Monday Mimisms ~ Step Into My Garden

The peonies bloomed late this year

 that pretty much describes me

Sometimes I forget to pull the weeds

from my own

 garden

 the rain falls anyway

Bloggingham is awash with weeds and wild growing things

P.S. I told him I loved peonies.

Photography Mimi Lenox

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The Woman In The Van ~ A Mother's Day Story

I noticed her right away. 

 
I sat in my car at the large local nursery, eating my lunch and preparing to face the unbelievable crowd of shoppers this Mother's Day eve. Folks filed by with wheelbarrows full of mulch, potting soil, blooms and hanging baskets of pretty things all ready to deliver to moms near and far. But she...well...she looked so frail and thin walking across the parking lot towards my car. I imagined her to be at least eighty, maybe older, white thin hair, pale and very small-boned.  She carried a large pocketbook in one hand and a single small potted plant in the other as if she knew exactly what she was going to do with that spray of blooms. Her own mother must be long gone, I mused. I wonder if she's going to take it to the cemetery. She looked so sad and alone to me.  Maybe I should get out and make sure she gets where she's going, she looks a little wobbly....and then I saw another woman coming from around the back of the van the lady was approaching, the vehicle directly in front of mine. We were grill to grill, windshield to windshield in the parking lot. 

 They resembled each other. The youngest had her hair in a ponytail, a middle-aged properly combed ponytail. She was strong-boned and able. Without a word she led the small lady to the passenger side, opened the door and helped her in. It must have been her daughter. Yes, her daughter.  They sat down right in front of me.

Well, I'm glad she's OK, I thought. What a sweet little woman she appears to be.
I started to gather my things, throwing little purse into big purse, makeup bag into zipper, camera flung around my neck and mentally thinking which plant aisle I wanted to visit first.  The ferns sure look nice and healthy today. Before I opened the door to make my way into the Mother's Day madness, I happened to glance at the van once more, hoping they had moved away so that I could pull into the space and not have to back out later. And that's when my whole carefully planned day dissolved.

There they sat in front of me like a magic outdoor movie screen, still not saying a word to each other and completely unaware of my gazing curiosity. The elderly lady opened a bottle of blue-labeled bottled water and drank from it. And then the ponytailed woman opened a package of what appeared to be yogurt and began to feed her, sitting there in the parking lot of plants, one spoonful at a time. Her mother opening her mouth like a little bird, trusting the hand that fed her as if they'd done it a million times in reverse. Neither one talked. Just one nourishing the other and oh, how the eyes of the ponytailed woman filled up with love each time the spoon was lifted. I saw it so clearly in the voyeuristic windshield. It was a well-rehearsed dance between one who loves and one who is loved - except by the time the feeding was done I couldn't tell who loved the most. All I knew was that I had to look away before they saw me crying, before I spoiled their peaceful day, before I broke down completely into something akin to witnessing a sacred moment I probably shouldn't have seen, but one so tender it touched me to the core and filled me up. 

 No one's mother experience is the same. Not all people kept the mothers that birthed them. Not all mothers know where or how their children lived out their lives or what became of them. I think about and worry about those women on a day like today.  Some people have mothers who mothered who weren't their mother you know. Those are like the two in the van, only with two sets of heritage and two sets of memories; we can't tell the difference because the love is so palpably real. Both sets of circumstances have merit in the journey of a life.  Just because a day is assigned for mothers does not make it Mother's Day for everyone. And that is each person's personal cross to bear. I have flowers firmly planted in the roots of Bloggingham that remind me of my mother and all that is delicate and beautiful about her. The blooms are ever changing but always strongly rooted.  Sometimes we have buckets of good memories to share and give back, sometimes all we have is a spoonful.  But all of us can say thank you for giving me life.

I don't know how many spoonfuls of trust were exchanged in the lives of these two women.  But I know there were enough. 

And that was a very fine thing to watch.

My mother's azalea bush in bloom 2013

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Monday Mimisms ~ Can Someone Say Busy?

