Getting my hair cut a few days ago, I saw her. My hair wet and slicked back, there was nothing to disguise my face. She was saying something about my preferred style as she brushed, but all I could hear was the smile of my mother’s reflection. And it washed over me, the same joyful relief and responsibility, as it always had whenever anyone said, “You look just like your mother.”
Sometimes I catch myself — the brain can so easily throw out words that the heart would never dare. And I imagine those words coming out of my mother’s mouth and I fling them away. Because it’s not just her face, it’s about all that she had faced. And how she did it, with grace and dignity. And she, carrying her father’s, wasn’t I carrying both? And isn’t it my responsibility to do the same, and more?
Sometimes I fail. My hand slips on the rock where he stands. My heart breaks the ruffle of her dress. And I know they see me. I have nothing to disguise myself from them. But they keep smiling at me. On shoulder and in mirror. I hear them. I see them. And know they see the love in my attempt. And I give them back their smiles, and I am saved.
To be so filled with life that it has to flush from your very pores. Cheeks ruddy and ever ready. I suppose we all think it will last forever — sure that our feet will keep the deal that youth has made. But maybe it’s the heart that takes over. (Or maybe it led all along.) Maybe it’s the heart that drags us from spring’s mud into summer’s bliss. Maybe it’s the heart that races through grass’s morning dew again and again, and lifts us up from green knees when we fall, ever promising to keep our cheeks flushed through autumn. Through winter.
Every time I paint a face, I feel the colors in my own, flowing through my hands. And the corners of my mouth rise up, smiling, so happy to be a part of youth’s reddening still.
What will you do today, to remain in the race of summer?
I’ve started a new project. Each time I do, there are always things to be learned. Computer programs change so quickly. The paths to incorporate my artwork from page to printer are constantly changing course. And armed with my mother’s sense of direction, (she who thought the map at the mall should be on the ground so you could just step into it), I can’t say that I find my way quickly, but joyfully, I always find my way. I suppose it’s because I’m never traveling alone.
My first step was to get photos of all the new images. I was stumbling about. Turning pages. Checking lighting. It all felt so clunky. And then I got the tap on my brain’s shoulder that said, “get the sticky notes.” It was my friend Deb who gave me the little notebook of multi-colored tabs. We first used them to mark our favorite outfits in the Sundance catalog, sipping lattes, and reading the cover letter from Robert Redford, as if he had addressed it to us personally. We had colors to mark “maybe,” “yes,” and “why am I not wearing it right now.” Hours of entertainment with just a stick of a color.
Smiling, I used those notes to mark the pages of my artwork. It all began to make sense. I found my direction. Even using the new programs on my computer became easier.
I keep moving forward, but not without those who got me here.
There’s an expression that people use when someone dies that I’ve never liked — “She’s no longer with us.” It couldn’t be further from the truth. While the Sundance store has closed, my friend Deb sits right beside me. And I am saved.
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
It always comes as a surprise — the morning dark. It is delightful though, that I still believe summer will never end. That the morning light will sprinkle me awake and pull me into the promise of ever. And I make those same promises back. I always have.
From the moment I stepped off the last school bus ride of the year. I’d drop what was left of the documentation of another year at Washington Elementary, and I’d pull off my bumper tennis shoes without taking the time to untie, and I’d wiggle my feet in the yet unmown grass, and to each blade of green that snuck through the spaces of winter toes, I would promise to enjoy every moment of sun lit wonder.
And oh, how I filled my pockets with light. Wagons pulled. Balls hit. Bikes ridden. Each one a bright spot to carry me through the winter I would never see coming.
I suppose it’s the same with love. All that light and promise. Even in the darkness, it never goes away. It wiggles through toes and dances in hearts, and keeps its promises. Ever.
I smile at the morning dark. I am not afraid. Everything is still possible. And I am surely loved.
It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming.
Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night. Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening.
In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!
I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons.
So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true.
For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry.
I was always aware of time when it came to the things I loved. I thought I could outrun all of it. Pumping my thighs just ahead of aging. If I got up early enough, made a pact with the summer sun not to waste a moment, ran beside Hugo’s golden fields, ate my self-packed lunch in the green of the yard, read books in lakes, rode bike on gravel, hit balls on fields…then summer, (even though deep in the back of my mind I knew it would end), somehow it would always last. The promise still holds.
