Morning arrives.
Yesterday is done and done.
This day that beckons to me,
Never before has it been lived…
Bird song and light footsteps on a woodland path, carry me.
Bejo,
loved flowers, oceans and woodland walks even though she spent much of her life behind office walls that bear the weight of busy concrete cities.
My ever sassy grandmother…
She baked a tender biscuit…brought order to an unruly boardroom full of men where she was the only woman…grew fairy roses like magic…and tended the loving spirit of a sister soon to depart the world…
She laughed brilliantly with her head thrown back in joyful abandon.
She cried the tears of heartbreak that linger in ways that others will never know…because one pushes them aside to keep on….
My brother arrived first in the family so, he bestowed her with her grandmother name. Bejo was one of a kind…
She gave me libraries, woods, old photographs, art and writing….we explored a thousand things when I was a little girl…
Bejo wore a cotton dress with her sensible boots, even in the wilderness. A walking stick accompanied her, just in case. No adventure would dare to escape her!
I can hear her still –
One must tend to oneself no matter where one might be in life.
Sit up straight.
Please and thank you.
Use a soft voice.
There is always time for beauty.
Paint just because you want to.
Write to me…
Thoughts on the circle of time, travel with me wherever I go…
I wander the forest with them…every day.
A Celtic knot returns unto itself.
Just as my walk circles and centers me.
When I return home, then I have completed another circle, albeit an off kilter messy one.
As long as it comes round to its beginning, doesn’t that make it a circle…
A Celtic knot spread is a circle.
A heart pushed in all directions to its outermost is a circle too.
I wonder over why a moment or an image or a thought takes hold of me.
I am helpless to let it go until I move through it mindfully
And make it my own somehow.
I write and write to clear my head and cleanse my heart.
always…there is more.
Souls don’t want to be told what to do…not really.
Bejo certainly didn’t!
She was the teller, never the tellee!
I think there is enough of that in the world already. Telling, I mean.
Perhaps, instead a soul wishes for a reminder that life can somehow bear sorrow and that love will always find a way…
At the age of 19 my grandmother married a man from New Orleans
who played minor league baseball by day
and a jazz fiddle by night…
She left him
Never to return
When my father was only three years old
They took a train back to her home in Texas
Hungry in both body and spirit…
I love mornings like this one…
If only I could be still for the whole long short day.
The whir of the fan, curtains drawn, soft light, quietly absorbed in transcribing the stories of my dreams. Breathing them into life.
Someone may read them…perhaps, no one ever will. Either way…it is ok.
How much I take in! Every day…All the time! Even as I sleep I gather notions in the reflection of my nightscape. Gather and tend. Gather and tend. Sometimes it is too much. I cannot hold it all at once.
Some of it falls in the lined pages that hold my thoughts.
Letters slanting to the right, edge to edge becoming words, one beside another until a page is filled and my thought comes round in an ever widening circle.
What then…
Do I feel better…that I have taken time to listen.
For a few moments I have stopped the whole busy world, except for my hand.
I give myself over to a thirsty pen, rich with ink, making every last thing bright with possibility!
Some mornings I have a tight grip that fights its way, leaving me with a worn feeling up and down my arm. Those thoughts come painfully. Soreness follows them. Sometimes those are just the sorts of words that need to be written. Some days are like that.
But, this day is soft,
Sky and heart and words…
I don’t know what it will become.
Joyful or crowded or silly…only time will tell.
for now…
….the edges are blurred in a lovely disarray that leaves me hopeful.
There is the comfort of listening….to music, to my heart, to that which carries me backwards and forwards and everywhere at once…to take out of nothingness and make something worthy of an eager pen.
Bejo lived more circles than I have ever tried to count…and loved deeply, often unnoticed.
A woman who changed her name when that wasn’t done.
And worked as many hours as they would let her to provide for an extended family during the Great Depression.
A woman so formidable that she had Two birthdays!
To be honest, Bejo was not overly fond of me when I was a child. That was just her way. We came to know each other when I was well grown. Then, she took me into her heart and showed me the depth of herself that she seldom shared. How grateful I am…
Bejo wrote…
Professionally with precision
Advisingly with a sharp tongue
Personally with a woman’s heart
And she did it All without the benefit of the Internet!
She wrote letters longhand
She taught me to write letters longhand
We lived far away from one another for most of my life
She kept my childhood letters
And I kept hers
I have them all now, tucked safely away.
She loved me I think…as I did her…
I often feel her close in spirit
Reminding me…of many things…
So when I pause
to wander my thoughts
and gather brilliant images
to create a new old story
one that I so long to share…she is with me…
another lovely circle coming round in beauty and grace
Write…she dares me…all that you live and love and dream and are…write to me…
****
ellie894 January 19, 2019
Happy Birthday Bejo, all my love always, suzie ❤️
