Bright and Cheerful!

Memories of Christmas in New England are from my childhood, when my younger sister and I went with our dad to choose a tree. We'd walk along a row of pine, fir, and spruce trees leaning against a pole until he saw one where its size matched the height of the living room ceiling, plus his pocketbook. Pulling it upright, he'd check the length of the branches and if they made graduated end tips down to the base. By the time my fingers were cold and curled inside my mittens, our dad had handed over the five dollars and was tying the family's fir tree to the roof of the car.

Twenty-six years later, on Christmas morning, our twelve-year-old daughter was excited by her first pair of skis, as our curious five-year-old daughter explored the rooms in the large doll house, with its hand-carved wooden floor boards, that her dad had built. There were the years of roast turkey on a platter at Christmas, shared on our dining room table—then the years of change crept forward, until our family was separated. Our daughters took in these years... and in time put their own imprint on lasting marriages that have given me three grandsons and a granddaughter. As I learn of what their generation is doing, I am inspired... I share in their Christmases as my daughters' photos of their families—and their trees—arrive in WhatsApp.

I now live in an apartment complex for seniors that faces a boulevard where traffic is moderate. Across is the three-story former school building under redesign. On my first Christmas here, I set off with a small knife to clip two branches of bunched red berries on a bush I had noticed in front of the now-vacant building. Returning on the bush-lined walk to my apartment steps, I cut three stems of slender, pointed green leaves from a tall bush growing nearby and climbed up the eight steps. Finding a single unneeded white shoelace, I wrapped and tied the bright and cheerful berried branches and strung them on the bare screen door.

My realization is, "Choosing certain moments to remember at Christmas time can bypass a second or two of wistfulness that may appear, bringing instead the quiet and simple contentment that can be found in aging when doing what is possible."

Shariat Farm: Serendipitous Love Part Three

Whenever I returned to Shariat Farm, I moved to simple-minded time, watching the sun rise and set and the stars wink out, following the herds and flocks crossing from Jesse's woods to the neighbor's, looking at the variation of petal, leaf, bark, and branch of dogwood, redbud, cedar, hickory, Southern pine, one magnolia, and whatever flowers and grasses wove the texture of the field.

Shariat Farm was sold in December 2015, following my last two weeks there that summer. Yet I knew in my heart that my love of these times and this place would live on.

 RED BIRD SONG

 Red bird singing in a black fig tree,

Looking out my window what do I see?

Morning sun in a tangerine sky,

Red bird to a hickory tree will fly.

My home, my home,

Here for awhile 'til I leave to roam.

My home, in the greening green—

Grazing at sundown, deer come here.

Red bird singing in a loquat tree,

I'm just sitting in the quiet air.

Chair a'tilt and my feet up high,

Star-gazer looking at the moon so near.

My home, my home,

Here for awhile 'til I leave to roam.

My home, in the greening green

Red bird sighing in the trembling sky.

Red bird singing my song unseen.

My sweetheart's letter in my hand today.

Words I read made my heart change tune;

Two months more and we're together in June.

My home, my home,

Here for a rest from a working world.

My home, in the greening green

Red bird above me in a twilight sky.

                                    PJC 2003

My realization is, "When the heart feels clearly but the mind questions, allowing the feeling may bring a previously unimagined depth of love felt within and expressed without."

* All quotes in this post can be found in Prema Jasmine Camp's A Flower for God: A Memoir (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021).         

* Author's note: Several years after the sale of Shariat Farm, I was in the town and went to the farm property to look from the gate. The owners had a different vision for the land, but I knew that Shariat Farm, in its gentle harmony with nature, would live in my writing for years.

Shariat Farm: Serendipitous Love Part Two

Unable to find any place to rent and with my departure date coming up, I wondered if I could move my things into the farm, and with the thought that I could also help Jesse, I began cleaning. When Jesse's twenty-one-year-old son finally appeared, we agreed that I needed to make a call to his father. His first reaction was shock, but he turned amenable when I asked in the name of Meher Baba and I heard the answer I had hoped for.

Now I brought my things out. The field with the horses was un-mowed since Jesse had left mid-summer, but I delightedly plowed through grass up to my knees, stopping for cactus that climbed even higher, with one of each of two pale-green and prickly mitts narrowly attached to its brother underneath. Tall, thin stems erupting in tiny, white flowers became part of my search for plant names in the wildflower book.

“Returning from India to the farm each year, I loved my small bedroom with its west-facing window taking up half the wall ... where in the morning I propped up pillows to look out at the roughly mowed yard and the trees, where birds and animals moved and leaves were shifting. ...This was the first time I'd lived in seclusion among abundant grasses. ... I looked out and met my new family—scrambling, squabbling birds at the feeder I hung, wheeling hawks, grazing deer and wild turkey, a passing fox partially visible, and a steadily crawling, long-term resident gopher tortoise on its routes."*

* All quotes in this post can be found in Prema Jasmine Camp's A Flower for God: A Memoir (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021).