protected. But she, you see, was and is the green felt that slides the cowboy ‘neath the wildest of my words, my dreams and keeps them alive.
We don’t have jellybeans in France. It has been my extreme pleasure to introduce my French family to what may have been the last essential element in my mother’s food pyramid.
It’s not surprising that I have a colorful array of jelly bean related stories. Red was my mother’s favorite, and mine as well. We spent more than suspicious lengths of time in the candy aisle, searching the bags for the ones that contained the most red ones, balanced with the least black and purple. So when Mr. Bulky’s came to Ridgedale Mall, offering the largest, freshest of Jelly Beans, that you could scoop out, by color even, our lives were dramatically changed for the better. My mother would scoop red after red into the sack. When it was nearly full, she added one yellow, just “to make it seem random,” she’d say. Clearly that would cover our tracks. We’d laugh in sugar coated smiles.
At Easter time, when Walgreen’s put out their sacks, she’d sort them out by color. Saving the white, purple and black for the birds, scattering them out the window of her apartment on Jefferson Street. “I’m not sure they eat them,” I said. “They’re Jelly Bird Eggs…” she reasoned. Again, our smiles glistened red!
Dominique grabbed a few from the sack he keeps in the car just before we went into the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. (I love that he loves them!) It’s not an easy museum, and it shouldn’t be. From slavery, to mass incarceration, my heart sank. I shed a few tears in the reflection room as the choir sang, A balm in Gilead. The last section we went through was on voter discrimination. I could see the jars of Jelly Beans. Smiling, we entered. What are the Jelly Beans for? We started to read. How did I not know this? They didn’t teach us this. But I should have known. But it’s so crazy! So insane! Can this possibly be???? To suppress the minority vote, they were asked to take tests – with the most ridiculous questions – like how many jelly beans were contained in this giant jar. Neither of us were smiling.
The thing is, we don’t have the same stories. And we are our stories. We carry them. We live them. They stay with us. Maybe the truest “balm” we have is to listen. To learn. To share. We are all here to tell a story. All.
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 having coffee with a friend of mine when I got the call. Deeply immersed in the big fashion issue of Vogue, I was prepared for the adventure he proposed. I didn’t know him well. He was a pilot. Had his own small plane. It was a lovely sunny day and he was “going up” and wondered if I wanted to come along. “Sure,” I said. Told my caffeinated friend. Her first question was, “What are you going to wear?”
I had the perfect outfit…so I thought. It was a combination of flow and twirl. A Michael Kors silk skirt and top. The skirt was fitted to the knee, and then flirted with a small flare. The top flowed. I was a human airplane scarf. Ready to soar. I was Faye Dunaway. Meryl Streep. I was Whitney Houston in the final scene of the BodyGuard. Cue the music! I was ready!
He pulled up to the hangar. I was underwhelmed with his baggy jeans, but still prepared to be in my own movie. We walked up to the plane. I looked for some sort of stairs. A ladder even. Anything. He was doing his pre-flight check, and told me I could get in. But could I? I replayed the movies in my head. Scarved and flowing, I saw Whitney run to the plane. But they didn’t show how she got in. How was I supposed to get in? I looked around. Trying to appear interested in the empty sky. I was really just waiting for him to get in so he wouldn’t be able to watch me crawl up the wing. He easily hoisted his long leg in his baggy jeans up on the wing and hopped in. I hoisted my skirt. What underwear was I wearing? I hadn’t thought about that. It wasn’t that kind of date. “Don’t step on the wing with those shoes,” he said. Obviously I wasn’t wearing tennis shoes with my ensemble. So I pulled myself up on the wing. Sat on my backside. Crab crawled my way in backwards. Pulled my feet in, not touching the wing. Sweating in the glaring sun, and even hotter embarrassment. I adjusted my skirt. He niner-ninered, as I sang, “I will always love you,” to myself, in my head.
I acted out the movie for my friend at Caribou Coffee the next day. It was one of our greatest laughs. My full length drama had become a latte-snorting comedy. I try to remind myself of this, during those times when I feel like I’m hoisting myself, struggling to climb the wing of the day. Everything is not as serious as it seems. I look in the morning mirror. Fling back my imaginary scarf over my shoulder, breaking into chorus, “And I, I, Iiiii, will always love you….ooooooh-ooooh!” I’m flying!