 Please do not hang up.
You have not reached this blog in error.

 I'm still here. 
My life feels a little igloo-ish right now: hunkered down dealing with work work work, rehearsal rehearsal rehearsal, go here go there go here go there, emerge for a few minutes and start all over. But soon the craziness will slow down and I'll have more time to write and blog like a proper Queen should. I hope you're still here.
Just give me a minute to thaw... 

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Monday Mimisms ~ Peace on Earth Day

EARTH DAY is an annual holiday, celebrated on April 22. Events are held worldwide to display support for global issues such as climate change, which is the focus of the 2013 Earth Day. The project began in the 1960s and is now recognized in 192 countries every year, much to the credit of the Internet's impact on society and social media exposure.  I love the way people from all over the world come together one day to honor the beauty of our world and pledge to take care of it for future generations.

Earth Day is near and dear to my heart. The above logo which is an official NASA image in the public domain, has been placed on a dark blue background, now known as the Earth Day Flag. I will fly it proudly on this blog. It reminds me of a certain blue marble in the shape and color of our world created even before the onset of Earth Day.
This one
given to me by my grandfather


which has become a symbol of peace in my life and many others. Here's the story.
 Remember to honor our world by keeping her free from the ravages of war, the atrocities of nuclear weapons and the destruction that comes when her people do not cover her with peace. 
Bless the Earth and all its inhabitants today.

 It's Earth Day.
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We all live on the same blue ball of dirt. Let's take care of it.

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Monday Mimisms ~ The Lion

I don't know what she saw that day.
Baby Boy saw it too. He was just outside the frame in the mirror frame.
"Look, Mimi. It's a lion."
 I was already mesmerized; the beast looking over my shoulder, captured in my lens. The picture in my mind spoke volumes before the child said a word. Somehow he knew not to interrupt us.
The lion and me.

"And you are?"
"Mimi Lenox."
"Really."
"Yes. You are...well....you are. And you are staring at me."
He didn't flinch.
"It's making me quite uncomfortable really."

"I only asked you who you were."

"Well. YOU seem quite sure of yourself. Your name. Your place on the wall and in the world. Me? I was just remembering how good it is to be free.... before you and your wheat ragged jungle butted into my business. I've never seen you in this store before. Ummmm Sir. Then you had to arrest me with that glare and ask me my name."

He was staring. I was staring. Baby Boy was quiet as a mouse.
"Familiar you are. Where did you come from and why do you bother me so?  You with those authentic eyes in the grass...protecting your kingdom and popping up in the strangest of places.
I...I think I may know you. You are...may I say...quite spectacular."

"What does she look like?" he asked.
"Who?"
"This woman you call Mimi Lenox."

"You see her in the mirror, don't you?"
"Is she strong like me?"
"I think so."
"Does she know who she is?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Does she belong anywhere?"
"Do I?....what??...I....I..."

"To whom, Mimi Lenox, do you belong?"

How dare he ask.
I glared with a sense of wonder and admiration. Where did you come from? And why do you ask me such things? But since any ordinary day rarely holds court with kingly lions, I thought I'd better answer him.

"Well...if you must know I will tell you.  I belong to the courageous one. He who is capable of holding my gaze without flinching. He who will ask me strong questions and not mind that I am weak.  He who knows a thing or two about a camera, a lens, and a reflection...and love, that too...he will know about love. All about it. He will lie in the tall grass with me and we will ask questions of stars.
He's the one. I belong to him. I don't know him yet, but I know he is waiting."

"What does he look like?" asked the Lion.
"He looks like someone I know. And for the life of me I must say, he looks like someone familiar...someone like you."


How did I ever get so lucky to be paired with such a magnificent soul in a floppity-flip flea market house on a summery fall day? One who has his own kingdom and knows where he sits in the grass.
 I never met such a beautiful audacious soul in all my life.

"Let's go, Mimi," whispered Baby Boy, tugging on my hand.

