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.
She was not unlike most of the super powers that I watched on Saturday mornings. All were contained in the tightest of fashion. It’s why, I imagined they could move through the world so easily. And so it was with Mrs. Bergstrom. She stood in front of our first grade class at Washington Elementary. No loose ends. Her hair slicked back in a perfect bun. Her black pencil skirt smoothed without wrinkle, making it impossible to see where the chalkboard ended and her waist began. That’s how all the words got in, I thought. This seamless transition. And wasn’t that her superpower, all those words that she spelled out, sounded out, drew out. I wanted some of that power. Just to stand in all that “super” for even a moment. I leaned forward in my desk. Pulled up my neck. Straightened my back. Reached one leg behind the chair to make myself into the straightest line. To create a path for all that knowledge she was passing our way.
It’s easy to let a day go by. To let the passage of time slouch us over. To drape in the fray of worry and get caught in every dark moment. But that wasn’t how we were taught. Not how I was taught. So I wipe the chalk from my hands and smooth them down my skirt and I stand. I stand tall. “Gather it in,” my heart tells my brain — be taut — despair can only slide down, slide off. And it occurs to me how similar the words are. This taut and taught. And it straightens me. Lifts me. Letting go the fray, I Bergstrom to the front of the morning.
When she was reporting on a full time basis, the writer Joan Didion said she used to have this dossier taped to her door. It was a packing list of what to bring — a list she could quickly check off without thinking, and begin her journey. I love it because I find myself doing the same thing. Not for a suitcase, but for my heart, my mind.
Challenges rarely announce themselves, they merely show up at the door, so I need my list ready. I don’t want to think about it. It goes a little something like this:
Before I had finished the page in my sketchbook, it had become an Emily Dickinson poem. “In the name of the Bee,” — a poem that had been passed around between my mother, my ninth grade English teacher, my friend David, two books on my shelf, and the path that I walk daily.
It was another Emily who asked,
“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?” STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”
– Thornton Wilder, “Our Town”
Wanting to get to “some,” and realizing my limits for sainthood, I try to walk in the poem each day.
I said once, on the days that I can’t create something beautiful, at least give me the wisdom to see it. Yesterday was busied with a trip to Marseille. We had an appointment at the Hopital Conception. We were greeted at the entry with a poster of Rimbaud, the French poet. While others sat in the waiting room. I sat in the poetry. I looked around to see if others were held in the syntax, hoping, wishing, they could feel my Emily within their Rimbaud. That maybe we could all live together in the magic of the word, maybe not “every, every minute,” but for this moment, the magic of this collective poem.
I liked to sit by him at the table, breathing in the smell of the earth from his overalls, but there were often things on his plate that had me racing to the cereal cupboard for a replacement meal. I was not one for squirrel, or gizzard. Gravy poured over anything never appealed to me. It didn’t present the horror of a church potluck, but it was close. So I grabbed a stool to reach the bowls from up high, and something Kellog’s from the variety packs my Grandma so generously kept stocked in the very attainable bottom corner cupboard. And I was saved.
We carry emergency food in the car. Mostly crackers. Mostly for me. Dominique will often brave the local cuisine as we drive from state to state. Gas stations are sometimes the only source. Somewhere in the indistinguishable fields between Colorado and Nebraska, we pulled over. After gratefully using their bathroom, I knew I would be finishing my Wheat Thins. Dominique looked behind the glass and settled on the deep fried gizzards. (Of course they had gizzards! If my grandma could so easily show up with her root-beer floats, my grandpa was certainly not going to be outdone. And there they were – gas stations gizzards.)
I kept driving with the box of crackers neatly tucked between my legs. Dominique ate his gas station gizzards — and really enjoyed them! The smell of earth seeped through the windows. Rueben and Elsie smiled in the rear view.
I don’t remember not having a crayon in my hand. At least one in the pocket of my jeans purchased in Herberger’s basement. An unsharpened pencil (because why wouldn’t I use it?). Paints in the nightstand by my bed. Big Chief notebook pads everywhere. Coloring books stacked in the closet. Inside my book bag. Pencil cases from every theme park within Minnesota and Wisconsin. I suppose the scene was set from the start, in this my first act.
The famous writer Anton Chekhov said, “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”
I may never be famous. Nor rich (in the monetary sense). None of this has ever been the worry. But I fire my “pistol” daily. I write. I paint. I create something. Anything. Because I know what I’ve been given. I’ve always known the value. I have peeled the paper from every Crayola and used it to the end. I have sharpened the #2 until my fingers were at risk of getting caught in the sharpener that hung by each classroom of Washington Elementary. I fill the pages. Each canvas. It is my privilege. My duty. My responsibility. My joy.
Whatever it is that you’ve been given, use it. Fire the pistol. Play the piano. Weed the garden. Care for the children. Teach. Reach. Run. Use your gifts. There is a reason that they were put there, on your set, in your hands, within your heart.
I type the words for you this glorious morning. Read them with a bang!
