Heart Box Studio

Art. Show. Love.

I remember being small, rubbing my hand over the smooth Crayola wax left imprinted on a piece of paper. The force it took to make it smooth.

The way words connected to perform tricks on the blue lines of an open journal, rolling and diving, juggling confusion and hurt into the air and catching it behind its back. 

I remember the way quiet actually had a whisper and could hold me in its arms when I would sit down to draw. 

I applied months ago to several art fairs. I've never been in an art fair. I am a wobbly business woman. Tragic, actually. I give everything away and I don't keep track. Somewhere, someone told me I had to keep track. And I have to make money. And I have to use words like profit and marketing and distribution. And that little voice made an office in my heart and starting pushing papers around, writing up invoices and purchase orders. And my heart got tired of all the business. And my heart didn't want to create anymore, for words like profit and marketing and distribution. My heart pouted and stood in the corner and waited for me to get back from my "meeting." 

Then somewhere I found this speech. These words from Neil Gaiman about art and making and showing up to a blank piece of paper and one extra large desk of uncertainty.  And in his words he spoke of success and failure and what it means to be an artist in the world.  And he spoke of bottles and the tiny messages we put inside every time we make something and set it free into the deep seas of this world.

And to give it away is to never fully know whose small or large heart swelled or beat faster for the words written, the paint brushed, the forms danced in that bottle.

I woke up every morning for three weeks at 5:00 a.m. to get it all done. To frame the giclee prints, to color the originals, to make myself feel like it was enough.

And I broke my toe. Right there in my studio. At 5:30 in the morning, with quiet hallways and children nestled under waves of rest. And I wondered if it was a sign. And I hobbled through worry and memory. 

I gave into the dark cloud that said it wasn’t good enough. That the message inside the bottle wasn’t enough. It was too small. Too self-taught. Too amateur and naïve.  

And I sat in the quiet of our house, with broken crayons and opened and loved journals and I wondered. I wondered if this was what he meant. Neil Gaiman and his 19:54 speech to a group of green, art student saplings stretching their limbs to the sky.

And their little feet would wake my heart again. Would gently help my heart back up from the office floor where it was buried under receipts and order forms. And they slid beside me and helped me prepare with the whispered reward of a new P-518 Mustang, fighter plane model set. 

And sometimes work looks a lot like sleep. 

And I tried to control the waves, tell them which way to bend, where to place their foam and force. I tried to create a breeze to push my little bottle further. Distribution. Queries. Proposals. And my arms burned with exhaustion, holding this sea up with my imagination.

But it was in these old frames, the ones I found discarded and broken and alone, waiting for some kind of new life, that I found a message. One left long ago, pushed out into the sea, that secretly came back to me in this studio. 

And the painters brush, with its secret passage acrylics that lead to an open bottle with messages encrypted and branded on the aged canvas.

And these messages are made in the moments, the places where the pen meets the paper, where the brush gently glides over stretched canvas and bumpy cold pressed watercolor paper.

And this thing, just arms length away, touching the tips of my fingers with its recollection, passes quietly over sunset waters to create wonder and faith in the watercolor sketches and broken fragment prose.

And the dancer’s back arches, pulling a pointed toe to her knee and her outstretched hands give back, pushing the small bottle further out into the world.

And this need to make it all mean something, with margins and deposits, marketing and distribution. It’s gone. And my heart is whole again. And I’m ready for that thing that waits for me, over there, behind the closed gate, between firewood and burning matches, where I can’t see.

And there’s no control, no warning signs or red flashing lights to lean upon for direction or assurances. Just a simple ring, a note played in a well played song. The poem I left on the dining room table or the heart he made in the shower door frost. It comes. It goes. Tiny glass bottles with quietly scratched messages.

We filled two cars with display boards and price tags. We drove four hours with two rest stops. And I cursed when the display board pinched my finger. And the bead of sweat sat poised on the edge of my eyebrow like a cliff jumper contemplating his fear. And I stood in front of a little booth that held all of my heart and I watched them walk by and nod, smile briefly and step closer to the painted yellow street line. 

And she walked in slowly and stood in front of the framed pictures, the four corner wounds that hung in the vulnerable June light. And when she turned, her eyes met mine and she held my hand. Glossy tears fell from her white corner pupils and her head found my shoulder.

"I lost someone too." 

