Heart Box Studio

In the Lines and the Curves

Sometimes there is no room for words.

Something sinks so deep inside, it is all I can do to swallow each and every syllable and let the interior walls of my heart birth something from them.

There is much aching and bending and stopping lately. Grief wants your full attention so you quietly settle in and give into all of it’s demands.

Memories have taken up residence in every part of my heart and I can feel the rifling around in there, moving things around, exchanging priorities with duty, lowering expectations, pushing out shallow desires and lifting up all the pure and simple that had found their way to the bottom. 

There has been a lot of wishing. A lot of blank pieces of paper with no words or pictures. These words are mine. The offspring of witness. I’ve been putting them to bed in my heart, tucking them in with wide smile picture frames and belly laugh memories.  I fold the crinkled edges of each page and gently push them into a shellacked box, kept hidden between secrets and lost dreams, goals set and never reached, the tiny bargains I made and then forgot. And I want to keep them small, all wrapped up in warm assurances, hide them in my deepest pocket, put them where I can still somehow protect them. But they grow vines around my arms and legs until I am forced to sit and release them, letting them grow shoots from this unstable ground.

And I dig my heels into the ground and hold on. And the past rushes past me like an unexpected breeze on the hottest of days.

So I walk in holy wonder and wait for the ground to grow back around me.

So I’ll let the words dissolve into lines and curves and hope that all of the rain will get caught there, right where the pen meets the paper. And I will draw a heart and pretend to put it back together, connecting the dots where no line has ever been drawn before. I will draw flowers around each question mark and inflated exclamation mark.

And I will set them free to swim deeply in a sea of Adriatic blue and ocean green #2. Because these pens have been my little orange ring lifesavers, holding my heart high above the deep sea waters of confusion and wanting.

And a small voice whispers over me, pushing the hair out of my eyes,

“Draw your heart out.”

So I write love letters to the part of my heart that sits on the swing waiting for a gentle push, the part that kicks the dry dirt ground and waits for the return.

And sometimes the curve of the line doesn’t want to bend. It wants to stay straight. It wants to keep things safe and free from hurt. From all of the stops and starts.  From all of the moments too soon.

And these busy hands steady the heart.

And there are the pictures you can’t finish because they were meant for someone else’s eyes. So I just draw the outline and wait for some kind of forgotten trust to fill it in with all of it’s color and hue.

And when the sun dips down below the horizon’s edge, I will nurture the pieces that have the deepest scars and softly caress each wound until it has lost all of it’s strength to refuse me.

So, it's here that I sit, in this space of waiting and stare out at all of the beauty, the corners that bend behind doorways and question it’s truth. I look for the seams that hold it all together and pull at the sky to loosen the stitches. I want for secret doors. And I wonder if by just one small touch the sky might break into a million pieces, revealing another world hidden behind it where these lines, these curves, these shapes waiting for color, just might connect to something.

Dear Marla

My beautiful friend, Marla Fry, died unexpectedly on Tuesday, April 11, somewhere between a red light turned green and one misplaced semi, between one birthday lunch spent with her 10 year old daughter and the soft whisper of heaven’s reach. And as I wait for time to bend backward, arch into that Tuesday afternoon and draw her into a new day, my heart reaches to place umbrellas of courage around her husband, Dave and their two small daughters, Anna and Maisy.

I don’t know if this is the right place to write this all out. I don’t know if there is some kind of emotional or healing etiquette, for what’s proper or managed or secret or clandestine. But I know these words sit agitated inside me, coaxing me to open the cage door and set them free. All of the little pieces of Marla are just too big and beautiful to fit inside this one little person. My hands, my eyes, my mouth and my heart want to sing for her, create for her, lift themselves to translate her love. Because when you witness love and beauty in the world, there is some kind of obligation within the heart that is far wider than the small confines of our mind to interpret. So it is all we can do to share the story of what we have seen, what we have been witness to, so that the caged remnants of her love will be made new again.

So I will love her from right here. The very best I can.  Because she is as much part of this space as I am. Her art, her love and encouragement were the black soil birth of my art. And I feel like I have to fight for this thing called love that rests deep inside her. Just as she lifted her swords of blue and green, yellow and red, I will lift her light to shine down on this blank canvas of remembrance. And listen in the quiet stillness of a studio turned upside down to hear her words spoken through each and every page.

