daisies were on my shopping list. our daughter was coming into town and i wanted some fresh flowers on our table and in her room. so, daisies are our go-to.
but the pink tulips caught my eye. long slender stems and the palest pink buds, i could feel my whole body slow down gazing at them.
every time i look at them it feels the same way.
the buds never opened. yet, the tulips are still proudly standing tall, ten days later. it is an image of potential. a visceral right-in-front-of-us portrayal of stately beauty. or maybe it’s an image of choice – of taking a different road. these tulips are stunning. and it is not in their blossoming open.
both of us artists, i can tell you there are many, many unopened buds. they stack in corners and in notebooks, in the recesses of our minds, on our laptops. they are pale pink and soft. they are deep-red and fiery. they wait for their moment.
and some buds don’t open. i read those buds may have faced a particularly cold winter, or had too much — or too little — exposure to heat and sunlight. i’d add that they may have had naysayers naysaying at them. they may be competing for sun with other buds, other flowers, other ideas.
or maybe they just like it that way. as buds. standing tall and quiet, emanating peace and tranquility.
every time i have looked at these pink tulips i have thought about their color. i have imagined it on a wall – the palest pink – with white crown moldings and trim. never having had a pink wall, i’ve wondered about how it might feel to be in such a room. i’ve wondered if it might feel the way it feels gazing at these buds.
i’m cheering our tulips on for another few days, maybe even another week. i want to keep them around. they are making me breathe differently. they are giving me pause. they are making me imagine.
and maybe that’s the point. it’s not always about the blossom.
we wore pink. our daughter said we’d get bonus points and we love bonus points. so we wore pink. i had on pink converse high-top sneakers and sported a pink floral drawstring backpack. david had on a pink v-neck t-shirt.
and we went to see barbie, the movie.
there’s a lot of talk-talk about this movie. and, for once, i’m not going to enter the fray. instead, i’m just going to say we loved it. and, we’d like to see it again, revisit some of the one-liners and implicit (and explicit) comments on our society. our tickets were from our daughter so it was extra fun to exchange texts about it after-the-fact. mostly, there are some really defining moments in this movie. it is unexpectedly thought-provoking. and, if you haven’t already seen it, we would both absolutely recommend it.
as you already know, when i was young i wasn’t allowed to have a (cultural icon) barbie. in an excerpt from a previous post about barbie and my mother:
“when i was 38 i got a package from my sweet momma. of course, it was from poppo too but he was pretty much a follower on this one. i excitedly opened the big box and there was a note inside. it read something like, “surprise! it’s about time…thought you could have one of these now.” curious, i continued to rapidly unwrap. inside this simply wrapped gift (for my momma had to mail it to me across the country and everyone knows that those sticky bows get squished when you mail them) was —- wait for it —- a barbie doll with chandelier earrings in a huge party dress with pastel flowers glued onto it! now, that – blossom beauty barbie – sounds like an unusual gift at 38, but you have to know the back-story…
my momma would not let me have a barbie when i was growing up. ahead of her time, she felt that the barbie-body was somewhat unconscionably derisive for women and the feminist in her was railing against having her own little girl fall prey to that attitude. and so, she never let me get a barbie of my own. instead, she got me the doll penny brite, an adorable, flat-chested, bright-faced, modestly-dressed doll who just looked 1960s happy. a little later i got a skipper doll, who was barbie’s younger sister – clearly she hadn’t inherited the same physical genes barbie had. not being particularly well-endowed myself, in later years, i teased my mom that she had given me nothing to aspire to, but she just pursed her lips and tried not to laugh.
so this was a big deal – getting a barbie from my momma. it’s too perfect that it happened to be one of the tackiest barbies out there. but i received this from her when i had my own little girl and she probably guessed i was about to start buying her some barbies (so as not to be “the only one” in her group of little girlfriends without one, like me, still recovering from non-barbie-ptsd.) momma was quirky that way.“
but because of my little girl, i was finally able to immerse in barbie-world. so the movie was particularly poignant as a recovered non-barbie-r, errr, delayed-onset barbie-r. the set, the barbie-house, the barbie-car, the use of product messaging, the language … the pink – all the pink – was pretty splendidly on the mark. and the messages were loud and clear. “it is literally impossible to be a woman…” and “it is the best day ever. so was yesterday, and so is tomorrow, and every day from now until forever.” and “you can be anything.” not to mention the quotes about patriarchy and gender inequality and humanness and the digs at capitalism, the question of play, the differences and similarities between men and women. all conversation fodder. ahh, go see it.
and then there is this moment at the end of the movie, when barbie inventor ruth handler (played by rhea perlman) says to barbie, “we mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they have come.” this moment made me cry.
the passing of the baton. no matter if we are born in 1921, 1959, 1990…the baton gets passed on. and the pink. it took my momma 38 years, but she passed it on. in a curious coincidence, she was 38 when she birthed me. the baton had already been passed. holding still, ever-holding.
we hiked past the dogwood off-trail. the tiny berries were almost all gone and the stems were exposed. pink. i immediately thought of barbie. it was a direct-connect.
