Working between two screens, sometimes my cursor gets stuck in the opposite one that I want. (Like my brain doesn’t do that all the time.)
It’s so easy to think, “Well, I always did it this way…” Whether I’m talking about different countries, different languages, loves, relationships, even my hairdresser. And I catch myself swiping madly on the wrong screen.
Change is never easy. Neither growth. But both are so necessary. And it doesn’t mean you have to give up everything in the letting go, the moving on…You keep the lightest of things, like joy and hope and love — none of these will ever weigh you down.
Too often I’m unaware. It’s barely more than air, the little birdie that tells me things. But when I’m paying attention, really paying attention, all the truths that move between who I am and who I want to be, chirp seamlessly between my heart and my brain, and I am saved.
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.”
She was the first person I knew to wear a beret. She sang songs about Paris. When I say I knew her, well, we never actually met, but she, Joni Mitchell, was my babysitter. Alone (I suppose you could say “unfettered”) with a turntable my brother left behind, I played the Court and Spark album again and again. I had memorized the words to each song, long before I knew what a free man in Paris would look like, or where Paris even was on a map.
She was always there, the two hours between my hop off the yellow school bus and my mom’s return from work. Music never lets you be alone. Nor poetry, or any of the arts. Maybe that’s why I love them all so. For me, all a form of grace — it sits with you, until you can walk in it again.
Maybe you’ll think it strange, but one of the first things I purchased at the Galleria in Edina was a green beret, made in France. But I think it’s perfect. This spinning of my worlds together, round and round, like the very music of my soul.
We outgrow our babysitters, but not our need for care. I try to give it to myself, still. I hope you can do the same. Find your grace. In the right tempo. Walk in it. And then one day, “unfettered and alive” you find yourself in the dance.
I had time to think about it while I painted the individual seeds on top of the loaves of bread. The chalk board behind her in the boulangerie displayed the menu and the prices. It didn’t feel in the spirit of the painting. But what would I put on it? Leaving it blank didn’t seem right either. So I kept painting. Seed by seed. Trusting the answer would come. I was many loaves in, but by the third shelf, I knew.
It’s always the case, but it’s a lesson I have to keep learning. I, we, are in such a hurry to get to the answer. Wanting to bypass the process. The work. But that’s not how life happens. The only way out is through. So I take it seed by seed. Thought by thought. Step by step. Feeling by feeling. Trusting that I will get there. Aaaah, trust, that ‘ol show stopper — it can be a tough one, but every day I’m letting it in, just a little more.
I decided on the words from the old French song, “Les Mains d’une femme dans la farine” The chorus, in translation, sings that nothing is more beautiful than a woman’s hands in the flour. It is perfect, not only because it celebrates the work, but it also connects to our French cousins who co-own the bakery. I’m probably no more or nor less related to any of them, this lovely woman, or the husband of Dominique’s second cousin whom she works with, but I feel connected to all of them. And who’s to say we’re not related? Once our hands are all elbow deep in the flour, in the joyful work of this living, we all become the same.
We do the work. We trust the letting in. We are family.
It won’t hold any more because of it. Be more secure. Even lighten the load. I suppose it wasn’t at all necessary to add the French scarf to my French bag, but it is beautiful! It feels like a compliment — and we all know (I hope we all know) how good those feel!
My mother was probably the best at it. Giving compliments. She threw them out like Halloween candy through a screen door, never asking, “Who are you supposed to be?” She simply filled my open heart with all the sugar it craved.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating (which I guess is the point of all of this — the joyful repeat). She often taught me three things with just four simple words. When getting ready together for a special event, she would walk into my room and say first, “You look good too!” We had to control our giggles as not to smear our make-up. And in that simple phrase she managed to compliment me, compliment herself (which is vital — you can’t give away what you don’t have), and give us both a reason to laugh.
So I put a scarf on my purse. I tell my friend she looks beautiful. That she smells good! The stranger in line that I like her coat. And I’m not afraid to tell the woman in the next dressing room, “You look good too!” Because the laughter must be shared. The compliments given freely! And maybe, just maybe, unlike my purse, it DOES lighten the load, just a little.
On your way up today, don’t forget to give someone a lift.
I usually had ten to fifteen minutes to spare. I held the back of the green leather seat and jumped up the minute the bus driver braked and pulled out the stop sign along with door. First off of the school bus, I ran around the corner to the back door. I flung my coat into the locker that I never actually locked and ran to the gym. No windows, it was as dark as night. I put a notebook between the doors, cracking a sliver of light that led me to the utility closet. It wasn’t always there, on the doorknob, the plastic jump rope I purposely hung after gym class. Most days, the gym teacher put it away and locked the door, but from time to time, as I felt my way along the wall the next morning, I would feel it before I saw it, and my day began with a heart jump of excitement.
Of course I had jump ropes at home. I managed to sneak them in our cart quite often at Ben Franklin. They weren’t expensive. But the jump ropes at Washington Elementary were nothing short of gorgeous. Worthy of being locked up. They had a weight to them. The plastic blue and white segments would snap against the gymnasium floor with each turn. Maybe it was the darkness that heightened the sound, but the hard plastic cracking against the floor sounded like power. And I twirled myself into confidence.
