Open Writing

A huddled image of Hope leans over me like a shadow. This doesn’t deter me from using up my wishes as fast as quarters in a slot machine with no thought of trying to break even. I know how to hope — but never with the abandon I would have allowed myself if I had not grown up with that woman looking down at the top of my head.

Hope hung on the living room wall just over the couch for so many years she made her mark on the wall. The painting, about two feet high and not quite as wide, was framed with burnished wood finished to look like metal. She was an eerie, dusky sight: a woman draped in a gown of sepia, mustard, olive drab and slate gray, her head in her hands and her legs sprawled over the top of a big, round, equally sepia ball. I would glance up every time I walked into the room. She became an obsession.

I watched one day as my mother lifted Hope off the hook and set her on the floor, leaving a clean rectangle as exposed as skin after you rip off the band aid. I crouched on the carpet while mother turned the picture over and pointed to the sticker on the back embossed with fancy gold letters. “Hope On Top of the World,” she read as she turned to me. “This is a picture of Hope. This is what Hope looks like.” I jumped up and ran to my room, my mother’s voice following me. “Don’t be silly, She’s not real. Pictures can’t hurt.”

I was the age when Santa Claus lived within me in a comfortable limbo somewhere between real and make believe. But I could not be this accommodating with Hope, even when she lay face down on the carpet with her sticker showing. Credentials or not, I kept one foot in my room and peeked out my door until I saw her back on the wall where she belonged.

Not long after I had another dismal encounter with hope. It was my birthday. I was called upon to make a wish (which, of course, is the flip side of hope) and blow out my candles all by myself, with no help. I felt the circle of tense faces coming down on me while I closed me eyes, took a big breath and let go. I don’t remember how many candles were on the cake but I blew them all out and everyone clapped. “Don’t tell what you wished for or it won’t come true,” someone hollered. Right then all my hope went up with the smoke. I had been so anxious to do a good job I had forgotten to wish.

Worries change their size or shape as we age, but wisps of unsettling childhood memories stay with us just as surely as the traces of Aunt Jennie’s slight overbite or father’s long nose. It is Hope I am stuck with; she hangs on the wall of my mind as limp as a dust rag, as lifeless as an old negative.

I still don’t do well when people stare at me. When I sit in the corner of my doctor’s office, for instance, engrossed in a book I wish the nurse wouldn’t call my name so loudly when she throws open the door. All eyes turn toward me as I jump, gather my belongings, tidy the magazines and head for the open door, sweater dragging, purse unzipped. I am so rattled by their detached but curious “I wonder what’s the matter with her?” look that I forget to hope for the best. So far my health has been fine, but without hope I’m pressing my luck.

Wishing on a star was my next experience with hope. My mother and I would chant, “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might get the wish I wish tonight.” She reminded me, every time, to look sharply because it had to be made on the very first star. I must have wished as many times as stars have twinkles but I never knew if I had found the first star, and I can’t remember for sure if any of my wishes came true.

In time I replaced this childhood chant with a more sophisticated tune. It begins, “When you wish upon a star,” and ends, “Your dreams come true.” Lyrics in between give us permission to wish on all stars, any stars, any time, any place. I don’t have to strain my eyes in the twilight searching for the first flicker, any old star will do. And I don’t have to blow hard and not tell anyone to make my birthday wishes come true. Even if I forgot to whisper the wish to myself it is in my head, and that just might be enough.

At any rate, my mother’s taste in art hasn’t completely removed hope from my life. I, of all people, ended up with Hope On Top of the World. I still have her, after all these years, but not over my couch. I keep Hope in a cardboard box in the attic above the garage. I don’t climb up there very often, but I imagine she is still sprawled over her sepia, shadowy world.
When I come upon one of those touristy little wells just sitting there collecting money and wishes I am always surprised at the carpet of coins at the bottom. If there’s nobody watching I toss in some change and make a wish of my own, as though I were Hope on Top of the World and the face in the ripples is someone I’ve never met.

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