and it made me want to run home and put on the converse high-tops i had fished out of my beloved daughter’s closet.
in color psychology, barbie pantone pink is the confluence of femininity, fashion, and vibrancy. in the dictionary, vibrancy is the state of being full of energy and life.
pink. in my world, it reminds me of my beautiful girl and her brilliance in the world.
i’ll be wearing those pink high-tops a little extra this fall.
there was this knot-hole in this tree on this trail. i used to stop there each time we hiked – to gaze through it…stand and take in what i could see through the tiny porthole in the woods. always, it was a reminder of the fluidity of time, of ever-present change, of nothing standing still.
the porthole i found in the milwaukee art museum – through one of barbara hepworth’s sculptural pieces – had the same impact on me. bending down, i focused only on what i could see through that porthole. on a different day, at a different time of day, in a different month or season, never static. even minutes from my peeking-through, the wind picked up and the lake’s surface roiled a bit and all from before was erased.
late-late on sunday nights – into the wee hours – we stay awake to listen and watch our son livestream mixes from a club in chicago. he was away for a couple weeks and we missed these late dj nights. they are our porthole – our tree-knot-hole – into what he is creating, producing, learning, feeling. every midnight-hour-sunday we see the changes in the new seasons of his work, his growth, his zeal, his poise at tech controls that evoke curves of mood, layers of sound, textures of music we may not have accessed otherwise. we see his joy.
it’s the same reason i took my first snowboard lesson. at that time, it was a porthole view into our daughter’s life – a peeking window that allowed us to feel the smallest smidge of her professional work. watching her fly down mountains, picking up speed and agility and ever-more skill through our tree-knot-hole on the sidelines and touching her joy-magic with our own feet on a snowboard on a hill.
we can assume things about others. humans do it all the time. broad sweeping generalizations about people and peoples – different because of race or color or gender identity or ethnicity or country of origin or age or disability or socioeconomic status or politics or religion or whatever the prejudice-de-jour might be. we glance over at “them” and form opinions; we claim to be “open and affirming” yet we slam closed the porthole that might give us a true look into their life. we scrub away the transparency of truth and apply the balm of our agenda – totally missing perspective, the possibility of commonality, the gift of community, the connectedness of us all as a species attempting to just keep on keeping on.
were we – perhaps – to notice, to step forward and take a closer look, to shield ourselves from inevitable human failings of assumption and instead to breathe deeply and gaze – we might have a view into the sameness of us all, the things that unite us, the things we need honor and hold in high regard….that we are all one under the sun. that while we cannot walk in another’s shoes, we might learn by looking through any and every tree-knot-hole we can find. that new eyes, new focus may also mean new learnings and new appreciation and new grace. that we should stop and peer through portholes whenever we can. there’s no time to waste.
texting with our son, who was about to attend a music festival out west, he wrote that i would probably like the artist. he sent a link to the teaser of above and beyond’s song “gratitude“. i followed the link, loved it, jaunted over to the full-length, and loved that.
the everest youtube paused, we followed the soundtrack song to find that new favorite i wrote about in may, “you and me“.
it is not likely we would have just stumbled upon either. there had to be a tiny opening, a tiny window, a door to something new.
explorations don’t have to be gigantic. they can be mini adventures, pocket-sized, teeny-weeny, a moseying into something unknown, a reminder that there-is-just-so-much-out-there. exploring creates a yearning to explore, a synergy of sorts, to keep-on-ing.
mary oliver, in her book, “long life”, writes of “what she calls ‘the little alleluias’ in her days and in her doings.” (frederic and mary ann brussat) those tiny noticings. micro adventures. “nature, animals, the soul, place, and literature.” and sound. and music. and touch. and color. and laughter. and cooking. and creating.
in these days we don’t get far. our roadtrip juju has been poking at us for months now; our last roam was in december. that’s a long time ago for two people who love roadtrips. but work and an intentional budget and, yes, covid, have kept us closer to home. “soon”, we say to each other, “soon.” and then we sigh. the mountains are calling, the coast and points north, family down south, family out west.
in the meanwhile, we scout out other exploring. we paint rocks and hide them. we dance on the deck. we listen to music we don’t know. we pay attention to the girl, the boy, friends tell us about things we might like. we use two tortillas instead of one.
last night we had the best pancakes for dinner. gluten-free. and real-live maple syrup. my niece sent me the link to them. breakfast for dinner. it’s not a trip to the mountains, but it gets us to the foothills of adventure. something different.
exploring is like snickers minibites. sometimes five grams of delicious feeds us.
i was heating up black bean burgers for lunch and had taken out the salsa and the avocado and the lime. i took out the white corn tortillas and commented that the tortilla would likely fall apart once the bbburger, the salsa, the avocado and the splash of lime were placed upon it. i asked her if she wanted a fork and a knife. she said – wait for it – “use two tortillas.”
two tortillas.
like seriously?
who knew?
“yep,” she continued, “warm up the tortillas and place it all on top of two, not one. it won’t fall apart.”
reverse threading 