A Parent Is as a Parent Does

Source of photo: QuotesGram

“Mom, why does God let bad things happen to nice people?” my young son asked me one day.

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Grocery Store Demon

Source of photo: AZ Quotes

We never spoke that day

I do not believe our eyes even met.

We kept passing one another:

First in the baking-goods aisle

Then in the canned-foods section

Again, near the frozen goods.

Each time, I could feel a terrified shiver run down my spine.

It has been years since that day,

And still I wonder how I could feel so much evil

Emanating from an ordinary woman

Doing nothing but buying groceries with her child in tow.

I prayed – and still do – that we never cross paths again…

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My maternal grandmother could find objects: things that were impossibly lost. When my mother was a teenager, she was outside and lost a ring in the snow. My mother’s family was very poor so this would have been a disaster: you were expected to take good care of your things, and if you lost something special, there would be no money to buy another one. With this in mind, it is no surprise that my teenaged mother came into the house crying hysterically. According to Mom, Grammy walked purposefully out of the house; walked across the dooryard; reached into the snow and brought her hand out – holding the ring. A proverbial needle in a haystack- except that she didn’t have the benefit of knowing which haystack.

And yet still, she found it.

Read more: Grocery Store Demon

According to my mother, Grammy could heal burns, too. With just a touch. And a prayer, of course, for added measure. Grammy was a devout and fearful Catholic.

I have absolutely no gift for finding things but I do have a certain knack for healing – especially emotional wounds – and I am one of those people who gets ‘feelings’ about things. As I have heard no other family stories about such things, I have often wondered if these gifts came from my grandmother.

I am not a person to have dozens of friends and a lively social circle but I often connect practically instantaneously to the people who end up becoming my dearest friends. After we have been friends for a while, we will muse at how ‘it just seemed to happen’; no work involved; no real ‘start date’. It just simply ‘is’. As cautious as I can be about building new friendships, every once in a while, I simply throw caution to the winds and forge right in.

I also occasionally get a really bad feeling about an individual. And four times in my life, I have instantly felt a cloud of evil emanating from a person. The strangest – and most terrifying – happened, of all places, in a grocery store. I was wending my way up and down the aisles with my cart at the grocery store when at one point I became aware that I kept ‘meeting’ a woman shopping in the opposite direction: just a normal woman, pushing her cart with a small child in tow.

Every time I saw her approaching, I could feel this awful, black weight on my shoulders and chest. Every single time we passed one another in the aisles, this terrible shuddering shiver would start at my shoulders and course down my spine. I recall trying very hard to keep the shudder from showing. I did not want this woman to know that I was afraid of her. I did not want her to notice me at all. I felt very much as though I were in grave danger.

I have since prayed – many times – that she and I never cross paths again. And I have prayed for the child she had with her – who would be all grown up now. I do not understand what happened but I am sure that something inexplicable – but very real – did indeed take place that day.

To be fair, I have also felt the presence of great good – many times more than I have ever felt such evil as the woman in the grocery store. As I have gotten older, I have started telling the people I meet who send off wonderful light and energy. They always ‘get’ it because, well, they are filled with light: how can they not be aware of it?

But I can tell it always makes their day anyway.

I used to hide this part of myself: people are superstitious and such things smack of the supernatural. But oh, I am tired of hiding. I’m not getting any younger. If I am very lucky, I might have twenty more good years left. I won’t waste another second holding back.

Take me, or leave me. But please, let me be…

p.s. Rawgod/ A New Spirituality: you asked for it: this is as close as I got…©

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

Ode to my Father

Mom, Dad, my little sister on top, and me – the constant worrier – below,
not trusting that Dad had her protected, too…

My Dad and Mom were, respectively, just 22 and 23 when I was born. They had not planned on my arriving quite so soon: while they were respectably married when I made my tiny appearance, I was nonetheless way too early to be anything but a shock to them. Dad was attending university at the time, and Mom was working as a clerk at a local department store, to help make ends meet. Dad was spending way too much time out with his drinking buddies and Mom was spending way too much time at home alone with her growing belly. Nonetheless, when Mom started bleeding mid-pregnancy, they both held one another and wept, already enamoured with the little lump that was growing in my mother’s womb. Ever after, they would lovingly call me their ‘little whoops’ and cry as they told me how devastated they were when they thought they were going to lose me. My timing may have left something to be desired but I always knew I was very much wanted all the same.

Here’s to the Odd Ducks

Me with a fellow odd duck, many decades ago. And yes, I know it’s a goose…smile…

You see them everywhere, the Odd Ducks.

But only if you look; only if you are paying attention.

They dress differently from everyone else: some wear thrift-store clothes, have unkempt or unusual hair and don’t care a lick about fashion. Others are elaborately coiffed, flamboyant and colourful.

Some are loud and boisterous; others quiet and introspective; blending seamlessly into the woodwork.

They speak easily to the birds, the animals and the little spider in the corner of the room. They hug trees. They feel – and sometimes see – energy all around them. They speak gently to the weak, the tired, the broken and the seeking.

If they let you get to know them, they are interesting. And they are always interested.

They know things; they feel things; they are lifelong learners. They are seekers on a never-ending quest.

They have quirky, esoteric points of view. They don’t fit into moulds (although some of them try, for a time).

They are the strange child; the quirky cat lady; the long-haired octogenarian; the quiet friend.

They are often alone but they are rarely – if ever – lonely.