I suppose we all hope for it — a little of the magic to rub off. The plaque on the outside wall says the author lived here. I stand in sturdy on the sidewalk, ready to catch any discarded words from a hundred years ago. Words left hanging in the cement’s cracking, perhaps ready, in this moment of my standing, to release themselves. I open my pockets and umbrella my shirt.
I go to museums and restaurants. Vowing to paint this. To make this. I will turn the kitchen table into the coffee shop, and sip slowly, slip gently into the romance of it all. And isn’t that what we’re here for, after all. To enjoy the art of being alive, but also to leave a touch of the magic behind for others to climb upon, to rest upon, to become.
I was lucky. I saw it early. I sat at my grandparents’ kitchen table, and held. The wood had already absorbed them. These Hvezdas. Scents of kolaches and pipe tobacco. Imprints of elbows calculating and cards slapped down in victory. Dice shook. Recipes tweaked. Books of crops and yields gone over and over again. Radio vibrations of Paul Harvey and rain forecasts. Over it hands shook. On it hands folded. And underneath, four angular legs that stuck out too far for a racing toddler, but held strong, this sturdy table, this gathering of life.
I take it with me everywhere. I’m sprinkling it now on this kitchen table where I type the morning words. Reach out your hands, your heart, the magic is falling.
I have purchased them, found them, painted them even — these bookmarks. This way to signify where I’ve been, where I’m headed. This perfect way to keep moving forward. If only I, we, had the same way to mark our every day lives.
I think of how many times I have learned lessons again and again. Going back in chapter to retain the information. Oh, yes, I think, I’ve learned this for the last time, and yet…here I am thumbing backwards. Worrying the same old worries. Replaying the words someone said. Until my heart finally says, as loud as it can, over the words written on brain, “Move on. Read on. There’s so much more!” And it’s always sweeter. Life. My story. When I do. When I take the mark from the page, lay it beside me, just out of reach, and continue the story.
I’ve said it before, it’s good to rest. To place the bookmark gently. Breathe. Sleep. Smile. Dream even. But we must never give up. There’s so much more to learn. To see. To love. To share. So much of the story awaits.
I painted this bookmark of Maya Angelou. She says, “When you know better, do better.” Yes, I smile, and turn the page.
I have to turn the heat up while reading this book. It takes place on Lake Superior, and the icy winds jump from the page and go straight into my bones. This is the power of words extraordinarily placed, for sure, but it’s also the release into those pages — the allowing of yourself to go there — an agreement between author and reader that says I will take you on a trip, if you trust me. And what a ride, if you do!
Maybe it’s easier for me because I’ve been making that same deal with my heart for most of my life. As it authors my journey, I choose to follow. It has never promised a clear path, quite the contrary. But it has guaranteed an experience. Paths that I never would have imagined. It waves me in. (It’s hard to refuse the heart’s “c’mon!” — so I follow.) But it never leaves me stranded. Within the adventures of the unknown, the uncertain, the even frightening at times, it throws out lines of “brave” and “hope” and always the ol’ show stopper — “love.”
This new book is entitled, “I Cheerfully Refuse,” by Leif Enger. As I snuggle under a Grandma Elsie quilt, I take the rain to the face and follow where it leads.
There is a voice in all of us, I suppose, that says “you know you can just quit.” I have heard it a million times. And it can be intoxicating, but it’s not my author, so I refuse, cheerfully, and make my way with courage, hope and love. And the key word here is make. Perhaps we were taught that we would magically “find” our way, when the truth is, it has to be made. Step by step. Word by word. Day by day. Trip by trip. Typing it now, I have to smile, because it tells you right in the name, this journey — this “trip” — that there will be stumbles, just as advertised. This is not for fear, but comfort.
The sun is coming up, I can’t hear the sound of the negative voice over the yell of my heart’s c’mon! I begin to make my way.
I would have never thought to use the phrase, even if I was aware of it — “Up to code” — all I knew was that everything I loved at Central Junior High was deep in the basement. Were there even windows in the art room? I can’t be sure. Because truth be told, it all felt like a window, a magic doorway to travel. It was, in my teenage vocabulary, wide open!
The time we spent on each medium was merely to get a taste. Before the wheels stopped spinning, or the clay dried on our eager fingers, we were off to the dark room. We drew grids on cartoons from the Sunday papers and duplicated panels from the Wizard of Id. Was it good? We didn’t even wonder, because our thin, long haired teacher, said things like no other junior high teacher from the upper levels. He said, “that’s cool,” and shook his head slowly. Short of snapping fingers, for one hour a week, we were the beatniks of Central Junior High.
It was ironic, I suppose, to feel so free in this darkened basement, but I did. And it was easy to be brave below, where no one else was watching. I pocketed the dreams, hoping, willing even, that one day I would take them out of the basement, into the light of day. Stuffed deeply, it took many years, but here I am. Out in the open. The wide open! And I look at the walls covered in portraits and travels. I thumb through my sketchbook. I share with you. The world.
I see the paint on my thigh as I type the words this morning. I shake my head slowly, my heart up to the only code it knows, and I think, that really IS cool.