 Click went the shutter.
Thank you, Mr. Lion, I whispered to myself. One day the strength I've been seeking will stare back at me as you have. Only this time....I will not be afraid.

And somewhere behind me in the back of a rickety store full of wisdom in frames, I heard a roar and a rustle in a field of lovely grass.
"You are not afraid, Mimi Lenox."

No. I am not afraid.

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Springtime In Bloggingham

It's not Springtime

 in Bloggingham

 

until the camellias bloom. 

They look a little weary this year because the weather has been strangely cool..

but even the wilty ones are beautiful to me.

There. 
It's Spring.

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Monday Mimisms ~ Southern Hospitality

Knock knock

Let me open the door for you...

Ah! It's so good to see you. Welcome, my friend!

  Come into the house

Sit right down and make yourself comfortable

Would you like a fire while you wait?
Can I get you anything?

I'll just be a minute in the kitchen

Make yourself comfortable while I rock the

 

baby to sleep...shhhh...

I'll just turn off the television for awhile so we can chat

 There

Do sit down. Let's have some coffee.


Sugar?


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The Retelling: An Easter Story

once upon a time I worked for a man who claims he saw an angel
not just any ole angel
but one that showed up close and personal
right there in his house
in a dark room
full of light and spirit and God's presence 
as he retold the tale to me and several others
I've never forgotten the feeling it gave me 

The Retelling: An Easter story for the believer, the non-believer, and everyone in between

I don't know how we got on the subject, except that religion and faith always seemed to be tumbling into our office conversations. One of us was an atheist, one a Buddhist, one a born-again Christian, a strict Baptist, one bitter agnostic, a charismatic who spoke in tongues, a transcendentalist trying to find himself, two scoffing doubters, one former Hell's Angel and one on the fence.  We worked together as a team for three years, sharing lunches and elaborate parties, successes and flops.  We were all business every day all day until this day; when the subject turned to the preposterous notion of living breathing angels walking around on earth, and how do you account for sight unseen occurrences or do you at all, and what about the bodacious claim that somebody's "God" bends down occasionally for the likes of humans to intervene in the lives of humans, even to hand out the elusive undocumented miracle.  

A few were already laughing at the thought, the Buddhist lady had a wiry sneer on her lips at the onset and I think I saw the tongue talker utter a prayer under her breath. Me? I was poised over an electric calculator, twirling my pencil in my hair, as was my usual custom when it came time to ponder the preposterous. I loved to analyze and observe. I loved the debate even more. The room was ripe for the picking apart of beliefs, chapter and verse. And I was about to embark (unknowingly soon) on a journey that would lead me to throw my Bible against the wall in some wild defiance of everything religious. The timing of my presence in that ragtag conclave was prophetic.  

  And so the question hung in the air. I could feel the charismatic getting antsy, the Zen Man just wanted some air, the doubters were circling and motorcycle man desperately needed a cigarette.  The only ones stone faced were the non-believers, who were so sure that such conversation would quietly reveal the true crazies in the office that they didn't even bother to roll an eyeball.   Given enough time, one of the believers would trip up and hang themselves on a begat and that would be the end of it. No more ridiculous supernatural discussions for this crew. I wondered which one of us would dare broach the subject with a tale to tell. My money was on the charismatic, who was looking at this point a little like she forgot which begot begat Baalam's ass in the first place.

Until the only one in the bunch whose very nature was reserved and aligned with normalcy, organization, order and precision, the logical, rational, sane one among us, Chamber of Commerce ready, as predictable as a redline pen mark in the debit column of an accountant's spreadsheet, rose to straighten his tie.  This towering beautiful man in his late sixties, whose mission in life was to organize the usher's rotation roster each week at the Starched-Shirt-Church-Of-The-Saints, make sure there were suitable flowers on the altar and tally up the collection plate money, suddenly waxed awkward and unfamiliar right before our collective eyes. 