And my eyes burned like puffs of smoke and I squeezed them shut to hold it all in, the waterfall that held my little bottle.

And the tiny message, the one I sent out to sea, the one I pushed through the rough sea waters, came back to me and rested on my heart, the place it once lived in quiet prayer. And her fingers squeezed my hand. And the heart that I left buried under receipts and purchase orders climbed out from under the dark to claim the very message it had created.

And her eyes bowed, reverent. Her fingers opened.

And there in her hand,

my bottle.

The In Between

It has been dry here. The green stems of the garden have been hanging low to the ground, petals limp with a weary thirst. The June grass already an August shade of parched yellow. And as each days passes, a quiet anxiety rumbles. A worry somewhere deep in the ground. A quiet need for the refresh of a summer rain, the want for green leaves kissed with morning dew. 

I have been walking circles around my studio. Waiting for the rain, the refresh, the flood of certainty. Opening the door. Closing the door. Collecting thoughts and laying them on the floor, a small cemetery of ideas and new projects waiting to be resurrected by the wash of trust. The storm that brings with it the calm, the thick air pushed aside by thin droplets of clarity. I wait for the cleanse. 

There is this avoidance. The seat at the table that comes without hiding. It will be the beginning. This new story. The second book that waits in piles on the floor, the shelf, the lining of my heart. And I pace around the dotted line, the place where I need to cut away and put it back together. The studio, this place where God holds a mirror up to my heart and slowly drags my hand across the pictures, already drawn. Words, already spoken.

And maybe I am scared of the wiry garden of weeds that have accumulated in there since she left. Because I have abandoned certain parts, the parts that hurt, the parts I have neglected. Like prayer. And trust. Hope and Grace. 

So it comes out. In parking lots. In front of Hobby Lobby. In the aisle between the paints and canvas. These first drops of rain. The tears that long to quench this dried up garden heart.

And when it comes, it is all I can do to stand in its lavish gift and give into all of its freedom.

And it hurts. And the storm brings up pain. It brings up loss and all of the hard little places I shoved into drawers and hid under rugs. 

But in between the puddles, there is a field of joy. A place where freedom gives us the strength to hold our arms out to our sides, to slide forward in the mess.

And these boys, these tiny bodies, with all of their dirt and grime, mud and honesty. They show me what this freedom looks like when it gets bumped up against truth, against closed doors and dry soil.

And when the lightning comes, we're ready. There is shelter in family. Friends. Open hands and warm cups of coffee under makeshift roofs. And we can wait the storms out together.

And this friend, the one that holds his hand when he teeters on a log, just barely balancing between a high leap and an inch long scar. Her name is Grace. And she stands four fingers taller than the last soaked hair on his head.

Grace, the very thing that follows the storm, that stirs discovery, that uncovers the gift. Grace, the love laced twirl that binds the holes in our hearts, that skips past the mud and delicately tip toes to the sing song hum of our buried treasures.

She follows and hovers. Holds her hands to her heart and protects the very freedom that allows us to fall, barely touching the crease of our backs, gently holding us from the stumble.

And this grace may look small, like maybe she isn't big enough to carry and catch and clean up all of the damage, the muck, the messes we find ourselves in. 

But it's this very smallness that weaves through the tiniest of our cracks, the ones that lead to the deepest breaks. She makes her way through the lines that hold the storm clouds in each wrinkle.

And when the rains do come, you will find this grace between the tallest weeds, in the dirtiest hands, between muddy toes and slippery fingers. You will find this grace in all of the in betweens, the places where hope can get stuck.

And the sky will open up again. And the wet eyes and rubbed cheeks and the tears on the backs of our hands is the deep letting go. And the trees will reach once more to a sky made lighter by the strong winds.

And she will wipe away the smudges, the smears, the thoughts and whispers that hold us back.

And she will point us back to the path that once was covered in snow, in winter and blank pages. 

And the salt on the top of our lips helps us to remember the eyes once closed, can open under the watchful presence of her love.

And the slippery feet and wet, itchy skin, the agitation, that we left somewhere under rocks will find it's way back to the shelter of her grace.

And we will leave it all there, where the path met our feet and rub the dirt from under our eyes and look between the leaves and the bark. And her petals will be met with the soft hush of our last tear. For now.

Somewhere. In between.

