I suppose my first canvas was the empty lot between our house and Dynda’s. We had free rein — perhaps trampling as if we were on horseback. There was artistry though in the games invented. Bases made out of abandoned windbreakers. Rules sculpted from the last competition remembered. Our knees and elbows painted green from the weary grass meant to be underfoot. And oh, how we played. We worked that canvas until no summer light remained — and still five minutes after that, as our mother’s called from bug danced porch lights.
I had that feeling yesterday. After all these years. All these miles. It was getting later in the studio. But I was six years old and running. I was paint stained and racing toward the base. Each stroke on the canvas brought the joy (not of winning — but being allowed to play). My feet jimbled beneath my hands that danced in front of my belly that quivered — leaving my brain no choice but to say, “just five more minutes!”
They say you can’t turn back time. Can’t stop it. During the night a rare rain storm fell over our house. Going into the kitchen this morning, I could see the light blinking on the oven clock. Of course it was the lightning that took out the power for a moment – that’s what my brain says. But my heart winks at my hands and thinks, maybe not…
“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 think I get it now. What he saw. What wasn’t yet there.
The commitment of painting flowers begins in the shadows. In the black. I suppose the desire will always be there, to begin with the popping of the petals, but it’s impossible to paint that way, backwards. They, like all of us I suppose, have to come through.
Finishing the larger of the two paintings, I was there. Not just in the shadows, but in the dirt. The black dirt. The empty field, with my grandfather.
I was always amazed at what he could do. Taking the black, turning it to green, and then gold. What I thought was magic, was maybe artistry. Or maybe they are one and the same. Maybe that’s humanity itself. Being able to see beyond. To sit what isn’t yet there.
Could I be painting the flowers without his vision? Or my grandmother’s in the kitchen. Or my mother’s in her closet? Maybe I only see, because I was seen. I awake from the shadows, because of them.
My mother did not like a flimsy dishrag, nor dishtowel. Her hands could handle the most extreme conditions of the hottest water, so why would she expect anything less from the material within reach?
It wasn’t this alone, but she was constantly teaching me how she needed to be treated, and how to treat myself. It was down to the smallest detail. Decisions were always being made. What are you worth? What do you expect? What do you need? And to see her find the joy, wringing it out, hanging it over the faucet, as a job well done, ready for tomorrow’s task, it still makes me smile.
I finish the painting. Rinse out my brushes. And carry that same joy.
I had a customer request one of my older pieces. She said she looks at it every morning and wanted to give a print to her best friend. I sold the original years ago, but I still wake to the words on my heart each morning.
“It isn’t that something comes along and gives you a reason to get out of bed, you have to get out of bed and go find that reason, every day…”
I’ve always found discipline to be much more reliable than motivation.
I didn’t have the words for it then, sitting on the front steps of my grandparents’ home. The sugar still settling in my belly from one of the variety packs my grandma bought especially for us, I rested elbows on bare knees and rested bare brain in hands. My grandfather, not one to suffer fools or folly, making what wasn’t his first trip back to the tractor, asked me what I was waiting for. “I don’t know,” I said without lifting my head. “Better find out,” he said without turning back. “Yeah,” I thought, and raced into an open field of reasons.
There is always the sun. The morning. My hands and heart. I am out of bed, more than ready to find out….
I’m not sure when I learned it. Maybe on the school bus with wet hair, breathing so deeply. Holding blank, fresh notebooks tightly to my waist, to simulate the last hug from my mother at the garage door. “Be a big girl,” she said. Oh, I wanted to be. But then the Norton girls got on, all five of them, in all that comfort and bickering of a shared bathroom and last name. And I wanted some of that sameness, but I only felt more alone. I sucked in my lower lip, knowing that would be the first to go, to quiver. And I closed my eyes, willing the tech-school student bus driver to move, move… just get me to school and then I would be ok. I would find a friendly face in that circle as we sat on the cool floor. If I could just hold it in until, Cindy or Barbie, Wendy or Lori, or even Mrs. Strand, could smile at me and gather me in the warmth of “what did you do last night?” and “I’m so happy you’re here.”
I learned to hold it in. Mostly, I suppose, because I knew I had a place, a home, where I would never have to. I don’t know if it was the first time, but it was a time, and I was struggling, bubbling, simmering from lips to eyelids, and my mother asked me, “Do you need to cry out loud?” I shook my head yes. She sat me down. Sat herself beside me. And I did. And it wasn’t for long. I suppose when you’re allowed to let it all go, it can go pretty quickly. And I was saved.
And it wasn’t just tears. She gave me the safest space to do it all out loud. To dream. To hope. To become. To laugh. To sing. To try. I didn’t have to hide or wonder, brace myself or worry. I could just be — out loud, in living color.
I can’t say I never stumble. Never quiver. I can find myself looking back for her shadow at the door. And there are places and times when I know I have to hold it in. But freedom is never far.
