Heart Box Studio

Tidepool Eyes

The sky was a stretch of black ink as the plane lunged forward into her descent. He placed his small hand over the curved airplane window and pushed his face to the towering edge of sea and morning to be stones. He breathed a heavy sigh and spun circles into the steamed canvas. 

And there was the quiet space right before the plane touched its toe onto wet ground, like blank pages slightly torn from the spiral, the deep breath before anticipation's open gift.

He had a business meeting on Monday.

And four open book days to explore Seattle, the last cliff jump, hands over head into inspiration's deep hidden seas. 

And inspiration, she feels like a first kiss, full of anticipation and heart wing flutters. She opens her hands and pulls you over the fallen tree path. 

He said maybe this is what it feels like to live inside one of those electric train sets. The mossy floors beneath our feet and towering trees dangling over brick tunnels pulling us into its thick curiosity.

And it felt like a moving car, held by a child's hand, driving over the pages of someone else’s photo album, the memories laminated under dusty plastic jackets. A place in my heart that felt lived with out me there, the secret someone forgot to share.

There are places that feel like you have travelled somewhere midsentence, where the words have yet to catch up with the color, the smell , the ladders reaching into white planked clouds.

Where the last spoken word has already been said, where description is muted by pink streaked witness. And to sit there is to hear the words spoken from the mouth of beauty. Words spoken back to you in languages unwritten, spoken only in the gray mist hum and the desperate mountain hold, in beauty's soft foam kisses.

It is the book savored before the end, so each word gets spread out over the tongue, staying there like a round candy melting, holding on to its sweet taste. Each page lined with mountain valley views, the raw smell of newborn tides, pulled back like a heavy blanket.

The tips of his fingers were numb. But he kept searching, the deep knee bend and curled back collector. He moved each hand over mahogany mussel and the barnacles, falling off like loose teeth, leaving holes for his fingers to mend with eager curiosity.

And there, the homeless shell, the arms of crabs still reaching past the hungry gull’s mouth. The starfish with her small R bend, the crab hidden beneath the curve of the shell, safe in shadow and sand.

And he told me when I cried I made tidepools under my eyes.

The place where all of these moments collect and wait for the waters to pull them back out into the sea.

And maybe the sun could find its reflection there between the brown and green plaid of your iris.

Because I want this to be our home. And the walls will be made of your skin, soft from the rub of beauty against this shore, and your grace, sweet boy, the mortar between mistake and redemption.

I still find this pain in small pockets, buried beneath flattened string and warm pennies. The tears that come with marvel, when the beauty shakes my heart so hard, a memory of her gone, the enormity of this small second with burnt edges, already gone before I can hold it.

And somewhere in those tidepool eyes, there are all of the moments I have forgotten, tied together with the remaining string of daylight, this needle and thread pull of connection, embrace and the loose fingers, the fallen scarf let go. 

And the tidepools, her beauty’s city destroyed and built in a day, the impermanent measure of this hold, the permanent measure of renewal.

And for those who have stood here, under beauty's open face, feet sunk and lifted with windowpane outlines. You, who have felt unique for this one moment, made special only by the witness of this beauty, too impossible to scream, held tight for one moment, where lifelines meet warm palms. 

And this beauty wants for nothing in return except for the love that radiates from the tidepools in our eyes, in all the places where reflections get caught, the places that hold deep wonder, the underwater life unseen, caught in slow motion stillness, opening and closing the thin anemone feathers of a whispered breath. 

The moment's eternal goodbye, the forever patient hello. There will never be another. This mustard outline of the sun, this teardrop shaped cloud holding onto its gray belly.

Each moment a hold of the breath and the inescapable letting go. Another fine wrinkle of skin over bone, the kite’s last dance over blue denim skies.

And sometimes it hurts more than others. This fraility, this fragile make of fingernails and cracked shells and the stern ocean air cracking whips over the sand.

The rock between toe and shoe, the open mouth anemone with her petals new with each morning spring. The observant pine, standing tall, the army of soldiers guarding the entrance to stillness.

They already know. This. This moment. She is precious.

I cannot own her or shape her or stand on her back to see what is in front or behind her. I can only marvel at her eyes, the beauty of this one single breath filled with windswept tears running towards the light.

So I will notice it all and set my heart free to marvel, catch each last breath for just this moment and leave the doors open wide for the deep exhalation. 

And when the warm golden light of the tilted moon becomes our last breath, the deep inhalation of our recollections, we will line them up like our treasured collections, placed high on glass shelves, staring out from their shadows, remembering this time set aside. 

Find me here.

42

We slept until the light was new. 

