Yesterday I made both bread and cookies, so it’s not surprising that my daily sketch had her hands in the dough. My floured fingers were reminding my heart that it could always be a good day.
I guess that’s how I gauge them. For me they are good days, successful, as long as I do just that — “have my hands in the dough.” If I am in the attempt, covered in paint, or flour, or sweat, trying to make something, learn something, become something, then I’m ok.
And it’s usually the heart that gets most of the credit, and often well deserved. Follow your heart they say. Let your heart lead you. That’s always good advice. But I don’t want to forget the hands. The work. Sometimes the heart needs a little rest from all the heavy lifting. And sometimes, it’s the hands they say I’ve got this. I’ve got you, palms up.
I heard something recently. It was more about the tools you have in the garage, but it seems applicable — “Use what you have to get what you want.” And what I had yesterday, I had my hands. And the day was passed with effort and joy — exactly what I wanted.
And the beauty is, it’s nothing I have to wish for, I just have to do it. Every day. Put my “hands in the dough.”
The messages were clearly mixed. Every day in school we were reminded not to act the fool, but then were dared to be one, simply by heading to the chalkboard. It seemed to me always a fine line between misbehaving and risking failure. It was harder to see then, but maybe it all came down to intent. Was the goal to shock, or to try? Both got laughs, giggles behind hands. I found out early on, the audience was in their own control. It was about how I felt. How did my behavior affect my heart? For me, I always felt better trying.
“Better to go down swinging.” That’s what I heard on the ball field behind the Dairy Queen on summer afternoons. I took that advice through autumn as I tiptoed to the blackboard (heels were never a place for courage.) Sometimes I would get it right, and return to my desk all smiles. Sometimes, I would be covered in chalk’s dust, as if wiping the mistakes on my pants would erase it all. But I was swinging, wasn’t I?!!! And I was happy.
I heard it on the transistor radio in my grandma’s kitchen — “Only fools fall in love.” Is grandpa a fool? I asked her. The biggest, she said. I smiled. I was too. I loved them both.
I guess I’m still swinging. Every time I open my mouth in France, I am covered in the mistakes of dust, but look at me, I’m here! If you want to be at the front of the class, you have to risk the chalkboard. So I risk, daily. Do I look the tourist? Maybe. But who cares? It’s Paris! You should put a baguette under wing and marvel at the Eiffel Tower. I have, and will continue to risk it all for love, for the joy of living! My pants I can change. This is the only heart I get — I’m going to use it!
I didn’t have words for it when I began. It all seemed too much. Too long. And it wasn’t like I was simply out on a limb, I was gone, so far off into the distant future, a future that I could awfulize into every worst scenario. So I brought myself back. Gave myself only the space of this sketchbook. Allowing myself any emotion, but confining the worry, the fear, to about 12” of my day. Feel anything, everything, I told myself. And once I gave it a voice, without my knowledge or permission, that voice began to turn into a song. And that song calls me each day to the page, not the fear.
And the most joyous thing happened yesterday. Looking at the bird woman, with her wicker bag at the market, birds resting on her head, I imagined her saying, “Seriously, I really need to shop faster.” And I laughed. Out loud.
And it isn’t time making the difference. It’s the work. Giving myself a place to grow, to feel. A place where perfection isn’t required. And it’s ironic, I suppose, so beautifully ironic, that in this tiny space, I feel so gloriously free.
It just occurred to me, maybe that’s what the heart is after all, a sketchbook. Not the place with all the answers, but beat by beat, page by page, a tiny space where we are free to feel, to learn, to grow, to become. Ever the artists of our own choosing. I suppose it’s never the brain, nor the hand, that says, I can make something beautiful out of this, but the heart…ever the heart… turning the page, crossing over to the beauty that lies ahead.
There were “grab bags” at the counter of the antique store yesterday. Of course Grandma Elsie would have bought one. Or perhaps she had them placed there from heaven, simply to answer my question, “I wonder if Grandma had ever been here?”
I don’t know where she got it from. I never knew her parents. But she had it as long as I knew her, this feeling of possibility. She was, as she often said, “so close to winning!” No mail-in sweepstake went unanswered. No “Crazy Days” was ever missed. Ben Franklin and Woolworth’s always had the grab-bags. She bought one for herself, and one for me, even when I said, “Oh, you don’t have to, Grandma,” (just as I did, when she offered to make me a root-beer float) — but either way, before I knew it, there was a paper sack of dime store leftovers in my hand and a root-beer float melting on the kitchen table.
