They loved them for different reasons. My grandma’s a bit more practical. She needed her pockets for Kleenex and treats — we needed candy she said, you know, just to be sure. My mother kept her dreams in her pockets, be it skirt, coat or pants, needing a place to coddle them in hand, you know, just to be sure.
So maybe they weren’t that different after all. They just found their way to comfort through different pocketed resources. And after all, didn’t they both love the autumn candy at Walgreen’s.
We have no candy corn in France. No mellowcremes, or Autumn Mix by Brach’s. Yet, my pockets remain full, with the same magic as the heart, I suppose.
We get to decide the magic that we carry. The love we hold on to. The hopes and dreams and comforts that fill our pockets. Sometimes I find myself leaning up against a French wall, and rolling it all between my fingers, you know, just to be sure.
She stood in front of the original painting. Tracing the movement from the woman’s feet to her hand. “She’s so light,” she said, “it’s like she’s being lifted.” I smiled and replied “That’s actually the name of the piece — Being Lifted.” Her pleasure doubled. It was not only the view, but that she could see it.
And isn’t it always the way. It’s what we bring to the situation. How we want to see things.
Knowing her, I’m aware of the weight she is wanting to release. And the fact that she can see it, right there in front of her, I know that she will.
It’s why I painted her in the first place. This release. This letting go. I suppose I’ve always wanted it. Ever since I swam out to the diving board on Lake Latoka, I have yearned to fly. Since I felt the weightlessness of springing from the board. The wind in my feathers. My momentary wings. They carry me still.
It’s why I stand before her each night, the woman in the painting. Because I see her. And I know, when morning comes, one way or another, I am going to fly.
By my best estimation, I would say there was a hundred degree span (0 – 100°F) in which we were told to go outside. A span which could in fact lengthen depending on our attitudes.
Before the last bit of Captain Crunch was slurped from the bowl. Long before the school bus was to arrive. Or the sun of summer’s vacation. My mother would say “Goodbye. I love you. Have a nice day,” and it was clear that I was the one meant to leave. And for the next twelve hours or so, I spent the day outside. We all did.
Perhaps we had been sold on the fact that all good things were outside. They used it as a reward in school, so of course it worked at home. We lived it. We loved it. It was the great reveal of the sun. There were no boundaries. Imagination, even love, couldn’t reach a limit. And believe me, we dared it — with the pedaling of bikes on gravel, the abandonment of those same bikes in ditches, barefooted and unsure of what lay beneath, we raced, willing sunburned legs to spin one more time around bases or vacant lots.
It’s self imposed now. But I can still hear the call, the direction. You could label it as discipline, give it the fancy words of adulthood. But what brings me to the door each morning, what carries me to test the day’s limits are still the same words, “Goodbye. I love you. Have a nice day.”
There was a rhythm to the gravel road we lived on. A popping of pebbles against the tires. The whirring of rubber in dust. It was the music of homecoming. I listened every day from our house on Van Dyke Road. Just after 4:30 my mother arrived within the soundtrack of return. All that music, all that joy, I simply had to dance.
Of course the neighborhood was often abuzz with complaint. When would they pave this road? All that music, to them was noise.
I thought of them yesterday. They would be the same people here who complain about the cicadas. To me, it sounds like home. It is the opening of windows and doors. Bare legged freedom. A studio that has no limits. A comfort that requires no bracing. My song of home.
I suppose it’s all a choice. Noise or music. Just a feeling. And if it feels like a song, if it feels like home, it probably is… So I choose happiness. Joy. And it moves me from heart to limb.
After all, if we’re not supposed to dance, why all this music?
I have had this canvas for about 15 years. It has transitioned and traveled with me through abstraction and country. The last painting was here in France, a seascape of sorts. But I can’t tell you exactly what came before that. I know it’s still there. Underneath. Behind, within this woman.
If you ask me who she is, prepare yourself for the underpainting. She is the curve of every woman.
She is my grandmother whose hands never stopped. Hands that I watched in amazement and wrote, “If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.”