 

                   ”Spread love. Work hard. Have fun.”

 

I know now, that this beauty she knew about, this love that she wrote with her life is bigger than the bones of our stories, the skeletal outlines of this love she taught us. It's this love I wish to experience again and again, but hesitate, in a sight left dim on land and sea that keeps us from the portrait heaven keeps painting. We hesitate, sure that if we enter, we might be fooled. But you, Marla, your life tells me it is all real.  

Fear, you don’t get to tell me what’s worth it and what’s not anymore. This life is too short, too perilous and precious. And this love is too big to be put out by your shadows. So I will call her heart Hope and rest in its full, open wings. There is no space left in my heart for things that don’t matter. So fear, you must go now. There is too much work to be done. The heart’s red curve hidden in the clouds, the dried paint to chip away, the many lines waiting to be colored.

And the strength that will be needed won’t come from my own hands, but from knees bent at the feet of grace, at the altar of all that is unknown. And still, to be willing to rise to a curtain half open.

 

Dear Marla,

I didn’t stand up at the memorial. I didn’t say everything I wanted to say. I chickened out. There were all these beautiful faces, faces that had all of your years of life written deep within their skin, their fingernails, their toes, all the traces of you.

Maisy’s nails were orange. She painted her left hand and Dave painted her right. She told me he said he didn’t know how to do it. But she said he did it perfect. She showed me how she could tie a bow with her eyes closed and how her teacher was the only other person in the whole world she knew who could do it too.

I stood there and held onto your letter in my heart, half written, half remembered. I didn’t want to let go of it because then, maybe, somehow part of you might fly away along with the words. I know you were there, Marla, hovering around with your new-fashioned wings, kissing away each tear as they fell from our eyes.

But now, maybe there is courage. Here, alone, with the day almost new. I give you back my courage because I know you would understand how hard it was to find it. You knew what it felt like to draw a picture and never fully own it, to realize it was just a gift, and it had to be given. You could walk into my studio and see all the paths and doors that had to be opened and closed for one piece of art to be made. You understood the gates that stood hinged between secrets held and love shown. You felt this obligation to release it and you did. Joyously, bravely, you surrendered to it, your beautiful artist heart. You used your laughter and your smile to paint joy into people’s hearts, never fully understanding your own magic, this wand you carried around inside, however timid, you waved across the saddest, the smallest, the most broken of faces to lift the curves of their mouths, to feel the flutter inside their hearts. You knew there was no other choice in this world but to love.

            

Your beautiful reflection of love come undone, spreading itself over sadness and hurt, failures and falls. And your humility, your sweet little frame that held all the light. You released it through your windows, the glass panes of color and joy, the world’s you painted in hope and elation. The children and flowers dripped in freedom, the intricate gardens that became a wish for all those who had the honor of seeing them. And these paintings have no will to fade, but to hang in the light that was you, held up to this light, they become radiance, each stroke more alive, the animation set to motion, in the sunshine of one ordinary day.

            

I want to remember, Marla, all the beautiful things. The way you could walk into a room and know immediately who was the most wounded. Your soft heart beat for the weak and the frail. Your empathy laid itself out like a warm blanket in a field of grass and so many people came to you to bask in your sunshine. The way in which you could notice a bent posture, a shuffled walk, a tilt of a shoulder, or the residue of a heavy cry. The reflective quality of your deep ocean eyes to look for and extend yourself when someone was hurt was remarkable. But even more remarkable was your intuitive calling to see through the wrinkles of our pasts and meet us there, not once offended or distanced by the weight of all of our flaws. 

            

I texted you at 2:47. I wanted you to see my booth. It was set up in the driveway, teetering on aluminum legs. It was windy and the frames rattled against the wooden walls my dad fashioned out of bead board and worn hinges.  The photos had to be in by Friday and a committee of some such eyes would decide if I was good enough to participate in their art fair. But it wasn’t their eyes that would define my heart. It would be your words, Marla, that would push my cement legs passed the oak tree to the open door of my mailbox and slide the envelope in.