Mr. Predictable sat down in a chair in front of my desk and leaned his head back on the wall. He closed his eyes. So unlike him. He reached for his handkerchief. My pencil stopped twirling. And suddenly those hard-lined angles with all the checks and balances took a squiggly left turn. I saw smudges. All the ink in the room dried up. As he stepped out of the careful box he'd created and deliberately lived in all these years, I think I heard the proverbial pin rip right through verse four of Just As I Am and land somewhere between an impeccably drawn ledger line in the bookkeeping book of boring that was his life. Boring life. Boring religion. Boring book. He was a walking talking Billy Graham revival most days. He even sang like Cliff Barrows.  It was only when he began to weep  (a sight we'd never seen before) that the atmosphere in the room turned from theological skepticism to...to...well, I can't explain it. You listen.

There's something about seeing a worldly successful man who had the world by the tail, sitting in a starched white shirt, black tie, shiny shoes and salesman's cologne, suddenly break down at remembering.  There was something going on with his daughter, he said, and she was distraught.  Everyone in his house was distraught. She was lost in her own peculiar way and no one could find her. He told it so well. And before we knew it we were all hanging on every word of the story; the wayward child, the worrisome nights, illness, pain, uncertainty, a parent's nightmare. All told in perfect angst and candor to his friends. A man who had always seemed staunch with a tad of sanctimonious. Until something else showed up. 

And that was long about the time the second set of tears began to roll down the shiny cheeks of the all business businessman, falling in droplets on the front of his made-for-business shirt...."I went into her room..."  
His hands now covered his face. We saw water on his fingers, heard pain in his voice.  The smirks were gone at the sight of his courage as his chest constricted and heaved between shallow breaths of tears and the sound of a well grown man unable to speak without gulping for air, the kind of retelling that only happens when you've accidentally opened up a deep well of wound or memory you forgot you had, and instead of drowning again and again you decide in some God moment that it must be time to let down your guard because all you can do God help you is bare it.  You let people into your sanctuary of secrets and whether or not they deem it true is no longer your concern. You know the feeling, don't you?

...And then I saw...I saw..."  He stopped. He couldn't go on. My friend wept and wept in the made-for-business room. 
And I felt it. What he saw. Before he said it, I felt it. We all felt it. It was all over him. All over us. In our room too. 
As if it had just happened to him all over again. A silence of palpable presence that he'd held in his memory for nearly thirty years.  And a gratitude that the God he loved and worshiped would seek to send him comfort and a promise in the midst of one of his darkest days. The presence of the Angel was still fresh in his mind. The events that surrounded his life at that time changed and he was never the same. 

His story helped me understand the frame of faith in which he walked. And it solidified a belief I've held most of my life - That you can't argue with an experience. I don't care if you're an intellectual, a fundamentalist, agnostic or atheist, a liberal Christian or a Bible-thumping sainted ball of confusion, if you don't have an experience, a definitive moment in time that you cannot logically explain, to back up what and why you believe in a Higher Power, it means nothing to you but empty words.  You can argue from Genesis to John, as we did many times, but none of us could argue with his experience.  His long ago unexpected meeting with an angel of light and protection for his beautiful daughter, was still strongly tethered to the present. Quite simply, he knew he was not alone. He knew he would never be alone.
And in the retelling of it, I got a front row seat and witnessed firsthand this fundamental truth....
that words are only powerful when they're attached to your heart.

It was his experience, that experience, that made all our blubbering banter on the subject of religion 'round the water cooler mean less than a jar of beans. Because when something that powerful manifests itself in your life and changes the situation, it changes you.  
Thirty years later it changed us too.

  Richard H. Driehaus Gallery of Stained Glass, on the Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois, USA
released to the public domain 
 The Annunciation  - Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, c. 1895.
 Ecclesiastical Angels - Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, c. 1890.
 Two Angels - Tiffany Studios, c. 1910.
Thomas Cooper Golch The Awakening 


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Monday Mimisms ~ A Stroll Through A Winter's Day

There's something satisfying about old wood, logs and rocks in the middle of a dreary winter's day.

I'm cold. Wonder if there's a fire inside......


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