She is my mother. The posture of grace. In an apartment kitchen filled with more worry than nourishment, she lifted a hand, and gently directed me in the dance.
She is my friend, long past her days of professional dance, who still walks in the garage as if onto the stage.
She is another friend, deep in grief, (a depth that only comes with love) who dares the dance of my mother, and releases, again, and again, with the curve of a woman.
When I look at the sides of the canvas, I see these bright and dark colors. Not who she is now. Not who I am now. But I see the lines of the underpainting — the embossing and debossing of all that paint (the experience) that has come before. And it adds pattern to her dress. Movement to her hands. Strength to her feet. And opens the sky. Opens her heart. My heart. Your heart. Wide open.
“If you opened people up we’d find landscapes.” Agnès Varda
When I fell from my training bicycle, riding down the hill on Van Dyke Road (at my brother’s urging) I was opened up from chin to knuckles to knees to shins. I was certain that if I weren’t bandaged from head to toe, the neighbors would be able to see directly inside of me, revealing every thought, hope and broken promise.
Right from the start, all of my feelings were worn close to the surface, and without skin, well, wasn’t it obvious? Having survived this grand opening, perhaps I never saw the need to hide myself away ever again. Each day when I write, when I paint, a little credit must be given to the gravel of Van Dyke Road, the first to offer, demand even, my vulnerability.
This landscape that I carry, I must admit has often gone uncelebrated through the years. Buried beneath the dazzle of mountain and beach, of lavender field and golden grain. Can you even ask a gravel road to outshine the Champs-Élysées? And yet, when called upon, when skinned to my very core, or delighted to the same, it is there. To hold me. To lift me. To be my solid ground.
My husband often laughs that I always have something in my shoe. It just occurred to me, perhaps it simply fell from heart.
I saw the black and white feathers in the lawn. It’s funny how you can tell the difference between something let go, and something torn apart. While I don’t want anything to hurt our backyard birds, my first thought was, I hope it wasn’t another Magpie.
It’s ironic I suppose, the closer you are to someone, the less you see it coming.
But the resilience of the heart and brain. To keep trusting. To keep loving. It’s so beautiful. And isn’t it even more beautiful that I don’t think about it. That I have to be reminded of it, by feathers in the yard.
I walk through the vacation of our summer yard. Nearly bare of clothes and worry. The birds flutter and sing, and I know we all have it. This youth of spirit. To forgive. To barefoot again upon love’s green, beneath the chatter, the hope of the Magpie.
I was able to varnish her yesterday, this woman reading. It’s always the most joyful magic, watching the colors of the painted and glorious self come to added life with this layer.
I guess it’s the same in real life. Under the varnishing of love’s protection, this is when we really shine. Unburdened by the fear of losing what we have. Being able to take the chance of the day’s exposure.
When I listened to her sing in front of her 15 year old peers, standing alone on the stage, the notes braving the audience, my second and third thoughts were, oh, she’s really good, and she looks really beautiful. My first thought was, she feels loved. She feels loved enough to risk it all. And I was happy to be a small part of that varnishing.
I had this idea. That all was forgiven. I don’t mean just with me, although that was a good start. I mean with everyone, the world. And I suppose it seems silly. It seems as unlikely as the bird atop my head that brought the thought of this peace. And yet, there it rested, tucked in tangles of hair and misbelief. And I closed my eyes to slow the doubt — nothing chases away the hope faster. Maybe it was the Peter Pan collar, bringing these youthful ideas, I thought. But my heart said, “Don’t laugh away the magic.” And I coudn’t see, well, only deep inside where the thoughts were taking root, where the thoughts thought, hoped, that maybe you felt it too, forgiven. Maybe it was messengered in. As easy and light as that. And my heart smiled, sending the confirmation of what had been given. Sending it through lengthened neck and blushing cheeks and all those hopeful tangles, and behind lid, I knew, I somehow knew, that even if it left, flew away with all that hope, all that forgiveness, it still was all possible.
Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.
Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.
People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.
It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.
