the peaceful peacock

Last night I had a dream about my grand­mother, not a reg­u­lar dream but a vis­it­ing dream.  You know those kind?

We used to take rides together in the car when I was grow­ing up.  She would tell me about impor­tant life stuff that required hav­ing a teenager strapped down for awhile, unable to find a dis­trac­tion out­side of the moun­tain range ahead or twin­kling Christ­mas lights around town.  She reserved these rides for advice like, “Don’t even think about get­ting mar­ried until you’re 25,” and “You’re a but­ter­fly girl.  Pur­su­ing any career that isn’t cre­ative will suf­fo­cate you.”

She was a smart lady.

Some­times I won­der what she would be like now, walk­ing toward her last steps in life if Crohn’s hadn’t ended her jour­ney so pre­ma­turely.  I was tick­led when she showed up in a mini van, com­plete with hand­i­capped tag in the win­dow, and translu­cent white hair.  She pays closer atten­tion than I think.  We went for a drive.

Up the hills.  Over­look­ing val­leys.  To places that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.  Places that trans­form with time, shift­ing in size and magnitude.

“Wow, that val­ley used to look so much deeper.  It’s really not that big of a drop, is it?”

“I remem­ber when I couldn’t even get all the way up that hill.”

She drove, mostly quiet but giv­ing thou­sands of words in wis­dom through the famil­iar sky­lines that we looked at together time and time again.  We sat at the base of a moun­tain, one I hadn’t seen before, and we were silent.  There was a large play­ing field at the peak, a pro­fes­sional foot­ball sta­dium.  In the gate stood a man.  She started up the road, quickly.

“Gram, you’re going really fast.  You might hit that guy.”

“Jewel, you gotta keep your momen­tum high because the hard­est part is just before the top.  Don’t stop, don’t slow down.  Or you’ll have to go all the way back to the bot­tom and start over. He’ll just have to move.”

*blink*blink*

Last week, I expe­ri­enced a pretty good set­back.  And by pretty good, I mean both sub­stan­tial and pos­i­tive.  Though I had checked, dou­ble checked, and triple checked with lots of offi­cial and impor­tant sound­ing peo­ple, I was given the incor­rect direc­tion in terms of health depart­ment require­ments and tiny empires of tea.  It seems tea is a gray area and there are par­tic­u­lar packaging/repackaging rules that require a hefty amount of paper­work and licens­ing.  These require­ments are now tak­ing up plenty of space on my to-do list.

And that means no more tea until I get it sorted out.

While I’m happy that I finally have a defin­i­tive answer and I will even­tu­ally be able to offer and pro­duce my tea blends on a grander scale, it kind of sucks that I didn’t have this infor­ma­tion three months ago.  You know, before the peak of tourist season.

Sigh.

Thank­fully, I’ve been on a lit­tle knit­ting bender.…

And I like to flit­ter from flower to flower.

It’s kind of my thing.

St. Patrick’s Day always makes me think of you.

Last night, I was breath­ing in the sweet smell of my lit­tle baby girl, hap­pily think­ing of how pleased I’m sure you are that she has red hair.  No deny­ing it now–there are streaks of fire on that girl.

I smelled you.  Not the bot­tled up ver­sion of you that I have tucked away for when I miss you, but the real thing.  The orange and red shag car­pet, the red stove, the morn­ing sun shin­ing in through the kitchen win­dow while you sat at the island read­ing the paper and drink­ing your coffee.

I miss your songs and when you would have straw­berry soap.

You gave a kiss to Annabelle and told me some good secrets about her.  She is like me…happy and free and reck­less and she already doesn’t give a shit about any­one else’s agenda.  Another but­ter­fly.  I will be patient.

I love you.  I miss you.

~ j

Dear Gram,

I got the dreams you sent–I can’t tell you enough how good it was to hear from you again.  Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you but I don’t think I quite under­stood it at first.  I have so many things under my fin­ger at the moment that it takes awhile for things to soak in sometimes.

You’ve prob­a­bly seen the two lit­tle ones by now ~ your pres­ence at their births was pow­er­ful and clear.  Thank you so much for all of the lov­ing pro­tec­tion, espe­cially dur­ing Nico’s surgery a cou­ple of months ago.

He’s back to his old self again..which can be some­what aggra­vat­ing since he’s two now.

Miss Annabelle is grow­ing at light­en­ing speed.  Her first tooth has erupted and she has a fine time chew­ing on ol’ mama while the rest pop up.  We love to make her smile so we can see the soli­tary pearly white stand­ing proudly in her lit­tle pink gums.  We haven’t tried the whiskey on her yet but a nip here and there sure helps me get through the teething.  So far she seems to like turkey jerky well enough to help them cut through.

She’s quite a char­ac­ter.  I’m start­ing to think the mys­tery nose might belong to you. (Like the sweater? S’s mother was kind enough to make one for each of the kids when they were born.)

The days are intense with our sweet Irish twins (18 months apart…what were we think­ing?  hahaha) and I wish you were here to tell me sto­ries about your life as a mother.  I always loved the story about the time that the boys got into the flour and threw it all over the kitchen–I can envi­sion it per­fectly now that I have two lit­tle ones with that same dev­il­ish sparkle in their eyes.  I’m sure you had a mil­lion more just like it that would help me smile through the rocky moments around here.  It’s good to know that dream­s­peak is a lan­guage that we share now too.

I bet­ter get back to the kid­dos ~ Nico is tir­ing of his cars and is start­ing to throw things at the tree again.  Please let the ladies know how much I love the ideas for the dresses!  It might take a lit­tle while for me to get them under­way but I’m see­ing the ideas emerge with great clar­ity, bit by bit.

I miss you. I miss you every day. Still.

much love ~ julie

blogging, hippie, teething, turkey jerky, voice