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.
I can reach it through the tree line when I’m mowing the lawn, this portal to my childhood years. Pushing up, pulling back and pushing up again, I saw it — the outline, the invitation, of a small chair. I idled the lawnmower to peek through the leaves. There was a tiny table. Two abandoned plastic cups from the most recent party. One of the attendees, a small stuffed bear, obviously warn out from the festivities, was taking a nap in the shade of the table. Without unhandling the mower, my heart maneuvered through the thistled brush, and I, in my white flowered dress from my sixth birthday, sidled up to the table. Everyone came. All of my dolls and stuffed animals. My mom with her extra-frosting cake sat beside me. We clinked tiny cups of water disguised as tea and we spoke in the language of Alice, and danced behind the looking glass. Fueled by youth and love and the belief in all things possible, I finished cutting the grass.
I bake her cookies, the little neighbor girl. In exchange, I suppose, unknowingly perhaps, she keeps the door open.
Of course I had seen my grandma in a chair before. Witnessed the quick cat naps. But the first time I saw her sitting, really sitting, was in the grief of my grandpa’s passing. It wasn’t in the church. I suppose there, she was still being lifted. It was in the church basement. On a folding chair. Next to an untouched plate and coffee cup. When I approached her, I could see the rising in her eyes, but her legs didn’t offer the Elsie spring. Not today, they said. Something changed in me that day. Roles reversed. All the years of her heart bending down towards mine had taught me well, and I bent down towards her.
I added it to the list of the gifts she had given me.
For even grief was a gift of sorts, wasn’t it? Oh, this loving. It changes shape constantly. I we, can anger, be in fear, as love keeps changing, but it may be love’s greatest gift of all.
Sitting in front of their portraits this morning, I don’t really remember who leaned in…I haven’t the tally of the getting to, I only know that our hearts found a way to level, to come together. This love, sits forever well.
I recently learned that when birds sleep in a row, the two on the outer edges keep one eye open to protect and allow those on the inside to fall asleep. It doesn’t surprise me, I have rested within that protective watch.
There is a big scientific name for it, which I’ve already forgotten, this act of being able to keep “one eye open” while being in a half sleep — we’ve always just called that “pulling an Elsie.” She had to have been doing the same thing — birding her way through every card and dice game played on her kitchen table. Able to sleep while we pondered over our next move, then waking at the exact moment to handily beat us with chirping joy! And I saw her do it everywhere. In the funeral home where she phone-sat. At the grocery store check-out line (she did indeed check out). Even once in the car. But I was never worried. The speed at which she could belly-jiggle herself awake allowed all of us to rest, to play, to run in a carefree summer, to sleep soundly under her watch.
I suppose you could just rule it all as nature. But I know not everyone was blessed with a Grandma Elsie. So I give thanks. And make my way to the outer edges.
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.
You can’t tell me that they’re always trying to get somewhere. Most of the time, it looks like they’re playing in the wind. Dancing even. These birds so elegantly bouncing and bounding above. And why wouldn’t they dance, they already have the song.
She never wore a tutu, nor spandex dresses, but oh how my mother could dance. She would teach me on the carpet of the living room floor. It was slower. But when I had mastered the steps, she’d lead me to the kitchen floor, and I barely felt my stockinged feet touch the linoleum. She’d sing along to the boombox, pull me in and spin me out and I knew I was flying. I asked her if she had dance instructors? No, she said. In school? I asked. No. Did grandma teach you. She laughed (sure it was a bit of a dance maneuvering through all those people in the farm kitchen), but no. Then how did you know you could dance? I asked. I could always hear the song, she said, and pulled me in once again.
And wasn’t that belief? Wasn’t that the true art of living? Just listening for the music. Trusting your feet would follow. Believing, one way or another, you were going to fly!
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?
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 Christmas carcass became yesterday’s soup. Aproned and worry-free, I Grandma Elsied my way through the process. Adding everything. Measuring nothing. And it was delicious. Steeped with holiday and attention, it tasted rich and full, but for me, the added pleasure, satisfaction, joy, came with nothing being wasted.
I try to practice it — this making use. A scrap of metal turned into a frame. Discarded wood into panels. Yesterday’s still fresh oil paint into tomorrow’s tableau. And to me it’s all important, but I hope I pay the same attention to living. Using everything I have. Every speck of courage, because we’ll get more tomorrow. Loving with every piece of my heart, knowing it means nothing left inside. And perhaps it’s not as easy as pot to stove, but I was taught to attempt in Elsie’s kitchen. To abandon worry and just create.
She’s smiling over my soup bowls, but more over, my heart. Telling me daily to give it all, and just become.
I don’t suppose the spaces left from loved ones passed can ever be completely filled. But maybe it’s wrong to think they ever were. These relationships weren’t beautiful, memorable, longed for even still, because of their solid perfection. Perhaps they were always stardust, flittering, fluttering, changing shape, with room always left for dancing, beneath the flickering light.
It’s the way I choose to think of it, my mother’s space, not as a hole left behind, but a dance floor. And all that magic that sprinkles from her still, lights up the people around me, and they step in, tap me on the shoulder, and ask me to dance. They are my new daily connections. My new last calls. My shared laughter and secrets. Hopes and challenges. Not replacements, but keepers of the dance.
We’re not all good at the same thing. Some are meant to pull you in, and simply sway. Other’s tap their feet and keep the beat alive. Some dizzy you into laughter. Dance you into breathless. And hold out the ladle of punch. I am grateful for them all. All of you, who keep my dance floor filled, my heart in motion, in sway, in the right tempo, under the stardust.