To Stand in a City

The flight was short. I held a bent magazine with my left hand and squeezed the metal armrest with each jolt of bumpy sky air. I watched their faces. I looked for the fear in horizontal bent pupils. But they twirled their hair and crossed their legs. My eyes searched for the emergency exit.

My three small boys at home and me, somewhere up here, never separated before by so many open hours and minutes. And I wondered how often I forget to tell them I love them. In between the borders and the grassy plains, I placed each imaginary hand into mine and prayed. No fever. No warnings. And I longed to smell their hair and clean the dirt from under their chins. I wondered if they bathed or ate the last piece of toast left hidden under their napkin.

I traced the outlines of small fish lakes, the river arteries running through squares, dividing them up into moveable checker boards, puzzles and plastic fences. My eyes, the translators, and my sometimes courage, throwing me in the air, pushing me along, over clouds and miniature ruins of skyscrapers and soda machines.

And then she appeared from the bottom edge of the rounded, corner window. Her city. This New York City.  And I wondered if this first trip, novice film coating, could be rubbed off. She scared me. With her towering brick concoctions and buzzed taxicabs.  Her rushed across the street, jaywalkers and high climbing window washers.  She scared me. With her talent, and trend and posh exteriors. And me. So small, I could fit between your index finger and thumb.

I could tell you New York was great. I could tell you how excited I am that The Gift is spreading its wings a little further into the world, gliding gently over cautious streams and open fields of possibility.

But, to keep a book closed, to stare at the glossy cover and run your finger over the title gives little to the words that were sealed for so long between trembling hands. 

It's in the making, the shaping and shifting, that turns pages and paper and words and hearts and hands. It's the making, the waiting, the wondering that gives a book its breath. 

So I will try to be brave. Make these words the distance, the miles, the airplane’s wings. Let the words create the length, the perforated lines that connect the past and hold the power to tear each page out and let it go forever.

Because the real story is raw and it pulls the skin off of my fragile bones. The story of one small girl and one small boy. A Once upon a time…, searching for its hidden chapters.  The real story is about loss and finding your way home in the darkest depths of the forest. 

Because when you’re lost, the road is marked in ruins, abandoned temples of damage and the cracked walls of resentments. When pain is given permission to drive, when darkness controls the wheel, the light is kept out and the gardens of forgiveness, a blur past moving cars.

And the closed drawers inside my heart held the missing pen caps, the bent paperclips, the struggles, displaced and shoved between abandoned post-it notes with grocery lists never relieved.

And my jaw would tighten. Can they see it? The thin walls that shelter all of it. The tissue paper facade. And I stared out closed windows. and I waited for his eyes to return to mine. I waited for the walls to construct a place where he couldn’t go missing. Where I was his refuge, an island with gentle water shorelines. Where fear and hurt were no longer my guideposts, the tiny speed bumps that gave me pause. So I posted Missing signs for the hearts we once knew and I waited for a new spring.

I tell you this story because secrets corrode. They tear away at strength and hope. They use shame to wrap ropes around our hands and our feet, leaving us feeble and scared in a world where all we need is for people to be who they were made to be.

Because secrets silence hope.

Because secrets tie the beautiful strings of hope into knots.

These secrets lived quietly on blank walls and whispered quiet warnings onto God’s will.  Them. They. Those. Out there. But what secrets and shame don’t know is that love and grace, freedom and acceptance, are bigger and wider than their tiny little voices.

And a room full of darkness holds little power to the smallest stream of light, its golden glow spreading far enough to warm a soft cheek, to illuminate the path in front of us.

And those long lost hurts, the ones I tied to a string and let dangle from my life. I burned them on beaches and screamed their names into pillows. And I signed away ownership with hand scrolled contracts I made with the sky. And I waved goodbye to religion and filled a small boat up with its guilt and watched as its tiny sail became small against my heart’s red horizon.

And God met me on the shoreline and ran His fingers over the sun to shake the light from it's middle, to let the translucent memories hang there in the midday glitter, exposed and made warm by it's release.

I told myself it was all okay. I told myself the cracks didn’t show. I told myself I could grow in the driest of soils.

And what I found was a pair of scissors and a voice that kept whispering the same story and three sets of small eyes that needed to know the dark clouds weren’t the end of us.

So I sat and I listened and I cut and I glued and those same small sets of eyes, perched on the edge of my table, watched as one small boy named Will travelled the very road that laid before them. And I told them to believe even when I wasn’t sure.

