My Auntie Amy gave my mother a black wrought iron sign with a sunshine at the top. It said:
A kiss of the sun for pardon
A song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth
Auntie Amy had one of the most beautiful gardens in the back of her cottage-like home in San Bernardino I had ever seen. I couldn't tell you the names of the flowers, but do recall that every time I visited, whatever she had in that white clapboard garden shed of hers produced magic all around it. Everything was alive, perfectly groomed and so, so colorful. There were pinks and yellows, lavenders and deep purple, peachy tones, whites and barely pinks.
For years, that garden blessing was held into the ground of our backyard on Plumbago street. Having spent many years in that yard, I've held on to the words for a long time. I have always been impressed by anyone who can grow beautiful things. My father has a green thumb, and when he is in his yard, watching him is like watching a young, nimble boy lovingly pulling this weed, trimming that hedge, watering those plants. I remember I wasn't so happy with him when he planted large ferns in the cedar chest that I had always thought would be my "hope chest", even if I had old fashioned ideas. I loved the smell of that chest, which I imagined would lose its woody scent having been potted and planted.
In retrospect, I have watched my Dad tend those ferns for about 25 years and they are still alive, still thriving and beautiful every time I visit home. All of this "life" of memories comes back to me with the idea of gardens, growing things, beautiful flowers and people I love.
That cedar chest reminded me of my grandfather's house. I am actually not sure if it was because his address was on "Cedar Avenue" or because his house had wooden trinkets in it made of cedar. This is how memories are. . .they draw on multiple senses, places, faces and experiences that come together into a big ball of imagery that calls up other images, sights, sounds and smells that fill a heart and feed a soul.
The sign that Auntie Amy gave my Mom is still around, but it now blesses the vegetable garden in Carpinteria where my father grows bell peppers, zucchini, green beans and tomatoes. I love to see it and everything it reminds me of when I go home--natural surroundings, a little yellow house, the smell of salt air, the distant rush of ocean waves, seagulls squawking, morning fog, afternoon sunshine, sandy towels, a good book, the smell of barbecue, badminton birdies and racquets and loved ones around me cooking, sleeping, playing, reading, walking the dog and just being together in times and places that feel like home.
With Mother's Day approaching, my thoughts turn to home and what it means. All of it is home. All of them are home, and my mother, who brought me into this world through her labor and love, gifted me with life and the meaningful things that surrounded me and sustain memories that feed my soul.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
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