As I set it up, placing each card on the rough benches, hanging each shadowbox on a wobbly nail, small trickles of doubt began to leak from my shallow confidence. I could hear you, your voice pulled from deep within the file cabinet of Marla sounds I kept just for such occasions. When I was sad or scared, lonely or uncertain, I reached for my Marla voice, usually two or three words connected together on a string, that when spoken with such enthusiasm, would lift into the sky like a kite in the wind, refusing to fall, and dance over the dark clouds of my heart, chasing away each and every one of my demons.

To sit across from you was to know that each one of my most fragile words would be caught. Like a delicate egg, you would catch them and hold them in your hands, before their weight had the chance to break them into a million little pieces. You allowed for all of the quiet spaces to fill the conversation, the sound of the birds, high up in the trees, in response, your eyes would fill up with tears and in your big, wide lap, Maisy would lay, the sun brushing out her curls, your hands softening all her question marks.

I remember the first time I held your hand. The theatre was dark and Michael Franti hid behind a wall of fluorescent smoke. My brother had been sick and your hand found mine. I could feel our lifelines, running deep in the creases of our hands, connected. These two lives somehow brought together, simply to share in all of it’s wonder, it’s weight and redemption. A tendril of your hair covered your eye, and I wondered if you were crying. But you turned your head and smiled at me, not with your mouth, but from somewhere behind your snowflake eyelashes. You spoke to me friendship, a friendship I gently slipped inside my heart, given it’s own place I have secretly called you.

            

And the way you moved, almost by beat. I watched you as you stirred your edamame, your well thought our menu of chopped slaws and seasoned rice. You pulled pans from cabinet to counter, taking a pause to breathe in and shake your head over our powerlessness. These children. This life. So fragile. You always knew it. You felt it more keenly and detailed, some embroidered plan in the sky only you could see. You’d run your finger over it and hold them all closer. He. She. Them. Your finely tuned strings were connected to heaven from the very beginning.

I remember the weekend we camped. Patrik was 40 and the fire in the woods healed us. Dave’s voice, the buoy, signaling our course. You, my sweet, were the music, playing as the sun came through the trees, their leaves shaking gold glitter over the end. I listened to you ease the girls to sleep that night in the tent and wondered if somehow inside me, I could find a picture of a mother that looked like you and I could paint her into my heart.

                 

I watched you watch Anna as her hands found a pen and a blank pad of paper. The boys were busy pouncing on suspicious frogs, but you watched her, her lines a mirror to your own, the same sharpie people danced on her page, like a sweet copy machine imprint, the coloring book pages you dreamed of creating.

And we would put our feet in the pool and sit in the lovely space of a summer afternoon, without need for explanation or detailed accounts of the life that got lived between visits. And the children yelled from the top of the slide and we beamed. Sometimes I watched you. I don’t know if you knew that. I look up to you. You, somewhere up there, holding hands with the stars, making all the constellations sparkle.

And there was that phone call, the first one I made when everything fell apart. Pat was coming home. And you listened. Somehow you held this same hand through the receiver of my phone, quietly collecting all of my anger, my hurt, my feeble attempts to control the spin of the room. You knew there was no time for small talk.

 

“Show me your eyes, Chrissy. I know where you’ve been.”

 

There are these people in the world who are given the golden ticket, this kind of love, that when unwrapped, you know you have won some kind of lottery. And I stand here and wonder how I ever got so lucky. This one in a million heart that spreads well past it’s initial opening, and I just stand here, still holding this ticket, your glorious, golden light, and pray by some magic, by God’s wondrous hand, that other’s will steal a glimpse into your heart and they too, for a moment, will feel what’s it’s like to be the lucky recipient of your love.

 

I listened to The Beatle’s this morning and cried my way through Dear Prudence, imagining you sitting cross legged on the floor, a sweet girl’s head in your lap and a wide joyful smile on your face.

 

Dear Marla,

 

The sun is up.

The sky is blue.

It’s beautiful.

And so are you.

 

Dear Marla,

 

The wind is low.

The birds will sing.

But you are part

 of everything.

 

  Dear Marla,

 

   We love you.

 

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

Bloom

It's here! The warm air, the blue sky, the whistling chirps of busy birds, calling and singing. It's too sweet here, with my window wide open taking in all of the breezy whispers of the leaves and distant wind chimes. 

