I Didn't Know Anything

Memoir Notes III

Mom's in her garden in the backyard of our red brick house with black shutters and the white picket fence. The yard, an explosion of snow-white dogwoods and the lone crabapple. She's on her knees, green garden gloves on her hands, smoothing and clearing around the irises. 


Mom loved to garden. She had a very green thumb. Everything came to life under her fingertips, lush and colorful, but with a sense of order. Knees in the dirt, she'd push her face deep into the flowers, eyes closed. 


I remember the snapdragons; tiny fists of yellow and pink flowers on long green stems. I was little. Maybe four, five? 

In those days, I didn’t know about Bill, my brother. I didn’t know anything about Mom losing her son, about her other life in Canada, how she probably thought about her son every day. How Bill was living with his mean cousin, Murray. How his Dad was dead. How we were here and he was there. I didn’t know anything about my brother until I was older. Nine, ten? 

   

My brothers and I were always running around the yard, swinging on the swings, 45’s playing on the portable turn-table, Build Me Up Buttercup, crawling along the ground in a game of army with the Ashby and Trexler boys who lived just beyond the canopy of pink blossoms through a small opening of fence.

Every night Mom had dinner on the table for us; her one girl and three boys, and her preacher husband. I didn't know that somebody was missing. I didn't know anything about her other life.

Thursday Thought

Potting Plants etc.

Potting plants,

digging in the garden,

listening to birds,

breathing.

Enjoy this glorious day!

xo b

Morning Glory

It's only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision.

~ Barbara Ward

I could wax eloquently about how thoughtful it was that she took the time to email me a thank you note for coming to speak to her class. How her initial reaction was, who is this lady and did she say we're gonna write? And how when I said we'd be writing, she thought she might throw up. Okay, she didn't say that, but think mega roller coaster ride and how your stomach does that weird thing. How it just so happened, that once we got going on that cold *Sunday afternoon, she began to feel differently. About the writing. And herself. It was still a roller coaster ride for her, but now it had shifted into the good kind. Anyway, there will be no waxing. After I read her beautiful email, I promptly burst into tears; cracked open by this person's reaching out, and by her writing.

It was a happy sob-fest; a heart-opening, moving stuff around inside me, kind of thing. I believe it's good to cry outside, so I sat on the back porch steps and listened to the birds. It was a Wednesday gift; a moment of gratitude for the way people come together, [often in the oddest moments, and least likely locations,] and connect.

The good news is, I let myself have it, instead of tapping the tears down and getting up to empty the dishwasher. I sat on the paint-worn porch steps and put my head in my hands. And like any good crier, I spread my fingers out so I could see what was going on around me. And then I noticed the shoots popping up out of the ground in my garden. Which led me to get my trowel and shovel and ball of twine. I weeded and shoveled. I moved things around. I brought the clematis up front and dug up the big purple flower and moved it to the back. I tucked some morning glory seeds into the ground and climbed up on Mom's rickety old ladder, attaching twine to the house for the vines to travel up.

I never know when I'm going to receive this sense of opening, sense of vision. But I know enough to trust that it's going to keep showing up, if I just spread my fingers out wide enough to see.

* read "Two by Four-ness"