We drove past steel mill cemeteries and dusty furnace stacks. And we smoothed the land with our eyes, making space for the outline of Chicago’s steel frame walls. He moved his hand over his head forcing the skyscrapers of sleep to crumble beneath his palm. 

There are places that feel like falling backwards into the soft open arms of rest.  And we found forgotten childhoods running through the halls of The Art Institute this day, secret notes left unopened in 200 year old eyes of canvas, oil and breath.

January. She asks me to remember.

There is my birthday and the white snow silence of winter. Chilled hikes into forests with muffled voices hidden beneath scarf and hood, his eyebrows lifted, small eyes speaking.

“I wish I was still little.”

His wonder connected to shovels of excavation, the dirt of memory that grows into hills and pastures of adulthood. And his sweet boy wish, the seed buried and grown, the flower bloomed at garden’s edge.

“You are still little.”

And there were words written under skin, set deep in wrinkles and caverns of time. Words I needed to speak to the girl of long ago, the girl still wandering the halls of my heart, searching for rooms with wings, doors of escape, the grass lined path home. You are 42.

And there is the room inside this heart where the door remains closed, leaking light from under its crack. So I stayed awake under blankets and hushed light and asked the small girl to remember. 

There was the band-aid stuck to your knee for nearly two years, the scab just barely healed then scraped away by blacktop collision. Saddle shoes on pavement, socks with lost elastic grip, the soft cotton rolled around your ankles. The backpack held on by thin strap and your eyes finding her, three rows back, her voice ignited by doors opened wide.

“Hello sweet girl.”

The cat’s tail, moving between question mark and exclamation point as you followed him into the woods to save him from the ribbon strung too tight around his neck. The hive of bees swarmed around you from the ground, rising into the gray air like helium rain. And the pair of mother arms lifting you into the sky, cupped under the bend of your knees, her face, her neck, her eyes, stung by the anger of protection.

And sometimes you found her in her robe, leaning over the floral ashtray with the chip on the edge. You followed the smoke from the tips of her fingers to the open mouth cloud of exhalation and sometimes the light would catch it, this smoke, and wrap its long arms around it carrying it into the Saturday morning air.

It was your soft hair wrapped around finger and thumb when the room felt too big, when the eyes caught your fear in nets. There was the loose part of her pants, just below her knee, where the view of the world seemed smaller.

There was the sound he made when nightmares filled the hallway. The shake of the doorknob handle with fast pulse eyes.

And the tree that waited for you deep in the tight knot of forest, the hole made home to squirrel and nest, the leaves catching each secret spoken in vein and stem.

And the explosion that shook the house from beneath the roots, walls turning each picture on its side.

I will find you.

I will find you again.

The Easter morning you cut your hair, the thin shelf bangs that fell just above your lashes. It was her hands, always her hands, the line just above her knuckle where the glass fell the night we drove to the emergency room, watching the snow fall from the frosted window.

And the drive home from North Judson, following the white stitched highway, the sea of stars born behind front seats, forehead pressed against smoky glass, the sky opening up with shaken bottle release.

You sat in his bluebird pick up truck with the rusty hole, Saturday morning coffee and meringue at the 212 Bargain Center. There was the shoulder roll cower when the waitress bent close to your face, the same cower your limbs would adopt as posture for the next 17 years, until something in your heart told you it was okay to stand tall. It was okay to lift your eyes to the sky.

And the words and pictures that made beds in empty drawers, the box still smelling like her Wind Song and the poems no one would see.

Mrs. Kenny’s voice, the first beat of assurance in a heart with lost rhythm. Her wiry hand wrapped around the first of many words written from that place, the staircase climb through trapdoors of uncertainty.

“You will make things.”

A sentence existing without period, your comma in waiting, the deep pause of development. And the way those words held together a heart of doubt, the filament string of grace when the voices tore at loose ends.

And I lost you, small artist girl, to the wind of comparison, critique and fear. And the circular eye search for the soft hue of confidence, the bright color of voice, the black and white pinhole view widened.

And the first time you felt a broken heart bedroom collapse. His words on the phone, feet on basement concrete, the curtain rod falling in front of the sliding glass door. You. Not. Enough.  And the way the words followed you like tape stuck to the bottom of a shoe, the ink stain of insecurity.

Someone spoke it. Said it out loud, the magnetic pull of secrets buried, the secrets you thought would withstand the pulled skin stretch between girl and woman.

And the day you tore your jeans and dyed your hair, pushing the last strands over your dark eyes, the notes you folded, the cigarettes lit in dark rooms.

The red lipstick stained napkin, the slow walk home under a pulse of city blood, the last hotel’s light blinking. And the way the sky wept, clouds undulating. The smell of alcohol and memory washed in permanent dyes of regret.