In all of it's wonder, I have to say I do have a faint spot of worry. I look at all of the delicate petals open and the newly born stems finding their way from the ground and I want to shelter them, make sure the cold frost doesn't find them again.

But for now, I will rest in the hope that it is over, the darkness and the cold. I will let the afternoon light spread it's warmth over my face and give my raincoat a wink for good luck.

I started working on a shadowbox when the skies were still dark and the air was cold and frigid. There was snow on the ground and it was hard to imagine this shadow box, with it's color and lines reaching for the warmth and the light. But I guess, all things start with just one seed, the idea, the intent. Some magical picture that gets placed in our hearts so we might be able to birth it from our hands. 

But I was daunted. Overwhelmed with it's size, I wondered and feared. Maybe it was all too much, too big, far too ambitious. So I took a deep breath and began, where all things begin, with belief. In this tiny seed, this whisper and nudge, there lives this moment so I might believe it to be true. That I might believe something so small could become something so big.

Sometimes it's hard to see the seed when it's buried so deep within the heart. It takes cutting and moving, pruning and shaping to even begin to see the faint outlines of what might be hidden deep within. So the canvas is prepared, the soil moved and nourished with this hope of the dream, the impossible imagination unearthed.

And this hope is the secret, the place unseen that grows it all. The movement under the darkness, the strength underneath the hard dirt and clay that waits for the right moment to grow towards the light. 

And so I wait. I trust that this seed is growing in places I will never know until the first green stem finds it's light and the delicate blooms unfold to reveal what, maybe, I've known all along.

That these roots grow deep. These roots are strong. They will hold me when I am weak and lift me from the darkest of places. And even in the dark, when the cold wind still blows outside my window, there is a seed, unseen in the night, waiting for some kind of spring.

So I watch the life of this little flower find it's way through the darkness. 

And the smallest of blooms begin to appear.

The leaves unearthed, the petals unfurl.

A garden born from the tiniest of seeds, this secret place I couldn't see before,

keeping it's promise, 

That this secret kept hidden, behind the veil of winter, under dark, cold nights, has been growing roots under the soil, waiting for the kiss of one butterfly,

To finally bloom.

***And in light of spring, this new season of birth and bloom, I would love to celebrate by giving away two, x-large, 22" x 24" archival giclee prints of this new shadow box. If you would like to be part of this giveaway, just leave a little comment below and I will put you in the mix! I will choose a name randomly and let them know by Monday, March 26th. And be sure to LIKE Heart Box Studio on facebook or sign up for email alerts on future giveaways! Happy spring!

 

Up In The Clouds

I had an extra hour before the puppet show began. The sky was dull and the clouds were thick. I parked my car and it started to rain. I pulled my journal out from under all of my to do's and began to write. I let every word find it's place on the page, arranged only by the order of it's release. Missed periods and commas, legible only to the heart that poured them out.

Soft rain fell on the window and I scanned the sky for an opening, an escape. I've been stuck. Stuck in the in between. Somewhere between yes and no. Fear and love. Missed and caught. And these words were my rope that connected all that once was and with all that will be. 

I could see it, the faint lines of this place. I watched the birds dance from branch to branch, and I attached each word to their wings and watched as they flew into the clouds, into the fog, the dull sky with no doors. I told them to go, to fly past the unknown into the blue. And I watched as their distance grew and the words got smaller. I opened the window and listened to the birds as they recited them all back to me in song.

And I waited for a new day, the tiniest of light.

We woke to blue skies and expectant, spring air. His little feet ran into the house, caked with backyard mud and crocus petals.

"Come see!"

And there in the sky, above a concrete driveway, hundreds of soft voices singing all at once. 

"The sandhill cranes," He peeped as his hand slid into mine.

"They're coming home."

He leaned forward and held out his other hand, cupped softly around a winter moth he found on the garage floor.

"His wings are broken," He whispered.

He placed the moth inside a plastic box and slid it into his pocket, hopeful for some kind of moth miracle.

We piled into the car and made our way to St. Joe, to the beach, to the children's museum, to wherever the sky would lead us. And we drove under single clouds, hung delicately on the strings of new words, and we searched for the place we remembered. 