And each shadowbox of The Gift, an offering, an outstretched hand to these little men that rode the waves of uncertainty, holding onto the sides of the boat when the storms raged, when all they could see was the hole at the bottom and the water rising beyond them.

Because sometimes we have to hear the story of us, of this love, whispered over us, spilled with ladles of grace and compassion. Found in the places we forgot to look, in a softly lit studio surrounded by tiny pieces of cut paper stuck to the bottoms of our shoes. In the places I tried to hide. The love note that quietly slid behind the dresser, discovered on a day when I needed it the most.

These stories weave bounty with their spidery fingers reaching past and into the words of other stories, becoming intertwined like sunday crossword puzzles. FEAR borrowing its E from HOPE, hope borrowing its H from HEART.

Give me your words, so I will remember, so I will no longer be hardened by the callouses that grow around the perimeter and bend it's translation towards night.

There is this tiny grave inside me that continues to dig well past the bones, into the deep sediment of anguish. And I move my hand over the loose dirt, patting it flat, marking it for identification. Suffering. Grief. Love. Reunion. All buried together within the well of memory. Connected by thin wormholes of light.

I wait for the soft whisper voice to become my own. I wait for the frequency to exceed my fears, for the rattles of hurt and uncertainty to be drowned out by the lyrical hum of love.

And the soft voice whispers,

“Did you know I was there? I was there when your heart was long and stretched between days stapled with grief. When there was wide open wounds that felt burned by the sun, the light that glowed taunts for a darkness you couldn't hide.

I was there when the dark shadows rushed past you and stole your breath. When the floor bent like rubber and his breath was gone."

Give me your hand and I'll show you the world, cupped in one heartfelt song.

There is an opening, a ceremony of abandonment when my hands let go of the wheel. When my eyes water only for the time lost in control, when the passenger seat waits for me to trust again. And turbulence is caught by the hands that silence the wind.

And there were these eyes of blue and green and brown, that watched me cry and joined with me when my tears weren’t enough. When I had shed it all, they had more to give. A circle of “me too’s” joining hands under the ceiling of an Our Father.

Because somewhere in celebration there is gratitude. A gratitude so deep it holds onto the roots of thought and memory. It pulls the strings that keep each soft petal in motion, each leaf in tact.

Let's dance with the sand between our toes and the ocean a quiet audience, clapping with each collapsed wave of submission.

And there is this gift. Not the kind with store bought bows and satin streaming ribbons, perfumed and encased in textured boxes. There’s no tissue paper to soften the journey. There are no medals or ceremonies or New York street dinners.

This gift is the very thing I left buried in the backyard of my heart, taped and bound in the tangles of secrecy. And this day, this book, this life, now free, wears no bows or ribbon or camouflage. I no longer need the embellishments to see this love made real.

Because this gift, you see, these broken legs we’ve hobbled about on, are the very same legs, cracked and splintered, calcified and made stronger by all of its weakest places.

I may always be scared, somewhere. But fear will become the memory, the past that only creeps in to surprise me mid sentence. When "I forgive you," becomes the last step off the shadowy cliff, with you, the tiny silhouette, falling face first into trust.

And here you are. The boy I thought I lost. Not on a silver steed. Draped in princely robes. But, here, alone, stripped of dark memories and days forged in our mess. You’re here. Still here. Holding my hand. 

To sit at a table in New York City across from this boy, 17 years later, 12 father’s days past, I hold a hand that let go, a hand that gave up it’s grip so that it might fit better into this clasp.

I stood in a city that once filled me with fear. The talent. The knowledge. The confidence and depth. That somehow it might swallow me up in all of it’s bright, repetitive burning neon and long leg gallery openings.

But their faces were warm and they invited me in. There was no pushing or shoving. It was a city remembering, drawing a new dream into a blue lit sky. And the mourning was honor and a softness made the hard edges fray, letting the wind take back its melody.

I stood in a city that once filled me with fear.

But instead, I stood beside him and I was tall. Not by size or knowledge or talent or depth. But because he was there and his coat was off and my small pitter patter heart got carried away in his. 

And as the plane lifted into the sky, I followed the shadow on the ground. I watched as the black cutout grew smaller and smaller as the plane rose high into the blue canvas. And as the shadow disappeared, it took with it this last moment of fear.

And the gift was how far I could see.