And the four years you buried beneath skin and scar, the one you couldn’t forgive for making you unforgivable. And the curl around the bend of his ear you stared at when your heart collapsed.

And the wide eyes narrowed over time to hold memory and dark roads with chandelier endings. The spills, the flat hand falls and the boy you dreamed of, not be a prince, but rather a man with the faint lines of a crown misplaced, laid down for the girl who lost her gown, torn on the road to find him.

And the first time I held his head in my hands and smelled his hospital soap scalp, heart rising in fear for the pulse that beat in his parched, sunken eyes.

And his sweet mouth with the broken tongue that fumbled to latch on to your breast and the watery, ravenous eyes you wondered would forever see your failures. He saw through you, this new mother terror, the fumbling hot plate of learning.

And the bend of God’s hand, cradling the shards of your heart, picked up along the way, in alleys, locked drawers, the smoky rooms of approval.

I wish you knew, small girl. It was there all along. You were seen before your eyes could even blink. And the years I spent searching for you, your words, your pictures, for the box that smelled of Wind Song and woods. 

Let’s make a kite and stitch it to the wind. Let’s watch its serpent tail turn the corner. We’ll enter the boat bandaged and hear the hum of the sail sing hymns of freedom. We’ll step onto island shores, turning our heads to look back, just once, to watch this boat sink under the horizon of forgiveness. 

For all you have wandered.

42.

I Will Find You In The Somewhere

There are places in this world that remind us who we are. That time is not best spent planning and worrying, acquiring and gaining. That this life is for shedding, letting go and living in what remains. 

There are these places where the light is delicate. Where the water's cold chill raises our skin to goosebump's refresh. Where early mornings hold the laugh lines, the soft creases of joy throughout the day. And gratitude is the gentle fog that comes in after the rain.

There is this place where God holds the sun in His hand, where He opens His fingers to let the light spread over every field and flower.

This place, this sweet Minnesota cabin, situated somewhere on the thin line of Canada. This sand is my heaven. It's grains, my tiny words, filling journals and secret rooms inside my heart.

 

I will find you in the somewhere,
in the muddy, outstretched sky.
I will find you in the somewhere,
where the clouds kneel down to cry.

I will cover each and every stone,
with hope and strength to borrow.
For when your heart, it walks alone,
through trails of grief and sorrow.

I will find you in the tea stained sky,
in the crooked, broken trees.
I will find you in a harp's soft strum,
in the quiet, floating leaves. 

 

 

I'll rest a finger on the tip,
of fallen houses new.
And battle for the eyes that weep,
for wounds of black and blue.

And seeds unearthed,
by pull and dig.
These blossoms found
in rock and twig.

Hold on, my heart,
that you may know.
The creeks you wind,
the weeds you grow.

These small tributaries,
these hollow lines unseen.
That move through veins of flesh and bone,
for what we wish and dream.

 

 

The sweet relief,
of words made true.
By river's depth,
a quenched renew. 

Our heads submerge,
to quiet the hums.
Untangle the strings
caught in fingers and thumbs.

You whisper, my sweet,
into night's swollen ear,
"Your heart, my found anchor.
This sea, my lost fear."

 

 

I'll no longer shake,
these fingers point.
The skeletal limp
on fractured joint. 

So nestle me closer,
in morning's new light.
These dreams that lay sleeping
in maybe's and might's. 

And there in your hand,
where lines travel west.
A sweetly wrapped secret,
held close to your chest. 

And these eyes that hold,
written scrolls to unfold.
The stepping stones leaps, 
of secrets you told. 

 

 

So sit with me slowly,
to watch open skies.
And listen, sweet berry
to our whispers and sighs.

Soft infant clouds,
awake from their nap.
To lay their heads gently,
upon your safe lap.

And flowers that bow,
and bend at our knees.
To hold the dipped hands
of each leaf on the trees.

 

 

And sweet water dew,
the fog blindly creeps.
Past doors left unopened,
while forests still sleep. 

I'll keep you here,
in wakes of new blue.
In orange bottled light
of summer's sweet hue.

And long, tangled branches,
of straight lined birch.
Each crooked bend,
your heart goes to perch. 

 

 

And the rings of each tree,
mark the days we let go.
The days we left buried,
in winter's last snow. 

So asters, go quickly,
and find your soft bed.
Between the torn sheets,
of words we once said.

And foxglove, there,
lend me your eyes.
My petals grown weak,
from this weight and this size. 

So gratitude, gratitude,
please make me new.
With the soft spun seeds
of too many, more few. 

 

 

And there you stood,
in the light of what will.
Your heart a deep pocket,
to harness and fill.