The place with gluten-free, Swedish pancakes. The place with lingonberries and real cream.

And we found new friends. The kind that help us fly when our wings are broken, when the memories feel too strong and we forget that we are never alone, that our roots are deep, that this place that feels lost, is never gone. Just forgotten.

And we climbed as high as our hearts would take us, searching for the tiniest of lights, the faintest of memories, the ones we held onto.

The ones we left way up in the clouds, the ones with the broken wings.

And there are these moments, these memories that get dog eared, marked for some other purpose, held on and memorized for years, waiting for the blank page to release them. 

For the birds to carry them back home.

Because sometimes the memories get stuck, distorted and weaved into our wings, making it hard to fly.

And his little hand held onto the broken wings in the box. And we waited for some kind of moth miracle.

And we laughed at the way it used to be, sure that the memory could no longer find us.

Through the panes of glass and open windows and the illusions we created while our wings still healed.

We remembered just who we were before we forgot, before the clouds covered the blue sky and the birds went silent.

And we held out for miracles, the kind that go around your heart while the days go up and down.

And we made new memories, the kind that don't get lost in black and white,

But live on forever in full color.

And somewhere, by the end of it all, a miracle. As seen only after you have let go, that the tiniest light remains.

Not someplace else, not in the going back, in the memory left dog eared in our hearts, the broken wings carried around in plastic boxes.

But there in the sky, up in the clouds, hung by a million tiny strings, all the stars in heaven reaching down to take our words, the ones we carried, the ones we gave away to the singing birds,

Just so that we might run free, back to the place we remembered.

Lift and Fall

It's been windy here. Cold and blustery, wet snow and indecisive rains. I've had a strong desire to hibernate and nest, to build walls and climb in and pull the blankets up to my chin. But my heart, the small girl alone in her room, spinning to see her dress lift and fall, the girl with the tippy toes and the ponytail on the side of her head. The girl who twirls her hair between her fingers and fashions the occasional purple jumpsuit with the tie closures at the ankles, she is busy making other plans.

There are all of these questions waiting for answers. 

"Can you____?" "Will you _____?"

And the small girl takes my hand and whispers,

"Come on. This way. Follow me.

This is what we've dreamed about.

Remember?"

She seems so sure, spinning around in that little dress, pony tail tight against her head, Carly Simon on the record player. But my old heart, the one with all of the ragged edges, and the places that have been stitched back together, this old heart, digs her heels into the ground and tries to stand against the wind.  

And I wonder, as my fingers twirl the hair between my fingers,

When will my heart look like hers again? When will this heart grow roots from the sky? 

 

I've been wandering these days trying to find her. Through the fog and the wind and the all of the reflections laid down at my feet.

In the paper and the cuts, the creases and folds.

In the blooming and growing, the harvesting and dying.

In all the ways I wish I could fly but remain grounded and broken.

In the tiny assurances, of wings folded and planted, beginning to spread out to my sides, preparing for the first of many flights into the wind.

Through new sets of eyes, three boys and the simplest of words.

Searching in new places, uncovering childhood with each overturned stone, she finds a spot in the tall grass to spin and feels her dress lift and fall in the wind.

In mossy jars and abandonment, there is a heart that remembers what it was like before the stitches left so many marks. Before there was ragged edges and rust that kept treasures locked.

She waits and listens and hopes that I will believe her when she says I am free, free to walk on my tippy toes and make believe under the tall trees that we are safe, that the enchanted forest is home. And sometimes when the wind is blowing and the world outside has crumbled, I can see her, arms outstretched to her side, the tall grass scratching at her legs as she begins to turn and twirl under the bluest of skies, while her voice is lifted over the wind,

"Come spin with me."

And I let my dress lift and fall. Lift and fall.

 

"You're The Best" dinosaur watercolor by Dallas Clayton, www.dallasclayton.com

Small

The two older boys were at a soccer tournament. And it was just he and I, gathering a small puddle of blankets on the couch. He watching and me listening, wondering what the day might bring us. I had work to do. A project that has been stretching and growing, amassing large quantities of cut petals and green stems. 

