A Magical Moment of Consciousness

When I was a little girl I was never afraid of thunder storms. It was normal to wake and find the sky dark knowing that before long the lighting and thunder and heavy rains would follow. There was a comfort in the knowledge that one action would result in the next action.

I’m not sure it meant the same to my mother who was forced to take me and my siblings to school. I still tried to persuade her to let me walk or ride my bike to school, however, because I loved the feel of the rain pouring down on me washing away my troubles.

I usually found myself laughing out loud as I flew down the hill on my bike. If it had been a particularly difficult week, the rain was a very nice cover for tears to be shed and then I would cry my heart out running home soaking wet.

To my grandmother, who lived only a few blocks away from me, a sudden rain storm was always a nuisance. This is because her daily chore of hanging out the wash got interrupted. I remember often spending the night at her house and hear her cry for me to help her get the laundry off the line. Running out the screen door slamming it behind her, my grandmother’s beautiful white hair, always perfect from her weekly visit to the beauty parlor, would be flying in the wind. I did what I was told and followed her out the house only to see blue skies and sunshine.

She hurried along unpinning the clothes pins, dropping them into the cotton bag hanging on the line and tossing the still damp sheets and towels into her whicker laundry basket. Before I could ask what the hurry was, the rain came in torrents and yet the sun still shone. I asked my grandmother how she knew it was going to rain and she said she smelled it. And then she said, “The devil is beating his wife with a frying pan.” This was because the sun was shining and the rain was falling. It was a truly magical moment.

I always thought that was a funny saying and pretty much forgot about it until the other day when my granddaughter and I were sitting on the back porch and it suddenly began to rain. The sun was shining brightly. For a split second, just before it rained I smelled the rain. And I said, “The devil’s beating his wife with a frying pan.”

I looked over at my granddaughter and I saw in her face the same look I had given my grandmother all those many years ago. And then the most amazing thing happened. Time stood still and I saw in my granddaughter’s eyes, my grandmother’s eyes and then even more amazingly my own eyes reflecting back. To be one with my granddaughter, my grandmother and God, now that was a truly magical moment.

The Secret of Immortality

“Like mother, like daughter – the nicest compliment there is.”

This tiny little verse is printed on a vinyl plaque that my daughter Jennifer gave me one day years ago. She was not a mother yet and still I can say that as she is like me so too is she like her own daughters. The littlest, Emery Kate, only months old, is sweet, calm, happy, and smiles all the time. She makes everyone around her feel loved because she is so generous with her own love.

But it is when her mother picks her up and holds her close to her heart that she is most content and although we all attempted, on our recent trip, to use the technique to get her to sleep, it was my daughter, her mother that was able to get her to sleep the fastest.

I can remember holding Jennifer in my arms when she was about a year old. We were sitting in the living room of our home in Denver, CO in the wooden rocker my parents gave us when our first born, Brian was born. Jennifer and I rocked and talked and hugged and laughed and I said to no one in particular, “My head says you need to grow up, but my heart wants you to stay just like you are right now, my sweet daughter.”

And then there is Alexandra Anne, also known as Lexi or the Lou Lou as she sometimes calls herself. Tiny, smart, funny, a tornado circling a room, a force to be reckoned with and yes like her mother as well; because she is also kind, sweet, and filled with love for everyone she meets. She meets no stranger and is surrounded by a light of happiness that is very contagious just like her mother.

Like mother, like daughters, my daughter has been given the gift of caring for two precious daughters and with the help of a loving husband she can do all things for her daughters. Honoring this gift she has been given comes easy to my daughter, but then she is like me. I thank God every day for having Jennifer in my life as I know she does the same with Emery Kate and Lexi.

And the lessons of love that I learned as a young mother, my own daughter is learning and one day she will pass them down to her two daughters and so on and so on through eternity for that is the secret of immortality.

A Summer Garden and the Simple Life

I’d like to think I’m capable of enjoying a summer garden and the simple life at the same time, but tending a garden is not a simple act. It takes time, endurance, and a certain amount of skill and it does help to not be afraid of worms, insects, and getting dirty ----all of which give me the creeps.

Moving to our new house in April, we found the backyard to be a blank slate. Thinking that when we sold our house on Signal Mountain and moved to north Georgia, we would most likely not have a yard, we gave away the majority of our outdoor tools---even the lawn mower. The good news is that we can share the lawn mower with our son Daniel, who lives eight houses away and who takes turns with his dad cutting the grass in both yards at the same time. Or Mark cuts and Daniel edges; still it is nice to have green grass and a lawn, something I have not had in the sixteen years we lived on Signal Mountain. Of course on SM I had trees and the largest tree I have now is three inches tall….yes, you read right—a sapling growing in my garden….will it or will it not survive? That is the question.

I digress….and therein lies the reason I want a garden to grow my own vegetables, to see the product of my (and I use the word loosely because it is my husband’s green thumb that is the true gardener) efforts from beginning to end; and, to have a place where I can step outside in my nightgown (like my dear friend Debby confesses doing in her morning ritual through her garden) and see for myself the product of our toils. I am the one who sets the plan in motion, with his blessing, I might add, deciding what vegetable to plant; what herb to buy; what flower will enhance that corner of the lot. I even picked out the hedge of Leland Cypresses for the back yard.

But alas, our garden is just a dream right now.

“It is a work in progress,” he says. I decide that is good. Moving forward in any direction is better than standing still.


Two beds were already built around the shed. In one, we planted crowder peas that the granddaughter, Paige planted from seed. When the “bush” peas turned out to be climbers my husband built a trellis out of wood and twine and now the beans are not only climbing reaching for the sun, but flowering and producing a bounty of beans; thank you Paige.

On the other side of the potting shed we planted two tomato plants and later some mint because we plan to plant tomatoes in the big bed next year. In the meantime, we have gotten three tomatoes which is a miracle. It was usually late August before it got warm enough for tomatoes on Signal Mountain. These tomatoes are good, but not like some of the heritage plants from previous years. We will have to experiment in the new bed next year with a variety of tomato plants. But I couldn't help but admire the dew drops on our tomato plants this morning as I walked around the back yard just after the sun rose.

Looking off into the distance I was spell-bound by the fog and mist rolling across the field behind our home. Fodder to the goats and cows that roam the field, it pleases me to be reminded of a simpler time in life when families lived off the land they held so dear. My back yard may be a blank slate but the beautiful raised bed my husband built will be filled with “black gold” dirt and “stuff” from our compost pile. And like the beautiful crowder peas, the larger beds will one day be filled with a bounty of produce that we can not only put on our dinner table, but share with our friends and family not unlike a simpler time in life.