They are the Odd Ducks.

And you would be all the richer for getting to know them…

My sincerest thanks to Ana Daksina, Troubador of Verse and fellow blogger, for the reminder, and for the inspiration…

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

The Rescue Mission

When I was around 12 or 13 years-old, someone told me that the Indigenous people who lived on this continent before Europeans took over believed that everything had a spirit: the rocks, the animals, the trees; even the plants. I don’t recall who told me this and I’ve likely gotten most of the details wrong, but the concept deeply resonated and has stuck with me my whole life.

I have always been one of those spiritual people whose heart recognises the profound truths of this world when she hears them. This revelation was the first big epiphany of my life. Never again would I pass a tree without understanding that it was as alive as I am. Never would I pick a flower without regretting that I had prematurely ended its life. The older I have gotten, the more sacred every natural thing on this earth feels to me. Composting, for example, has become a spiritual experience: nothing brings you closer to the earth than participating in the circle of rot, death and decay that gives every growing thing on this planet… life.

My love of growing things doesn’t stop with the great outdoors: my entire adult life, I never worked anywhere where I wasn’t surrounded by living greenery, lovingly tended by my own hand. Because houseplants were indoors and depended entirely on human beings to remember to care for them, I always felt a deep stewardship: whether they were ‘my’ plants or someone else’s. As a consequence, I have been known to stop dead in a government office (or a doctor’s office or the lobby of an apartment building…) at the sight of a parched plant and to rush to find a glass of water to ease its thirst.

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I arrived at my son and his girlfriend’s house in the dead of summer, in the middle of a heat wave. They were both at work so I let myself in with the key they had given me last time I visited. After being properly love bombed by my grand-dog and putting my stuff in the spare bedroom, I wandered a little aimlessly about the house, wondering what I might do with myself until they arrived.

This is when I discovered the first victim: a shriveled plant whose sad, lone leaf had collapsed onto the shelf on which it was perched, clearly approaching its final death throes.

“Oh, you poor, poor baby!” I exclaimed out loud, as I rushed to fill a glass with water. The little plant was so far gone, I was sure that my efforts were for naught. Not for anything, though, could I have left it to spend one more second swooning on that shelf without at least trying to ease its pain.

I am a very discreet person, not given to snooping in anyone’s house, but this, I determined, was a different matter. Lives were at stake. My grand-dog curiously sniffing at me as I bustled back and forth, I went purposefully from room to room, checking every shelf, every ceiling hook and every piece of furniture for another poor, thirsty victim.

I found several more – they were all fading fast – and I quickly went about the business of rescuing each and every one. To my chagrin, one of the victims was a beautiful ivy that I had rescued as a university student over forty years ago (several of its babies – including the one in the attached photo – are living very happily in my own home).

When the kids got back from work, I did apologize for ‘taking over’. I see for myself the long hours they both work and I understood that this had been a very unintended thing.

I am happy to report though, that by the end of the week, every single plant was convalescing quite nicely (a few – including my old ivy – having been fortified with plant food and some new soil).  I reminded my son (whose job it is to water the plants) not to forget them and “to please send me a photo of the spider plant upstairs as I am especially anxious to see how it’s coming along”.

I’m still waiting for the photo.

Perhaps it’s time for another visit…

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

“With Our Thoughts We Make Our World.” Buddha

For the past several years now, I have been having an all-out internal battle with the concept of organised religion. While I always had an easy, effortless and peaceful belief in God, I just cannot reconcile that belief with the hatred, judgement and distrust that seems to infiltrate religion: any religion; every religion.

If you actually break down each religion to its essence, each and every one focuses on some version of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”). Despite much misinterpretation to the contrary, not one religion tells us to go out and distrust, judge or kill people who do not follow what they follow; to reject the folks who don’t think exactly as they do.

I was fascinated, many years ago, by the implications of an experiment carried out by the late Japanese author and scientist Masaru Emoto, who scientifically proved that human consciousness has an effect on the molecular structure of water. He photographed water molecules as they reacted to positive thoughts and words, prayer and positive visualization. Then he photographed the same water molecules as they reacted to words like ‘hate’ or ‘evil’. The results, below, were astounding.

While many would call this hokey, I was mesmerised by the implication of those photos. If your thoughts really can do that to water, what on earth can your thoughts do to people, who are comprised of 60% water?

Unless you are a psychopath or a sociopath, if you knew for certain that your every thought had the capacity to directly affect another person’s molecules, wouldn’t you want to be extra careful what thoughts you allowed into your mind? Wouldn’t you want to stay as far as you could from toxic people who not only think hurtful things but say them and mean them?

For the past few years, I have found myself staying away from anyone who – by what they say or do – gives me the impression that they have the answer: the only answer. And I gravitate to the ones who, like me, are constantly seeking; open to the possibility that anything is possible.

Strangely enough, as I have gradually shared my feelings, it has come as a wonderful surprise to me that a great many of the folks in my own church have kept their hearts wide open to me; have welcomed my questioning and have lovingly accepted this divergent path of mine.

I have so many unanswered questions. But I do believe that one day, this body of mine will die and I will see with clarity all the things that seem so muddy to me now. My demise can hopefully wait, though. I am fifty-eight years old and I am just starting to get this whole ‘being alive’ thing figured out.

I still have many kind thoughts to think…

Source of 1^st photo

Source of 2^nd photo

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

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