But I was happy for this quiet, for this space, for his small head to rest on my lap. He has been bruised, this small one. His week, made up of fever and rejection, missed steps and wrong words. In his six years of growing, he has planted worry in my heart. There is this sensitive place where a lock has been hanging on the tiny doors of his heart. A place that holds all his hurts and sometimes this lock breaks open, wildly, recklessly. And the world around him shuts down and it is all I can do to watch and hope for this place to grow softer, for the lock to loosen.

And this mama heart, this place that holds all of his tiny fractured pieces, collecting all of his wounds and storing them, naming them, numbering them. This mama heart hurts too. I wish I could grow small again, climb into my six year old shoes and hold his hand, be the one to walk with him, forgive him when he stumbles on his words. 

The sun peaked out from behind the gray clouds and he lifted his head.

"Tell me the story of the bottle."

It was almost a month earlier, as I walked on the beach with a friend, that I came across the brown bottle lying on it's side. I could see two pieces of colored paper rolled up inside. And I knew in that moment that something sacred and holy had been delivered onto the shore. It seemed almost impossible, something conjured up as a narrative thread in some movie, yet here it was, a message, lost and then found. 

He asked if we could go back to the beach so he could see just where it was I had found it. I nodded yes.

And we braved the cold wind and the gray skies for a chance to find a secret message, something sacred and holy. 

And he didn't want to be seen. He remained hidden and small and I watched from a distance. Because some things you just can't fix. All you can do is sit in the dark with someone and wait for the light to come.

And I laid the bottle on it's side and covered it with sand. 

And I thought about the moment this bottle left the hand of it's creator and entered the water, the waves pushing it, crashing over the glass, tumbling on it's journey. This bottle, these words, are an offering, a heart waiting for someone to open it up. A small voice waiting to be set free.

And as I watched him, my heart longed to make it all better. But his small heart was journeying alone, the consequences, the waves, had to be felt and all I could do was just hold the bottle and gently lift the lid.

And set the small voice free.

And when the bottle is opened, when the voice is given the space to find the light, and it asks for an ear to listen, a hand to hold, for arms to wrap around it and keep it safe, there is always this tug, this possibility that someone can say no. That someone can close the bottle and send it back out into the sea. 

And sometimes this voice is spoken in a language no one else can hear. This love spoken with bent lines and broken hearts, this love will remain a question to be answered, a voice waiting to be heard. A bottle waiting to find it's shore.

But it's this story inside the heart that will always rise to the top and make it's way back to the shore again, this journey endured, the cold waves, the bitter winds, all so that this love can set it free.  

So the voice kept locked inside the small heart will know it is never alone, 

And it is not so small after all.

Free love

Dear Valentine,

   May your days be filled with chocolate and glitter, doilies and lace. Let your hands find scissors and glue sticks and empty hearts to color with love. Fill your homes with the smell of cookies and cakes and wait till later to clean up the mess. Jump a little higher, hold a hand longer, hug with both arms and kiss with your heart. 

 

And if you find you have spent all of your hours eating chocolates and holding hands, well, then, here is a free printable Valentine for you to use and enjoy! Click on the image to pull up a printable PDF, sized for an 8.5" x 11" folded card. I find it looks quite sweet on a creamy white or ivory colored cardstock paper. Enjoy and share!

 

And for a musical interlude....one of my favorites.

 

Kryptonite

She's been there from the beginning.

Those were the words I said when they asked me about her. The one who held me up when my legs gave out. When my world seemed to be rolling away from me, the snowball at the bottom of the hill, caught in the gate of hopelessness. She's that kind of friend. The one you hope for when you receive the call that makes your knees buckle. She is strength under the crumbled weight of fear. She is a flower bowing over the tangled roots of uncertainty. And her petals open up to share her hope.

And it's when I sit down at my table to start something new, that I can hear her words pushing me off the cliff while holding my wings in tact. This beginning of every new piece of art waits for the end. It waits for the failure. It holds all the doubt. And there is a moment when it is all I can do to just jump, leap into this beginning and trust that somewhere in this unknown, I will find it's end.

There are these times, when at the very start, I can feel it all hesitate. There is a restraint that holds me back from taking this wide leap into some kind of unknown place. 

And she is there.

