The Garden

This morning I woke up dreaming of a garden. The dream unfolded calm and fluid. Shafts of milky sunlight illuminated flowers blowing in a light breeze, and in the dream, I knew it was the end of summer. I felt every petal and blade of grass intimately, the sounds of life around me, heightened. Behind me, stood my grandmother, her head bent modestly, an errant lock of  hair caressing her right eye as always, the faint smell of lilacs and egg white on her warm, white skin. In the dream, she explains to me how the red poppies grow and then, she points to the yarrow  growing around the garden and that it is known for it's healing qualities. Her words are rhythm only, like listening to a babbling brook of water gliding over stone. I understand everything and nothing at the same time.

Why is my beloved grandmother here, on this day of remembrance? On this day when I am in a space where I find myself  wishing to move on.  Yes, I will gladly say a prayer for the dead -  but then let me go, let's all go -  further than that one place of sorrow and shock.

She waits patiently, forming words with her eyes. She wants me to unlock the secret of the garden. 

How?

Grandmother was a witchy woman (she is crossing herself now, appalled that I would use this word to describe her) and she knew her herbs, the folklore wisdom of old Bosnia, deep inside her, even though she would not have admitted to it. Bosnia. The place, like other places, carries the shame of war memories whenever mentioned aloud. My Baka, felt this shame, more than most.

I go deeper into my dream, to look for meaning.  I want to know why she is whispering to me in my sleep about Poppies, which I don't remember her liking, indeed I don't remember any growing in the fields surrounding us when I was a little girl.  The Yarrow, though, grew abundantly and she never failed to point it out it better qualities.

Achillea Millefolium - the Yarrow. She would bring back bunches of it and spread it on newspaper on the kitchen table to dry along with other roots and stalks from her daily walks. From the dried pieces, she would make tinctures and pomades, wraps and powders. Tiny little pieces of white paper with abbreviated names indicating prescription. These were written in German but with Serbo Croatian accents over 'sh' and 'ch' sounds, as she was only patient with some things and not with others - so never bothered to perfect her Deutsch.

When we had bruises, stomach ache, head pain, cuts and fever she would rub and knead and administer with damp cloths or tiny droppers her magic potions and heal us whole. And so, a whole brood of us grew up with witchy blessings on our heads, crosses around our necks and herb tinctures mixed in our blood.

Here is a story.....As a young man, Achilles the famous soldier/hero of ancient times was schooled by Chiron the Centaur.  Chiron was versed in medicine and the healing arts and supposedly passed his powerful knowledge on to Achilles. In his turn, Achilles the leader/prince taught his troops to use yarrow flower to stop the bleeding and hemorrhaging of wounds received during their epic battles. Hence the Latin name for Yarrow: Achillea.

Soldiers, Hero's, War, Magic, Wisdom. There. I see a pattern emerging from the dream....

Poppies too, I discovered,  live deep in our psyche as a symbol of sacrifice and memory. Somewhere there is a poem about fallen soldiers and poppies that spring up around their unmarked graves. In Greek and Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead and by the Christians as a symbol of resurrection.

Red, Christ, Blood, Dreams and Memories, Acceptance, maybe 

I'm not sure what the dream aims to show me. Today is a ritual of remembering for many, though it is not about mourning soldiers or wise men or herbologist Centaurs, I know. 

It is about remembering ordinary citizens on that day, the 11th of September, going about their business of life one minute and then dead the next.

 I think about them in the city and the skies and at the same time, I think about all the others too -  the people caught in between ideologies and fantasies, dreams and delusions. I think about soldiers on foreign soil and how unbelievable that is, to me. 

 Ordinary people going about their business of life one minute and then dead the next.

What were the words she said that would unlock the meaning of the dream, unlock the meaning of the jumble that is life and death, war and peace, forgiveness and acceptance? I will never know. 

Bathing Beauties

Another link to my multicultural heritage that I am intermittently fascinated with...It seems to appear out of nowhere. The adoration of a Russian Mother icon or a sudden lust for royal Russian drama stories from the past. Endless days of looking through Culinaria Russia. And then I am entranced, looking for the thread that connects me.

Kupala

I named it 'the blood calling' when I was sixteen and looking for my birth father.

The illustration I found on the Pinterest page of Andrea Ferrante   "In Slavonic neo-paganism, Kupała is the goddess of herbs, sorcery, sex, and midsummer. She is also the Water Mother, associated with trees, herbs, and flowers"  

More about this particular myth/story from Gods & Godesses and here a bit about how they celebrate in the Ukraine.

Changes

More treasure in pictures. It's interesting to see the very composed pictures

of the 1960's and early 70's in Germany and then Thailand and Usa

 as compared to later in the decade when we moved to Italy

when people like Versace, Bowie and Sarah Moon were influencing fashion in Europe and well, everywhere.  Fashion, especially with the advent of 'off the rack' and pret a porter suddenly made it easier to have well made clothing and simultaneously be more glamorous. I think it added to women expressing themselves through their bodies in a more free manner.  Instead of emulating the 'perfectness' of  how they 'should' be this new fashion allowed them to be less constricted. Especially hair and makeup and of course clothes the pictures show women were more playful in mixing and overlapping styles.

I remember my mother wearing Greta Garbo wide pants and 40's inspired triangle tops with 70's glam platforms.

Her hair was shorter and lighter and her makeup more natural.

I mean really, she always looked like a movie star and still does. The pictures from a box that I discovered made me realize that for women like my mother, the seventies must have been a really liberating time.
The idea that as a woman you could have more control over your own lifestyle was new. That you could  make your own choices without necessarily asking your father, brother or husband first -  that possibility was just opening up for women at that time.

 It's easy for me to see all this in the reflection of her changing style and fashion. The arch of the eyebrow remains but the movement of the hair, the unconstrained clothing challenge the past.  I guess I never saw what was obvious all along. We have always been lovers of style and fashion. Culturally, it really goes so much deeper than just buying a 'new look'. At the time of these pictures she was working with a well known Tuscan consortium to bring Italian fashion to the rest of Europe and specifically America. She spoke 5 languages and traveled to Africa, the Eastern Bloc countries and America. The 'liberated' woman with flair.

Mom took every opportunity to further herself and was highly regarded as a business person and a woman of style. I will forever be grateful.

Mary Day 2011

Mary Day Celebration

Every year some women friends and I celebrate the Goddess with in us on the 15th of August. It is the Catholic holiday set to commemorate the Assumption of Mary, the Mother of Jesus as she is whisked into the Heavens. I pick this day not because I am particularly religious but because it reminds me of my childhood. When I was a child, living in Bavaria, in southern Germany, Maria Himmelfahrt  was a really big deal. As I have written in other blogs, on that day of celebration, the whole town comes out, children in traditional costume and  with crowns of flowers on their heads, favorite cows adorned with wreathes of herbs and flowers and of course, the statue of Mary carried through town from the Abbey to the main church. It is a beautiful spectacle and I always see it first and foremost within that childlike vision.

In the last 10 years it's been a way  to connect with women friends that are dear, share stories - some of them about being women, some of them childhood memories, others are myths we know or half know and want to explore.

Our Lisa is the story teller and fascinates us with her memory of women stories, both learned and intuitive.

We read our coffee cups and have  wine, let our daughters join us in the lighting of the candles and writing of secret messages on little scraps of delicate paper that we then send up in smoke to the sky, hoping that our daughters too will find some fascination in the mysteries and bounty associated with the Mother.