The Morning Glory Story

                                             Morning Glories growing in my kitchen


     What is it about these flowers that I love. Their beauty, the color, the way they open themselves up to the morning sun revealing all of their glorious splendor.
     My love for morning glories started long ago, when I was but a child. Every year the school would send us home with seeds to sell and morning glories were among them, always the heavenly blue color. I determined in my heart right then that when I grew up I would grow them. Why I never attempted to grow them in my tender youth is a mystery.
     Morning glories come in many colors, but mine had to be the heavenly blue. Perhaps because they remind me of the summer sky of my childhood when I would lay in the grass looking at the clouds and blue sky pondering on life. If you look at the center of the morning glory it looks as though there is a white cloud contained within the flower.
     A few years ago I went to Baltimore to visit a friend, while out on a morning walk I spotted some wild morning glories growing, words began to fill my head, it became a story about the flower, written in rhyme, a story that imparts how messy life can be until love and compassion are shown, because of kindness and help the beauty of life shines through, it is The Morning Glory Story, I am near completing it, it has been a process, I was only given the first 2 paragraphs, but more has come recently and it should be finished soon. I believe there is a time for every purpose and it cannot be rushed, but what I hope to impart in my story is to look beyond what is on the outside and to have love and compassion for others. As many authors who have gone before me I carry a message, my message is delivered from the heart of my youth, when I lay in the grass looking at the blue sky and white clouds pondering about life and dreaming that we could love one another, transcending all of our differences.  
     

My Life

                                                              Fred and I, 1975

                                                           Fred and Adam, 1979

                                                                Fred and Erica, 1982

     I was a child of the 6o's, too young to attend Woodstock, but attracted to the hippie life.
As a teenager I would come home from school, lock myself in my room, read and listen to music. My taste in books and music was eclectic and ranged from Led Zeppelin to Cat Stevens from Herman Hesse to Richard Brautigan. One of my favorite books on hippie life was Home Comfort, it was a day by day experience of a group of hippies in their own commune in Vermont, I still have that book, it has great recipes in it, pumpkin pie sweetened with maple syrup being one of them.
      In my mother's day the girl's ambition was to get married and have a family. My dreams consisted of backpacking across Europe and joining a commune. But alas, as John Lennon sings, life is what happens to you when you're making other plans.
     I went to Monhegan Island, worked there for awhile, came home, had no job, no plans, went camping, ran into a guy I had known for awhile, Fred. We stayed up all night talking, he asked me to move downeast with him, so I packed up my knapsack and guitar and moved into a camp in the woods. No electricity, no running water, but a nice waterfall that came in handy as a shower and a river and scrub board, a great way to wash clothes. It was an adventure.
     We eventually moved into an apartment in Camden, but the following summer we would pack all of our belongings, putting our bigger items in storage, each of us packed a knapsack of clothes and started hitchhiking to Florida. Stopping in New York City to visit a friend of Fred's halted our plans to go to Florida. New York City is where we stayed for awhile, Fred could find work everyday by simply showing up when the temporary jobs were assigned. He did everything from moving vending machines to loading gold bars into armored trucks. It was the 70's and New York City was something else, something wonderful, an adventure. We were young and carefree, no ties, we were only bound to one another by our love.
     After New York we moved back to Maine, tore a barn down and built a small house with an upstairs loft to sleep in. Sometimes I'd stay up all night reading if I was into a particularly good book.
     A few years down the road I would get pregnant with my first child, Adam. I would hold him close to my heart. He had a sunny disposition, always happy and content, we lavished our love on him without measure. About three years later our daughter would be born, Erica. She was more frail, sick from the start. We were more vigilant over her because of her health, but she thrived and grew. When you become a parent you are always a parent, thinking of your children, wanting what is best for them. The natural progression of life is that your children grow up, they live their own lives. But, speaking from the perspective of a child who recently lost a mother and the perspective of a parent with children of my own, loving means you are always bound to those you love, no matter distance, time or death, these things can never erase the connections you hold to loved ones.
     Quite a few months ago I was inspired to write a poem, dedicated to my husband, Fred.
                         Us Two
Hanging on my wall is a picture of me and you,
When we were young, first married, it was just us two.
A few years down the road another picture was hung,
Of you holding our newborn son, now it was us two, plus one.
One picture remained to be placed with the others,
A sister for our son, now a big brother.
Two plus two, many pictures taken as our family grew,
 But I will always remember the one,
 taken when we were young, first married, just us two.

Details

I like details, finding out what things mean.
For instance R.S.V.P., now most people know if you are invited to a party and receive an R.S.V.P. it means they want to know if you are coming so you have to contact the invitor and let them know.
My husband and I were puzzling over what the R.S.V.P. stood for, he thought it may mean respond very promptly. He's close, but no cigar. I was watching Martha Stewart one day, I know, she can be a bitch, but she's a very informative bitch and I enjoy her show. Guess what, I learned,  R.S.V.P. stands for  répondez s'il vous plaît, meaning “reply please” or "please respond". I can even correctly enunciate it, thanks to Martha.
Now I know nobody loses any sleep over these details, but it makes me feel somewhat smarter to know these things.
I have even learned I can impress some people with my vast array of meaningless knowledge. I work for the census bureau off and on, during one of the decennial censuses lucky me got stuck with an area in which every other form was a long form with many personal questions that pissed alot of people off,  I was interviewing a college professor and had to ask him about his and his wife's ancestry. He said," my wife is English, but it goes so far back she's almost French." To which I replied, "Oh you mean when William the Conqueror sailed over in 1066 and conquered England." This took him aback, I mean here you have the lowly census worker who happens to know a random historical fact. I could see the surprised look that came over his face, he was so impressed he made me a cup of good old English tea.
During one other instance a woman came out of her house all pissed off, I simply remarked on her houseplant, "what a lovely clivia miniata." Her whole perspective towards me changed. Knowing meaningless trivia can be really good.
Now I'm going on a bit of a rant here. As most people know I am a conservative, so here's the rant, being a conservative doesn't give one the right to be stupid. I heard on a conservative show during the last census, oh my God, the government is going to count illegal aliens during the census. Newsflash, the government has always counted illegal aliens, as far as I know, during the 4 decennial censuses I have been involved with, we have never asked if someone is a citizen. So reporters get your facts straight before you report, otherwise you come out looking like a pack of idiots.
If more people researched what is fact / truth as opposed to what is fiction / lies there would be less idiotic statements made. Thus ends my blog.