We can do this for each other, you know. We can give one another the space to be who we are. We can join in the release of laughter, and tears — both out loud! And either way, we can be the one who says, “I’m so happy you’re here.”
It seems a bit early to wish you a happy Independence Day, because you see, for me, my Fourth of July arrived on the Sixth. That’s the day my mother was born. She was, is, my America.
I often wonder about that day. Did it feel like a slice of Americana? He in his overalls. She in her house dress, stretched to the limit. Did the back of Grandma Elsie’s thighs stick to the unairconditioned truck seat as they made their way to town? Did one of the Zavadil boys run alongside the road with the last of the sparklers, freezing the cows behind the fence? Certainly everyone was doing chores. There was no vacation days from the farms.
And were there still a few streamers left from the parade as they made their way on Broadway? Did the hospital still fly the flag, or were they back to the whites? Did the doctor look a little extra tan from the picnic two days earlier?
And when she arrived, on what would ever be my holiday of choice, (now with one boy and one girl and a farm), did they say, “This is our America?” Or did they simply know they were home?
I suppose, I often hope, that it might be the same for everyone. Sure, America is the golden dream, the grand experiment, but for most I think, for Americans, it is the used Chevy Malibu that drove you to the softball game. It is the agonizing and glorious gathering of one hour after hot dogs, before entering the water. The drive down broadway. The familiar. The hope of what’s to come. It is family, and friends, both that sparkle with a loud “tis of thee!”
So happy 4th! I celebrate with you! And when the 6th arrives, I invite you to do the same! We’re all in this together. Every day!
I didn’t know the meaning of fray until my mother taught me how to thread a needle. Sitting in her bedroom closet on a folding chair, because that was the only space for her machine and sewing supplies, she put my hands under the light and talked me through it. As the thread split apart and blocked the entry, she snipped the end and had me try again. And again. She had me close one eye. Then the other. The needle moved from side to side. Was the winking to signify I too was in on the joke, in on the fray? Slower, she cautioned. Breathe. And then, without my knowledge or permission, it went through. So excited I jerked around to show her, and it came undone, but still… So I did it again. And again. She held the small of my back, willing the patience to see me beyond the fray, beyond the passing, finally being ready to sew.
Oh, patience…she can be a fickle neighbor. Coming by when you swear you don’t need her, avoiding you when you do. But I hope I’m getting better. Leaving that entry open. Even though sometimes it’s like passing through the eye of that very needle. But patience does come. Will come. Beyond the fray.
And that’s when you hope you’re blessed, blessed to be with someone who will see you through that fray. Wait with you. Breathe with you. Celebrate when you make it beyond. That was my mother. She taught me how to sew. She’s still teaching me how to live.
You think it’s an apron. And it is sometimes. The proof is the paint splatters that are beginning to gather. And it makes sense around my waist, as a quick brush off of excess water, or a change of color, but it doesn’t really explain the spots around my neck straps. Those are probably because of the dancing.
While the music plays along with the strokes, there are some songs that just won’t take no for an answer, and soon I am dancing like no one but the portraits are watching. Partnered by the brush in hand, I will get pulled in, hence the paint on my collar.
My neighbor continues to ask, though I’ve answered many times, “Are you a singer?” I’m sure she hears me on the way to my studio. I say, “Sometimes.” And I am a dancer sometimes. And sometimes a poet. Sometimes a baker. I suppose I used to give the answer no. Not anymore. Because I am sometimes all of these things. And more. And it’s not a judgement or declaration of things that I do extraordinarily well…but rather if I can say, “Well, I had a time!!!! Wasn’t that some time!”
And the song will change on the player and I am a painter again, but I smile above my painted straps, tap my foot, and know the truth of all that can be.
Receiving a letter in college was monumental. We shared a community phone for our floor, and had to pay for long distance, so it was rarely used. The mailboxes were the tie to the outside world. Located in the entrance of our fifth floor walk-up, what lay behind the gray square door was significantly tied to the speed at which I could climb the stairs. One small letter could erase the added weight of my backpack, loaded down with the likes of Shakespeare and other anthologies. Anticipation picked up each foot. Thumb trying to break the seal before opening the door. Books thrown on sofa, I cracked the remaining seal, and breathed in the connection. And I was saved.
I could always count on the weekly letter from my mother. Sometimes my grandma. An occassional random boyfriend marked with a mascot of another school, or PFC. And I learned quite early on, to get a letter, you needed to send one. To be lifted, you had to do some lifting.
When I was painting her yesterday, the stories ran through my head. Up and down the staircase of my heart and brain. All those things I needed to say. All those things I needed to hear. And I wondered how you would see it. When you saw her. At first glance. Was she getting the letter? Or was she sending it? I suppose it depends on if you are needing to hear something, or if you have something that needs to be said.
We’re always navigating through both. And I guess the key is to keep the chain open. To be lifted. To keep lifting.
Life will weigh us with worry and “other anthologies,” but it will also give us what we need if we choose to participate.