I suppose that’s where I get it from — this believing that my next painting will be the best. Hoping my next story will be a grab bag of words that no one can put down. And why, when traveling through the smallest town in Arizona, stopping only for a bathroom break, I am lured to a counter in an antique store lined with grab bags and I believe it is a sign from my Grandma Elsie. Even in this place, so far from anywhere, I am so close to winning!
I’m in between at the moment. I recently finished a large painting, and the new panel is built. It waits patiently on the working easel. But I have to be ready. So I turn to my sketchbooks.
It’s good practice. They keep me active. Learning. And it’s never about perfection. But I do get to start and finish something pretty quickly. And that feels good. And I wouldn’t call it a victory, but setting myself up for one.
Maybe it’s because I recently had two setters from my high school volleyball team come for a visit. Every day at 3:15, we would change from our school clothes into our sweats. The energy that remained seated all day, from classroom to classroom was released, bouncing off the smooth hardwood floors. Mrs. Anderson blew her whistle and we sprinted, line by line. We called them crushers. And I suppose that’s what they were designed for – to crush out the demons of the day, the problems unsolved, the warnings of tests approaching, the teasing, the fatigue of numbers divided on blackboards and inside bathroom cliques. After shaking it all out, we lined up at the net. And it was Barbie and Cindy who began setting us up. On firm and gentle fingertips they passed the ball. We raced forward and swung with all of our might. And the ball went into the net. Again and again. But they, Barbie and Cindy, stood there, smiling us through the line, setting us up over and over, each seeming taller with every passing of the ball. Never rolling their eyes, or sighing with puffed out cheeks. They just kept giving us the chance, repeatedly, without judgement.
And that’s what my sketchbooks do — they Barbie and Cindy me through the ordinary days. The in betweens. The 3:15 release of all my creative energy. The letting gos. The trying news. Maybe I would have gotten here on my own, but I’m not sure. There have been so many that set me up through the years. Still. I write of them day by day. I stand a little taller. And because of them I feel a responsibility to do the same for myself. To give myself a chance. Every day. Who would I be if I just let it all slip by? Who would I be if I didn’t even try? You have to try! I see their faces, smiling, and I race toward the net.
I’ve heard it said that we operate out of love or fear. And I believe it’s true. But that’s not to say when you choose love that you will never be afraid. Perhaps quite the contrary. It’s almost guaranteed when you follow your passion, your heart, that fear will be lingering somewhere close behind. That’s normal when you’re vulnerable. When you’re open. But this is living.
Probably the closest I ever came to being a Wallenda was in the girls’ gym at Central Junior High during gymnastics week. Out of a class of thirty prepubescent girls, maybe one or two knew how to work the apparatuses. The majority of us, without nets or knowledge, flung ourselves from beam to floor, along to the music on the phonograph extensioned with an orange cord that ran from the gym teacher’s office through the locker room down the stairs into our pink basement gymnasium.
It was the hour just before my English Literature class. After 45 minutes of heart racing stunts, a five minute shower and a four minute walk to the other side of the building, I was home. With words and books and meaning. And that’s not to say it was safe. No. It was daring. Every day new words. A new lesson. New books. We were expected to risk seemingly life and heart’s limb when asked to explain the text. To put it into our own words. Most kept their heads down. As if the motionless spider on the wall defense actually worked. I, on the other hand, shot my my arm in the air. Not because I was brave, but because she (our gym teacher) told us to run through the pommel horse. If we slowed down, if we hesitated, we risked injury. So when Mr. Rolfsrud asked us to recite our poems assigned from the night before, I ran at full speed toward the front of the class.The things in my life that have been the most meaningful have come with the biggest risks. In work and love, I have lived by the words of Karl Wallenda —
“Life is on the wire, and everything else is just waiting.”
It is not without risk that I share with you my victories and stumbles. It is my heart on the daily wire. But if I am going to be hurt in this life, it is not going to be because I hesitated. I will run at love with full speed. And I will be alive.
I’m ready. I’m scared. I want to. I can. I… I… I am flying!
I can no longer say that I always make a test cookie. I did, until yesterday.