Sometimes I draw her. I cut along the printed paper and hope all the words will line up to tell the story of her strength, her heart that wavers in weakness to bloom where she is planted.

And other times there are so many friends, so many flowers holding me up in a bouquet of love, I feel it is all I can do to step off the ragged edge and land in this garden that waits for my weakness to find it's way from under the soil.

Between the beginning and the end, there is a long collection of moments that gather at the foot of every new piece I start. Sometimes the moments are crushing. Two in the morning darkness surrounded by suffocating quiet. And other times, laughter and release, held together by the daylight.

He asked me, "How high can you jump?"

And I told him softly I had never tried.

"You should try," he said. 

"You can touch the sky if you put your hands out like this."

And he tickled my feet.

And something was set free. We laid on our backs and let the sun make black spots behind our closed eyes and I wrestled with all the burdens that waited to climb back onto my shoulders. And his playfulness was my kryptonite. The weakness that gave me my strength. 

And inside there was a battle. The kind that uses every bit of strength available. So they lined up all of their vintage Transformers, the ones they saved for, the ones with the golden faces and the outstretched arms. The ones they found at the flea market on the table with all of the missing parts. 

And they read the words out loud and waited for some sort of magic. The transformation. Because these kinds of battles require a full army of strength, all of your resources, the words, the magic, the hope and belief. 

That somewhere, hidden behind this armor, is a strength that has yet to be discovered. A strength that comes from the very weakest of places. Because it takes some kind of super hero power to admit I was wrong, to say I am sorry, to tell the truth when it may bring rivers of tears. 

And he stood and waited for it to come. For it to speak. This language that is recognized only by it's measure of fear. The language that speaks to our smallest of parts.

"Jump."

"I will catch you."

And in the leap, in the midst of bravery, a strength is born.

And in this willingness to let all of your weakness rest beside your strength, to become the smallest of the small, you can lay down, look up into the sky,

and see just how high you jumped.

Stones and Leaves and Clouds and Light

I have been going through my photos this week, trying to consolidate and organize the astonishing amount of photos I have accumulated since the birth of my third son, Niklas. I always held onto the excuse that I was too busy after having my third child, but that excuse has since expired and I am now left with this overwhelming task.

It's hard to edit them down. These moments. Because I can see each one, each feeling so clearly, the transitions from fear to free, to moving and stopping, clinging and running. The twirling afterlife of a moment lost, then recovered in a split second, caught in the net of a simple photo. 

Sometimes I'll remember how I was feeling the very moment I caught their smiles, the moment I heard them laugh and then pressed my finger to catch all of it, stop it right then and there. But it never stopped. It just kept moving, the laughter, the crying, the clinging and running.

And there were times, also, as I searched through each photo, that I could remember how I felt the moment I caught their expression. There was a fight. There were tears and I had been crying. Overwhelmed by some kind of adulthood tangled up with my childhood. I remember how his expression made me laugh and I forgot the hurt for a moment, just long enough to see the light come between us and rest there momentarily. And the ache lifted long enough to see the truth. 

We have been collecting these moments in photos, but we also have a ritual of collecting hearts. Mostly stones. Collecting them, letting them settle onto the windowsill, waiting for another day to edit them. 

And as I went through my photos, I found them, almost waiting for me to uncover them again. All these stones, collected and noticed, felt like having a secret note slid under the door,

"You're not alone."

"I am with you."

And I could remember the day, the sand between my toes, the way the river was cold and I couldn't keep my hands in the water too long because of the icy water and the ache.

"Do you see it?"

"The curve. Right here. The top of the heart starts here."

And his tiny finger would outline the heart shaped leaf. The stones, the leaves, the clouds, the light.

And I would nod and place his treasure in my pocket. 

"Keep it safe."

"I will."

And as I traced the lines that connected each of the days that held each of the stones, each of the leaves and the clouds and the light, I was left with the moments in between. 

In between the stone reminders, there was a beating heart. There was life being made in rooms where a million little notes were being slid under the door.

"You are loved."

"You are loved."

"You are loved."

Because this kind of love isn't't made to be slid into pockets and placed onto windowsills. 

It's made to be chased and tagged and caught and held, tickled and wrestled and hugged and known.

And in the center, a heart made alive, 

From the stones and leaves and clouds and light.