Something told me we wouldn’t be there long. It was more than basement dark. The whole house seemed to know that changes were coming. Still I picked a color for my bedroom that I thought would change things. Yellow. Yellow carpeting. Bedspread. I tucked myself inside all of that hope. Of course my father still left. We had to sell the house. So you might say it didn’t help at all. While it’s true, it didn’t change circumstance, it did change my mood, and my heart to this day.
Maybe it’s the exhiliration of spring, or just a new day, but whenever I need a lift, or want to give one, I turn to yellow. It doesn’t change the basement, but it does light a path. I pray you can see it. It contains a thousand stars. A glorious sun. Even the lemons know, and rely on the promise of what’s to come. So I send it on word and wing — all things yellow, all things hope.
I suppose I heard it on the street. On tv. Someone called it a lemon. Maybe it was a car. Loving yellow, I looked around. I didn’t see anything. When explained that it meant something bad, something not up to standards, well, I just wasn’t having it. Not my lemons, my beautiful yellow friends. The color of my bedroom, my bedspread. The highlighter of all things important in every book. If anything, I thought they were more than special, these “lemons.” Braving all that light. I wanted to be that brave. Shining in a color so brilliant. What would be given so much notice, if it weren’t worth seeing?
It’s not always as easy now. As the “lemons” get bigger. But I think, still, maybe this isn’t bad, it simply needs to be seen. And maybe I’m not the beautiful glorious yellow of it all. Sometimes I’m the book, carrying all the highlighted words. Sometimes I’m just the table. Worn and weary, but smart enough to hold up the light of the lemon.
Maybe that’s too simple, but I’m not sure everything has to be so hard. So I highlight the words in my heart. Stand strong. Give me your biggest lemon. I know what to do.
I was a teenager having surgery in Minneapolis. It was not yet spring, but for my mother. She was dressed in yellow, head to toe. From my wheelchair, I could see her slacks, not break at the knee, but simply curve like a note in a Harry Belafonte song. The elevator door opened and the doctor smiled at her — said she looked as “beautiful as a jonquil.” I didn’t even know what that meant, but it was the most elegant compliment I had ever heard. Back at my room, no iPad or telephone, certainly no dictionary, we could only imagine how beautiful that flower looked.
It has been decades, and I’m still lifted by yellow. I’m still lifted that my mother dressed to lift, herself and me. I’m still lifted by jonquils standing tall in a breeze that they shouldn’t survive, as my mother bent, but never broke.
As the elevator door opened to 2026, I gave the woman in my sketchbook a yellow sweater. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Lift each other.
I imagine there are some people in this world who do the right thing and then build on it. And by right I don’t mean proper, but successful. That is to say they are victorious, and then victorious once again. I don’t know these people, and I’m certainly not one of them.
Most of my successes (and joys for that matter) have come from standing, not on the shoulders of giants, but lemons. And while a lemon won’t hold you steady, it will teach you the true meaning of balance with every wobble. Every victory will be earned. Maybe not the first time, nor even the second. But oh, how it will let you shine in that glow of the yellow. The yellow of bloom and blossom. Of sunlight and growth. Of evening lamp lit long into the study. Of the morning that comes again and again, whispering try, just try. The yellow that keeps the farmer planting. The grandmother washing dishes. The single mother walking to the office for little wage. The daughter studying for a school they can’t afford to pay, one she can’t afford to miss. Beautiful, and glorious lemons.
I paint them again and again, as the heroes of my story. The bright and shiny yellows of my life, my love.
I knew people didn’t particularly like dandelions. And yet, but for Mrs. Muzik’s lawn (she was an extraordinary gardener), they roamed up and down Van Dyke Road, tickling toes freed from the confines of winter, gathered in fists of little Norton girls bursting to profess one sort of love or another, mowed over by exhausted Dyndas, and thrusted by angry Shulz boys into unsuspecting summer dreamers.
I guess I was one of those dreamers. He rubbed the dandelion on my face and under my chin. I couldn’t see the yellow that he claimed was all over my face, but I couldn’t see the feel it, along with the pink that cheeked my embarrassment. “That means you like butter!” He laughed, almost accusatorially. I didn’t understand. I did like butter, and he laughed even louder when I told him so. Confused, I rode off on my banana seat bike. The yellow remained, I suppose, until the after dinner bath.
