The Chair, The Love, The Ideas

This beautiful chair, in which my late husband sat while his portrait was being painted by Brenda Tatum in 2006 in our home, The Grove, is part of a pair. I had both chairs recovered in a very similar fabric and color after his death, as I wanted the chairs to look perfect. The arms had started to split, as the silk was at least 50 years old. I got the new fabric in Greensboro and had Boones Mill Upholstery recover them.

I sit in these two chairs often. They flank the fireplace now, in our Library. And in my earlier blog I mentioned a "Grief Chair." This is it. I sat in both chairs many times since 2008, recalling the best memories. Today, June 1, 2013, is the fifth anniversary of my husband's funeral. The Visitation for family and pall bearers was in our Library, and his body lay in the blue stainless steel casket in the center of the room, in front of his portrait and the two coral-pink chairs. Five years ago today I never would have imagined I would smile or laugh again.

One very important idea from the religion I study, Christian Science (also the religion of Keister's first wife who died the year before we met), is that the QUALITIES in a relationship, like love, integrity, loyalty, compassion, empathy, passion, understanding, and joy, to name a few, LIVE ON eternally and can come back into our lives even when the people we so loved are gone from this realm. Ideas are infinite. Think of a number, like 4...we cannot "hold" that "4" in our hands, although "4" plays a role in our lives here. It is an idea. So are we. Reflections of God. Love and all the other qualities of a wonderful relationship are also ideas. They are also infinite.

Knowing this, and experiencing these qualities again, the grief has receded and evanesced, never gone, but healed, like a balloon I let go of so it could rise and go on.

Alas, I have the kind of memory, like a circular calendar, that tends to remind me of significant dates (births, deaths, trips, exams, meeting new people, major events) I have known. So today, a bright, warm June 1, with a strong breeze, the scent of flowers from the gardens, phone calls from my son who is catching a train from IL to VA today, calls from friends, white butterflies flirting over the flowers, hugs from the man in my life...these are what fill my heart today. I have been blessed.

A Garden of Wood and Leather

I live in the heart of gardens, among a myriad of blooms---foxgloves, peonies, iris, clematis, roses--as rich as any gilded illustration from a Medieval Book of Hours. And within the ten acres of trees and gardens that define this estate, in the heart of a small Virginia town, is my "inner garden" inside. Yes, inside. Inside the house.

While my loved one weeds and waters and landscapes under the walnut tree, around the crepe myrtle clusters, and along the ancient English Boxwoods, I work in "my" home garden among the rare books, the heirloom angels, and the inherited furniture. And the fallen insects who gave up their lives on the parquet or carpets from Persia.

The fading leather jackets of elegant books and the gilt edges of mysterious art call to me. Mid-morning and dusk seem to be the times I settle to watch memories and ideas fly in to "feed" like finches and grosbeaks and butterflies among the things that fill the many rooms of this mansion. I am not a "thing" person; I spend money on books and travel and fine foods. But having been bequeathed, by parents and my late husband, a medley of chairs, a pod of silver accessories, a murder of ebony and mahogany chests, a flock of china cups, a gaggle of linens, an infinity of fine books, and Eschers of collectibles, I find time to savour [yes, feels more appropriate with the "u"] the delights of these inner gardens under the 13-foot ceilings and Italian plasterwork and deep crown moldings of the garden walls.

While my blog and Facebook pals plant kale, fertilize corn, and pick flowers, I dust an Austen held by my late paternal grandmother Charlotte, straighten a Twain enjoyed by my late father Henry, delight in a Thackery held by my late husband Keister, and revel in the pictures of a first edition of "Benjamin Bunny" with which I grew up. I dust, tidy, admire, shift things around, share.

The books are my treasures, my heirloom tomatoes. Nothing, nothing, nothing fills my soul like ideas. And ideas grow in a garden well-tended and nurtured. My fine education and companions in literature and life have allowed me the luxury of gardening indoors among leather and wood. Next time, I will share the chair(s) in which I sit to think. I have a Thinking Chair. A Dream Chair. A Grief Chair. A Memory Chair. A Vacation Chair :) Carpe Diem, carpe post meridiem, carpe noctem. Carpe librum.

Steps

Each step is a choice or a necessity. I could stand still.

But I am curious. And, unlike either parent, I ask questions. I enquire. I look. I explore.

Steps beckon.

If I see steps, I climb them.

It might have a lot to do with a fanciful wooden staircase on my mantel as a child in Illinois, a "Staircase to Heaven."

These steps are in the 1928 house I have my eye on.

Methinks I am still climbing.

TIME and the fruit of my imagination

Why have I named a Blog "Parallel World"?

Life is a journey. The paths do not disappear simply because we have walked on them.

We can turn around and walk back. It will not be exactly the same as it was. But it can be done, through memory, writing, art, conversation, letters.

It is said that one cannot step into the same place in the stream...because the water is always moving.

We can step into the stream again and again, even if the water is different, rushing past in its own patterns.

"Time" is a stream, of experiences and insights, of "aha" moments, ephiphanies, shocks, and change.

A "parallel world" is my way of articulating an essential philosophy: that all exists now, has, and will...and we "see" it through limited human eyes and lives...imperfectly. In reality, I believe that all coexists and that some (of us) are able to experience things from long ago and from the future, now.

Think of an orange. Does it really have a center? If you keep peeling each layer, don't you end up with a pile of peels? Yes...but inside are the glistening segments and seeds. Peel an orange and you come to a center to which all the parts adhere. Or an apple: the center is where the seeds lie. Our universe has a center. Not magma and fire. But, like the orange, like the apple, our world has a center that is spiritual. Holy. I believe the center to be spiritual in nature: God. "The center and circumference of being," to quote a founder of an insightful and amazing set of religious ideas and a church.

My parallel world is as beautiful and complete, and impervious to "time" as the idea of a sphere, swirling through eternity.

Not the sphere itself. Not the natural world. Not the star. Not the earth. Not the sun. Not an orange, nor an apple. But like them all, the center holds.

Time is a human invention: a way to account for observed change, in the skies, on the skin, on the earth, in the leaves of the trees. But Time itself does not have to age us. Nor does time have to pin us to an epoch. We are free of that. We are in a parallel world, if we learn how to understand that all is idea. Not things. Ideas. Start the journey, step into the stream, look up into the vast skies, eat an apple.
This blog will muse about the ideas that sustain me.