It still makes sense. And I will, when I can, test out the dough with one cookie before baking the whole batch. But yesterday’s recipe required a little faith, and a little Elsieing. I googled the French delicacies. There were so many variations to these crackling little almond cookies, both in French and in English, so I Elsied my best guess, and made a little combination.
One thing they all agreed upon was the speed that the dough must go from creation to oven. Containing no flour, the few ingredients, like the egg-whites and sugar, would separate if you hesitated. Having to bake for 20 minutes, there was no time for a test cookie. Having thrown myself into stronger French winds than this and survived, I plopped the wet dough onto the baking sheets and believed, or at least hoped.
We ate them nearly as fast as it took to get from bowl to oven. Delicious. I knew if they turned out that Dominique would like them, but I was surprised at how much that I did! I loved them. It turns out, faith is a tremendous ingredient!
I mention it only because when I recall my greatest pleasures, they have all been accompanied with risk. Becoming an artist. Sharing my stories. Daring the markets of New York. Falling in love, big love. Moving to France. Creating a family. None of these allowed for a test cookie — straight from bowl to oven!
Are there trips and failures along the way – of course, but they aren’t the taste that lingers — that, my friends, is nothing but sweet.
The guaranteed impermanence of both the net and our interest, allowed us to put up the badminton game in our grandma’s front yard. No matter how far we stretched the poles, there was a permanent sag in the middle, which ultimately worked to our advantage. Each shuttlecock, or birdie as we called it, was worn down to the nubs, either by racket or grandpa’s truck that drove over them. We swung with exuberance, hitting mostly only summer farm breezes. We struggled to keep score — the real “wins” coming in the few moments we could strike up an actual rally.
When I see them play badminton at the Olympic level, I have to laugh. It is not the same game. I mention it only because I’m reminded how we do this in our daily lives — compare our experiences. When someone tells us of a certain struggle or situation, we are often so quick to say, “Oh, I’ve been through that, it’s not so hard”… or “Here’s what you should do…” or “just get over it…” The thing is, we’re not playing the same game. What might be a swing in a summer breeze to you, may be an international struggle for someone else. Neither right nor wrong. Just different. The best we can do, I suppose, is to sag the net a little and help each other rally. Maybe in doing so, we can all get back to the comfort of a summer breeze, in our time and in our way, and we could all win.
Perhaps it’s just an Olympic size dream raised up from the barefooted grass of my grandparent’s farm, but I owe it to myself, we owe it to ourselves, to keep swinging!
There is a hungry woman at my table each morning and it is me. I don’t know why it seems new. This same wood. These same chairs. Why should I be surprised by this bread? I made it with my own hands. But it IS new. I am new. And it feeds me with the chance, moving from table to tablet, the chance that I will put the words in a different order today, and somehow you will know all that I meant to say. Maybe they will push away the struggle, or broom a path. Tickle a wanting rib. Or maybe simply sit gently beside your expectant heart. I know most will scroll by. And that’s ok. Other words are calling. But who would I be if I didn’t try? We have to try. Believing that small difference, is still different. Small kindness is still kind. Small steps are still movement. So I type on. Hope on. And the page is not blank. And this day is not wasted. The lavender honey on this morning’s bread fuels the offered and open blank — telling me that pages weren’t meant to be followed, but written.
“I want to leave as few pages blank as possible.” Virginia Woolf
It took so little to show that we really meant it when we were young. Just a simple reaching out of a pinky finger to wrap around another’s. We swore it to be true, and our curled pinkies confirmed it.
I suppose it was fitting that our weakest of links, these tiny little fingers exposed like this, showed our biggest strength — a vulnerability, a trust. It was never with clenched fists or raised arms. Just our hearts exchanging beats. Pinky to Pinky.
I don’t know when we stopped doing it. Who was it that suggested a shaking fist deserved more attention? When did we start exchanging “vulnerable” for “sure”? Why did we think all that certainty would connect us?
The truth is, I’m rarely sure. I think I lean more on curious. To what if. To what could be. I have garnered more there — not necessarily the answers, but I have found challenge and creativity, fulfillment and reward, friendship, even love.
So take these daily words as my pinky promise, my reaching out, my hope for connection. I will give to you, not always “the best,” but it will ever be “my best.” This, I swear.