My mother was that summer. Maybe that’s why I still get up early, to meet her in the promise. To gather in all that I love — the “Joie de vivre” (the joy of life).
Walking on the path yesterday morning here in France, I heard the slow pop of the gravel beneath the approaching car, and I was immediately on Van Dyke Road. I wondered if my new French friend recognized my chubby hand in the gathering heat. Her “Phyllis Norton-like” wave out her rolled-down window told me yes. We both smiled as the years disappeared with each pop under her wheel. We bounced our smiles into the blue of ever and spoke the language, the hope, of youth.
Love and summer make the same promise. So I keep my end and wake up early to gather it in, gather myself in…knowing with each gravelly step, I am home.
Maybe it’s the light. The call of the birds. But I wake up earlier this time of year. I suppose it’s counterintuitive, but there is an eagerness to rush into the morning, as if it were a warm and wandering tiger that I could grab by the tail, and convince it to slow down. To sit with me. To sit with us. To dangle slowly as the ripening peaches on the tree just outside our kitchen window. I know how their skin feels. Like they alone can feel the gentle touch of the sun. Almost weightless without winter’s worry. Trusting as if held in the grace of the branch. Never rushing the ripe. For this brief moment, I just am.
Maybe it’s the perk of the coffee. The pop of the toaster. But I catch myself in this moment of happiness. And the tiger runs off. And in catching myself, I guess it ends. But my summer legs tell me it doesn’t have to. My summer heart agrees, and I am back in the moment. I am the tiger. I am the peach. Perhaps even the light. How could summer ever end?
There’s only so many times, even with youth’s tenacity, that a person can run around a farm house and only come in second place. He was always fast, my cousin Shawn. And while I was happy for him, being related and all, I did want to beat him. We wore a path around our grandparents’ home. My bumper tennis shoes always just in the shadow of his latest trend from New Brighton. I mention it only because that was my first thought — it must be his city shoes that outran my local Iverson’s. Or, I hate to admit it, I did have the thought, well, maybe it was because he was a boy…even then I cringed and ran around again.
He was staying for a week. So I stayed too. Each day we ran in circles. Each day our grandfather walked to the field. Each morning we ate Kellogg’s cereal from the variety pack box. Fueled by pure sugar, we chased the morning down.
Sweaty and fed up with losing by Wednesday noon, I asked my grandfather when he returned for lunch, what was the difference between patience and enough already. He took two steps to my four and said, “work.” “I don’t get it,” I said. “You have to enjoy it somehow, the work of it, or there’s no point.” “But I keep losing?” “But are you having fun?” I started to think. I did like being here. Outside. Summer. Racing. Round and round. I did love it. I smiled and ran to the house.
I think about it now. How he never said anything about his lawn, about the paths we wore so very thin, while his patience never did. I’m sure in his head he must have gotten to “enough already,” with all those grandchildren. All those questions, but it never showed. I guess he loved us.
I can’t tell you if my blue bumper tennis shoes ever crossed the front sidewalk in first place. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But I ran. We ran. Over and over. Around and under. Within summer’s warmth. And I won.
I’m still winning. Painting in my sketchbook daily, I suppose you could call it work, perhaps patience. Or am I carrying that farmer to his field, step by step? I have no need to finish. I keep on loving.
I say it every year, but shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t we? Be excited and completely in awe of summer’s return? I long for it. As if it were the last day of school before release. That first breeze that kisses my newly bared legs erases the years in between and flings open the school doors of youth. It sings the song of children’s laughter — a year’s relief. It races us to the open windowed bus and flies the paper let go from chubby hands. It drops us off one by one into this beginning — this beginning that will last forever, if we just remain in the driveway of summer vacation. But the wiggles in our legs and the jimbles in our hearts say go, Go, GO! And we race in, because joy bars none, and knows no time constraints.
Is that too much? Too much to expect from summer’s first breeze? No. Never. What does it matter that I haven’t ridden a bus in decades? My knees still quiver in the morning driveway. Ready. Always ready to carry me into the ever of joy.