I only thought of it yesterday when I saw the sea of yellow at a distance. How pretty, I thought. I do love the color yellow. As I climbed the hill, they became more clear. Dandelions. I have to admit, there was a brief second where I thought, oh, just dandelions, and then I caught myself. They were beautiful. And as long as we’re mentioning it, I do love butter! And especially French butter!
The thing is, we get to decide. It’s easy to go along with the crowd. To hop on the lawnmower when we’re tired. Send the nasty message. Begin to hate even, for no reason other than a color. Maybe it gets harder as the crowds get bigger, the voices get louder, the weapons more fierce, so we have to be strong. Stronger. And if we like “yellow,” we must wear it with pride. All day long, with hair blowing in the breeze.
There are so many things I don’t understand in this world. But I still know the difference between right and wrong. And I do love butter.
If I worried about anything, it certainly wasn’t the raw egg in the yellow cake batter my mother occasionally mixed up, along with the aid of boxed Betty Crocker, or Duncan Hines. Begging for the beater in mid-whirr. I sandwiched myself between apron and cupboard, inching my fingers toward the spinning bowl, my mother trying to push me out of danger with one thigh. She spun the dial back to stop, and cranked the neck, lifting the dripping attachments just out of my reach. She unplugged the mixer, because she thought of things like that — ways to protect me. Perhaps she had been bitten or pinched before. Or maybe it was other dangers lived through that told her to beware. With the power off, I felt like it had all been given to me. I cupped both hands as the elixir dripped into my palms. We had spoons, even a spatula, but I couldn’t be bothered with either. She then pulled the beaters out of the neck and handed me the first. Licking one rung left two pale yellow lines above and below my mouth. I was a warrior — a “battered” warrior.
Of course we never used those words, because they would have been too close. Too close to the actual battles ahead. And if there were warnings, would we have even heard them? Over the mixer’s motor? (I’m not sure anyone can, or does.) The laughter rang as she wiped a line of batter from my face and tasted it? Sweet was the taste of no real fear.
I don’t know if he left that day, my father. Did the cake get baked? Did we eat it? Did it get thrown away? This yellow cake of innocence? I don’t remember hearing the mixer again. Did we sell it at the garage sale? Probably. It was big. Too big to fit in our future small apartment. Too loud for those above us, or beside us. She would have thought of things like that. Not disturbing the neighbors in the duplex. The fourplex. The eventual apartment.
We never really baked again. But she filled my palms. First with security. Her hand in mine. And when the hunger returned, for something sweet, when the baked-in trust awakened and said it was ok to enjoy things, the laughter came as well, by the handful, by the heart full. Sweet laughter. It rang over rumor. It rang over fear. And it WAS sweet. Not like at first — when I didn’t know about the “eggs” — when I didn’t know that bad things could happen. (Once you know about them, it’s hard to forget.) But sweet nonetheless. Even baking now, I don’t give it worry — it’s just a part of it. And life is still so very sweet.
It’s happened once or twice before — just as it did this morning. Walking on the path, it nearly stopped me in my tracks. This sweet taste in my mouth. So clear. So delicious. So transportive. Yellow cake batter. The taste tickled my tongue. Inside my cheeks. I put my finger to my lip. Surely it was there. It was so real. My finger came back dry. But the smile remained.
The certainty of gravel remains beneath my feet. I stand unafraid. She is still finding a way to protect me — she still thinks of things like that. Reminding me. Pointing me to all things good. And the laughter rings above the birds, singing “Fill your heart. Feed your soul. Taste this life.”
You have to work at the romance of it all. Loving, sure, but for living as well. Even the most beautiful of places can dim when you’re not looking for the best croissant, but instead going to your dentist appointment.
Maybe it’s too literal, but yesterday, to improve the view, I started washing windows. Will that guarantee a rainy day today, even in one of the most sunny places on earth? Most probably. But I would do it again. And will. Because that moment of clarity in which I see it — really see it — the beauty all around me, without the dust of ordinary, this view is priceless. So I make the effort.
That is not to say that it doesn’t often come with condition and complaint. I’m not proud of it, but it does happen. But if I’m going see the beauty through the imperfections of a streaked window, then I have to allow the same for myself. Because these “streaks of imperfection” show the work put in, the effort made. And there is beauty in this. Perhaps even me.
So I ask of those around me, near and far, when I make the smudged attempts at beautiful living, even when I fail, perhaps, fingers crossed, heart hopeful, you will see the love in it all. Through the streaks of romance, beyond the damage and the dust, we all, I suppose, await the sun.