And the dapper young yawn,
of a prairie wide day.
The white tailed escape,
of a sunrise at play.

This grace is the queen,
with her lace dipped in white.
Weaving mistakes,
with her beauty and light.

 

 

And this place called remember,
steals strength from the wind.
Informing each moment,
just when to begin. 

The stars left unseen,
behind black clouds of fright.
Are stars kept in waiting,
for moments most bright.

And this summer sea,
with it's diamond light.
Lifts the waves to reflect,
these stars back at night.

 

 

This place is a tower,
a hand held last stance.
To bring them together,
this fate and this chance.

And the skin of the birch,
made dark by the storm.
Feels sunlight mid morning,
suspended, yet warm.

And there, at the bottom,
mistakes lost at sea.
The deep tranquil waves,
of this mutiny set free.

I will find you in the somewhere,
in this lake of broken glass.
Where wakes of summer sleeping,
still wait for winter's pass.

 

 

Come home,
My darling.
Come home to me.
Take rest in these arms,
of my broken down tree. 

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.

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.

Mexico and Lost Words

We have just returned from a lovely getaway to Mexico. I am still buried in laundry and putting cream on peeling skin, and sadly the untethered strings of things to be done have made there way back into my lap. But for eight days, I relaxed into some kind of silence I have missed, like my real skin growing back around my bones to hold me up.

I will tell you, I don't know what I am doing. Really. All of this internet and sharing and writing and showing. It's some kind of healing for me, something that shakes me and scares me each and every time I put my heart into the world. It's not what I've known. It's not something I have ever done before. And I am working on it. This vulnerability. It takes work for me. Because somewhere I learned to hide. Somewhere I was told I shouldn't. Somewhere someone said you can't. And it feels like I am digging around the ruins of someone I've never met, but feels so deeply known, I just keep digging and hoping I will soon recognize these broken bits of rubble. And that maybe this will somehow all get easier. This skin will get looser and the worries and fears will feel more like the wrinkles of a life lived.

There was no internet. No email. No voices. No static hum of keeping up. And I found a language spoken in the deepest parts of my children's eyes and the eyes of people who didn't even speak my language yet seemed to understand every bit of what it means to be a person in this world. Unsure. Uncertain. Hopeful and alive. 

And I found a prayer without words, a prayer of silence. And I listened.

May you hear the words of silence. May you find them in the eyes of all the love in the world. May you have a glorious Easter.

XO

From Here To There.

It's starting again. The writing. The story. The catching all things, all at once, kind of writing, where I am running to catch the story on the backs of receipts and checks and post-it notes and field trip forms. It comes so fast, these new words, like toddlers on a playground, bumping into things and sliding down the metal slide with their hands in the air.

I began writing and creating The Gift almost three years ago. It is now a real book. A book I can hold and read and smell the newly printed pages. I can see the story that was once so hard to catch now come across someone's face as they read the words, that all the catching and running and caging and preparing is now set free between small fingers and wide eyes. 

And when someone actually reads it, this book, The Gift, it is such a wonder to me, a mystery how this thing got from here to there. 

This new story will write me first. She will come out of all of my cracked and broken places and make something out of all of this mess. This story is about hope and trust and one small girl in the night that needs to be brave when she is feeling so scared, when the forest is deep and the air is dark. And this story will make something of me, just like The Gift became the story I needed to hear for almost four years before I could set it free into the world.

Niklas has been reading his new Shel Silverstein book a lot lately. He carries it around and lays the book open on the floor, the bed, the dog's stomach when he is quietly sleeping.

He has a favorite poem. It's called, "All Packed." And he was reading it as we pulled away, down the driveway to Milwaukee to visit with family. The snow fell as he read the words out loud,

"Me and Joe, we're all packed up,

Me and Joe, we've got our tickets,

Me and Joe, we're set to go-

Hey...wait a minute....

Where's Joe?"

And then he said, "It's a journey, mom."

And he was right. This thing. This writing. This getting it out and letting it be free kind of thing. This facing your fear when you're alone in the forest kind of thing.

So we journeyed. We stopped and visited and ate and played. We spoke and held and laughed. And we made our way inside a museum.  

And we journeyed,

And we explored,

And we stood outside looking in.

Because taking a journey means going places you've never been before.

And sometimes these places can feel scary. Like Lions and tigers and bears kind of scary.....

And sometimes it's best to just stay in the shadows and look out into the world from these most inside places until we feel brave enough to step outside.

Because maybe it's the shadows that give us our wings....

So we can come face to face with our fears,

And if we are very quiet and still, we can see that the biggest monsters,

were never really monsters at all.

And when it's time to leave, when our biggest fears have been met,

we'll return to the page.....

From here to there.