Poppies, Friendship and a Little Freedom
"Just living is not enough" said the butterfly fairy, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
The time was 7:18pm. I was the kind of exhausted you experience when you spend the day with young kids, all of the ideas in your head are struggling to take flight, the kitchen is a mess and your husband’s job is beginning to finally take off.
“I can tell from your name that you are a writer,” my friend has always said. She introduced me to her blog post. She became a citizen of Sweden, after marrying a Swedish man that attended our college. The topic of her post was dedicated to a table cloth she purchased at a thrift store. As I remember it, the imagery on the table cloth was bright red poppies with creamy black lines dancing around and overlapping the bright shapes.
Over the years I have most likely transformed the image, as in, if she pulled up that post to show me her original writing, it’s probably different. I suppose that is how the imagination digests information.
The glare, the blade on his tongue, the way he was dressed to lie, his calculated preparations. “I am ready to purge you, as if you never existed,” was the gist of his announcement. I sat unprepared for this moment, trying to listen. I felt a searing heat in the air between the two of us and could see a volatile anger emerging inside his blue eyes. I have seen him move his shoulders to close his body and twist his legs to walk off, when his sense of entitlement gets the best of him, on this evening that is how he walked away. I would never see his sweetness again.
In some ways the petals on the poppy almost defy gravity. How could such a thin stem hold those petals off the ground?
Poppies grow from tiny black seeds, they have long, thin, wispy stems and their bright red petals seem too heavy. In some ways they almost defy gravity. How could such a thin stem hold those petals off the ground? There is an exotic feature to the leaves, is this plant part wild fern? The poppy adds action to the garden, it is a flower that moves. It works with the breeze and the sun to generate motion.
The evening turned to an unsettling night. Every time I opened my eyes, I could see the stars. Those tiny stars were still spread across the sky, perhaps like seeds. The house was silent, his heavy footsteps were gone, there had been a slamming of a door and his car had disappeared hours ago.
The first time I cut a painting apart was scary. What a wild urge, to be overtaken by. These paintings have been sitting in boxes and between sketchbooks for years. Someone suggested I paint birds, someone suggested I paint shells, golf courses, things for children’s rooms. As I began cutting the images away from the rest of the paper, I felt a sense of baggage being removed from my life. I was aiding the escape of these particular items from the paper and allowing them freedom to move on and develop into something better.
When I awoke in the morning it was as if I was in someone else’s body. Their body moved with confidence, their thoughts were centered, they had a plan that included action, shelter, safety, protection. Their body moved like life or death were the option and it was going to survive. This body was emerging from a chaos that seemed infinite. It held strong while I felt cold and detached. It used my voice to make phone calls and ask questions. It moved my daughter to a safe place, put me on an airplane, pulled a ring of sentimental value from my finger and left it on a ledge.
Unsure what their transformation was going to look like, the possibilities seemed endless and overwhelming. These pieces could become parts of mobiles, glued to other surfaces, built into sculptures, or sewn to fabrics or paper. My ideas were a warm escape from the imprisoned reality of my situation. Once I began to free these images from the bondages of an oppressed life trapped on white paper. I began to consider the life of the white paper that held them captive. What could it become? I held the control of its destiny and I could use creative language to rewrite it. The large white spaces could become color studies and shapes I could add to the work I was creating.
A college professor of mine once explained the visual aspect of rape. He said, “As that woman lays there, the sky will still be blue.” Everything around you still has the uncanny ability to look normal. The human being is displaced over and over again. It experiences grief, betrayal, sadness. That blue sky that still exists, the friends and family who carve out time in their lives to comfort you, it’s all part of the circle of life pulling us up, that is normal.
As I began to go through more and more of my possessions that had been mercilessly tossed into cardboard boxes, I discovered that I am greatly drawn to the image of the poppy, that bright red flower and its black center, its sense of motion, its ability to grow in fields, wild and that tiny black seed it is born from. I have painted poppies, created them out of felt and sewn them to fabrics. I even stopped my car and grabbed an old rocking chair off of the side of the road because of an urge to sew poppies to its surface.
In the midst of this absolute grief, betrayal and anger, I was reminded of the love I have for the creative spirit. I am reminded of friendships, and how my friendships, each of them often whisper compliments to me that I do not quite believe about myself.
The poppy images I have worked to create were inspired by the images in Karen’s blog that have been dancing around for years, finding opportunities to visually express themselves. In order to create these pieces of art I have cut shapes of colors and sewn them on paper. There is a black line that moves around the petal to accent its form and create a delicate configuration of movement.
I have curiously felted these poppy petals and embroidered them to canvas to create little bags.
As time steadily moves away from the situation of the October evening, I have discovered a treasured space that has opened up inside my life.This space craves attention, it has uncovered paint palettes, folded papers, sketchbooks with proverbs, statements and ideas, and dried watercolor paint tubes. I have pulled out brushes, pencils, architectural rulers, erasers, old photos, things that I have been carrying around that make me curious. Nostalgic for the days when my young kids would create spider webs between the kitchen chairs and fill bowls with water and plastic bugs to make popsicle pies, I will harness their energy and play with the creative spirit.
The poppy seeds that I spread out days before that frightening evening, might emerge. I am emerging and my life is being pulled into a new direction. I am grateful that my friendships and my family are supporting me in ways that feel warm and compassionate while I grieve for the loss and softly avow, “Mom, you dodged a nuclear bomb.” I am encouraged when I reconnect with people I have been isolated from. Every time I sit down to create something I am reminded that this ability not only comes from the spirit of God who created the Earth and all its characters, but also the generations of women who came before me that had to face their own challenges and transformed their grief into magic, using the creative spirit.