It’s always a surprise, even though they come up in the same place, at the same time each year — the wooded slope at the edge of our property. Home to the wild asparagus in spring and the autumn jonquils. It’s an explosion of yellow, but you have to want to see it. You have to look for it. You have to brave the slope. Such gentle and confident beauty to grow in a place where few bother to search.
I saw them yesterday. I was nearly two hours into mowing the lawn. On the last stretch. Tired. Losing interest in the nature of things. Edging slowly toward the slope, behind the greenhouse, I saw them. Dancing in the sea of yellow that they made for themselves. How delightful, I thought, (and always think), that they bloom just behind the house of glass where it would be so easy.
Placing them on the table, I could hear Dr. F. Dixon Conlin tell my mother, who was standing by my hospital bed dressed all in yellow’s joy, “Wow, you look just like a jonquil.” It was my first time hearing the flower’s name, but not the first time I saw my mother looking like one. Because she always brought the joy, from head to toe, even in the most unlikely of places. She was by my side, surgery after surgery, never once looking like what her insides must have felt.
Maybe this is what keeps me searching out the unimaginable. Keeps me daring the slope. There is joy to be found. Hidden seas of yellow just waiting. My mother taught me that. Her lesson shines on our kitchen table.
She used to write them on little yellow sticky notes and put them by her telephone — favorite lines from the books she was reading. They would be at the ready for discussion when she called me. Maybe everything in that sentence is dated. Printed books. Wall mounted phones. Notes hand written. My mother. But for me, it feels like five minutes ago. Now.
She is still getting in her red Ford Focus. Driving down the street to the Public Library to return the books — never in the drop box, but to the librarian Bobbi Jo, who is lucky enough to hear the “yellow notes” straight from my mother’s mouth. And she is quick to deacon herself back home on the bench in front of the picture window. And the sunlit words of choice find their way from page to heart to hand to pad to me. And it never ends.
Each note was a reflection, a reminder I suppose, of who she was. We’re all looking to find ourselves, the best of ourselves, and pass it on. And, oh, she was good at it.
I change the business card holder on my desk frequently. Even with paint on my hands and pants, I need reminding of who I am. Who I want to be. A reminder to keep searching. To keep writing down the clues. Little bits of my heart. And to pass them on. Is it the best of who I am? For today, yes. Maybe tomorrow, even better. Because the calls are still coming into my heart. I hear my mother’s voice. And Bobbi Jo will remind me through Facebook that this library is still open. And maybe we will all get a little better at communicating the best of ourselves. And possibly, most probably, if we Ivy it right, the yellow of our beating hearts, will reach through all lines, and stick.
I have always been inspired, since the first time I saw it — getting bigger and bigger through my airplane window. New York. I know I am not alone. It’s in the song, after all… “If you can make it there…” The melody got louder in each beat of my heart.
Some might say it’s cliche… and I would have been the first to agree, had it stopped at some point. But it never has. With each trip, over and over, if anything, it grows — this desire to be better. To wake up and want more — I’m not talking about things — but I guess, to simplify it, life — to want more out of life itself — to want more from myself. With each step on a New York street, I feel like I want to dress better. Walk taller. Be sure of my steps. I want to paint better – master my pieces. Create more. Write more. I become the melody. Humming along with the taxis.
The trick is always, I suppose, not to be inspired (this is rather easy), but to keep that inspiration alive. That takes effort. Work. Faith. At first, when returning from a trip, I could keep it up. Dressing a little nicer when I went to Staples to ship out orders. Savoring Caribou’s coffee a little longer. Feeling the buzz in my hands. Oh, but how easily it could slip away, how easily I could slip into old habits of ordinary. Yellow fading.
It has been 500 days. 500 days! of this blog!! Not one day missed. It has become my New York. I have become my New York. At first, I labored (and some days still). Worried about the idea – would it come? But then I began to believe in it, trust in it, allow it to come. And it does. It has for 500 days!
It is so easy to let the magic slip from our heart and hands. To wait for something else, someplace else, someone else, to inspire. But I don’t want to miss out. I don’t want to let one day go by without feeling this way, without feeling this buzz of life. It may not always be this blog, but I have made a promise to myself that it will be something…each day will be something…I will be my own vibrant yellow! Moving. Maneuvering. Honking even! Unprepared to let even a day slip away. Hanging on! I am living this life!
It still may be a blur! Time moves pretty quickly! But oh, what a blur it will be!!!