When the bell rang, I hung the rope back on the knob with a silent thank-you. I picked up my notebook and smiled sweatily into my desk for the day. Ready to face the light of day. The light of learning.
It’s different for everyone. It’s even different for ourselves as we continue to change. But we always need to find a way to begin. To boost our confidence. To give ourselves a head start (a jump start). I know what works for me. My hope today is that these words are the tiny crack in the door, the small sliver of light, that leads you to finding yours. Your confidence. Your power. Your beginning.
I imagine longing has to stay in the car. And in that moment, that small and courageous step onto the uncertainty of gravel, in the abandonment of longing and the commencement of action, this, I think, is where true hope can begin.
I wanted to capture that moment. Stroke by stroke. As a reminder. To do something. And I’m not saying it’s easy. It can be terrifying to leave the ride — the “well, we’ve always done it this way” — even when you know it’s not taking you where you want to go. But this courage, to drop the baggage of what was, and see what will be, there is beauty in this. I can see it. Maybe you need to see it too.
I step away from the car. I can feel the rocks beneath my feet. It’s not painful. It feels like possibility. And I am not afraid. With each step I hear the words, “She wasn’t where she had been. She wasn’t where she was going, but she was on her way.”
I pillowed my ears between two couch cushions as the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed through my grandma’s living room. “Would the cows be ok?” I asked her. “Safe in the barn,” she said.
“And the car?” “In the garage.”
“And grandpa?” “Smoking his pipe in the basement.”
She patiently had an answer for each one on my list. But surely not the flowers, I thought. They couldn’t possibly be ok. I peaked my head through the front entry door. They were closed and slightly bent as the storm raged around them. “Are they dead?” I asked. “No, just waiting. You’ll see in the morning.”
I slept on the sofa that night. Grandpa snored in the next room. Grandma rolled. I waited under covers.
The first light cracked through the door we never used, giving sound to Grandma in the kitchen. I raced through to the side door. Tiptoed lightly, tickling the wet grass and stood in front of the sun-lit front stairs flanked by flowers. Straight, strong and wide open! I could not only see them, but hear them!
I marked my return to the kitchen with prints of little wet toes. “They’re good, aren’t they?” “Yes!” I agreed.
Oh, the storms I can create in the middle of the night, even still. I go through my lists and cover myself back to sleep. All part of the growth inside. Knowing the storm will end, light will come, and this bloom of voice and thunder, was about to be heard.
They didn’t make it clear when they bent over to get face to face and asked the question, “What do you want to become when you grow up?” They made it seem like it was a one time thing. I never dreamed it would be daily.
The easiest thing would be to just let them all fall to the ground, the wild plums from our garden tree. But that’s not who I am. So I stand bucketed beneath the limbs and pluck and shake and fill. Wild plums do not give it away easily. Skin and pit are prepared to put up quite a fight. I could just smash them all together, and it would be easier, but again I answer, possibly with less conviction, but still, that’s not really who I am. So I peel each tiny fruit. One by one. Put them in the colander to let the juices flow. Smash them by hand, struggling to release the pit that hangs on, and on…but I can’t blame a pit for being a pit. The juice and sweet pulp that remains gets sugared and boiled into the most beautiful rouge — prune rouge.
We had it on our homemade bread for breakfast. The day becomes, and I begin.
Maybe there’s no way to be warned. And maybe it’s better that we aren’t. It would be a little overwhelming to hear that you are going to have to become, and become and become. Every day you will be asked to become the person you want to be. For me, it’s from canvas, to paper, to table. From person to person, customers online, strangers en route, family in house…who am I to each of them, to myself? Of course I fail, but therein lies the beauty of it all, I get to become again. We all do.
That’s not to say it’s easy. Tears and sweat will need to be wiped away constantly, but when you get there, to the sweet prune rouge of it all, it is beautiful, this becoming, so I face the mirror and ask myself, still and again, to become.
The music was playing loudly in the studio, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.” She came to see me paint, my soon to be mother-in-law. Both being brand new, me to this language and she to sharing her son once again, we struggled to find something to say. I was so delightfully surprised when she joined them in the chorus. “Lie-la-lie, Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie…” She clapped along. Whirled her hands in a motion to tell me to play it again. I did. Twice. She touched my canvas (the nearest thing to my heart) and smiled. She made a motion like one would asking for the check at a restaurant. I gave her a pencil and paper, and she went back to the house.
I found a note on my desk later. She wrote it in her best English. The words are mine, but I will tell you she welcomed me to this family.
It was only a few years later. We weren’t prepared for things to be brand new again. I suppose one never is. Losing her memory, she needed the special care of assisted living. It was still new enough that she could tell the difference. She knew what was happening. Tears fell like drops of paint down the canvas of her face. I took out my phone and played “The Boxer.” She smiled, not with joy, but enough to say, “the fighter still remains.”
We fill the car with music as we travel from state to state. When Simon and Garfunkel sing this song, I can hear heaven’s clapping “in the clearing.” We head toward the daily brand new.
