I was standing at my table at Bilston Creek Farm for the Mother’s Day Market where I had an assortment of things I have made with my photography along with my seeds. I don’t usually apply to join markets, but I do apply to participate in this one.
This location is at least 40 minutes from the city or longer to my place. You park your car in a field and walk up a little hill along a winding driveway and as you arrive closer the orchard, and on this day, all the lawn games are set out on the freshly cut green lawn, in what you notice is actually an old orchard with benches under many of the trees. If you carry on along the road you are walking you will come to the sauna and cold plunge area. Perhaps you will notice the outdoor pizza oven with the smoke coming out of the chimney gearing up for a busy day. If you turn slightly right you will see a beautiful new barn under a huge Douglas Fir — past the food vendor under a tent, you see a small lavender shop– where you would buy a ticket to the show, unless, like me, you are a vendor and so you walk on. It is only then that you see the lavender with all its perfect rows of rounded lavender plants in this field that slopes away from where you are standing facing the bright sun, and at the far end are trees that provide a windbreak from the sea which you catch the shimmer of just beyond.
I tell you that to say that by the time I meet people at my table, it is an intentional act to come here. You do not just find your way accidentally there. For this reason, I have always found that people, in general, value the beauty in which they find themselves especially if they are the family member who has organized the trip here.
At the end of a three day market I have seen hundreds of people – had many many conversations, helped people find other gifts from other vendors, answered questions, gotten to enjoy small children approach the piano and play– I always say “I love to hear you play” which is something I always said to Ilse, my youngest daughter- who turned out to be a wonderful musician. It is the truth – I LOVE to hear when children are encouraged in their curiosity.
This past weekend was also a wonderful celebration of motherhood in all it’s forms. I am a mother to a wonderful human with whom I am completely in love and connected to and for that I will always be grateful. I am also a mother who knows the impermanence of that role. Having lost both my youngest daughter to a brain aneurysm and my mother to cancer.
I’m lucky that I don’t live with comparison.
I have worked hard with a very skillful psychologist so that I can be fully present to see and experience beauty, light and the wonderfulness that makes up my world. I have learned how I can take Ilse with me through my days. Because I have learned to carry my grief – I live such a joyful life.
And.
And on a day like this past Sunday, Mother’s Day here in Canada. It is an emotional day. Quietly and privately emotional. I have learned to let the tears come and go. And then things lift and I can be fully present to enjoy the day.
It made me sad when mothers and daughters didn’t have the skills or abilities to speak to each other with the reverence they each deserve. Or when families take each other for granted – blind to the notion that today, this moment, is all you have and could possibly be all you get to have.
I could feel myself smiling as I watched little ones with their grandmothers on the double swing outside the window where I was standing, or mothers lining up two of their children at each end holding the rope and placing the third, the youngest, on the oldest one’s lap so that she could try to capture this moment on her iphone in a backbreaking effort to stop time if only for a moment, and soon-to-be mothers with a huge round beautiful bump under their flowery long dresses.
I also watched a quiet loving couple arrive at the end, while she studied each table (but not mine so I didn’t get a chance to talk with her), he patiently waited. Honestly she was like going to an art gallery with my Dad who read each label, standing for an eternity in front of each piece. I am not like that. But this man was so patient, respectfully listening to her as she tried to decide which lavender items she wanted to buy- even going back for more after she had carefully chosen her purchase- to get something else. A few minutes after they finally left the market – I glanced out and they were on the swing together – holding hands. After I finished talking with someone about my cyanotypes I turned back to the window to see him pushing her lovingly on the swing and then taking the handle on the paper bag, with her well researched purchases, and placing them gently in the grass next to their coats so she could hold on with two hands and he could push her. So beautiful.
When I said to a little girl as she sat atop the piano bench before she struck a note– ‘Do you play piano? No, but my mom does!’ She said proudly. A few minutes later when I was chatting with her mom I told her and she laughed proudly saying – ‘I only know 2 songs and I love that she thinks I can play!’ Our conversation continued and as it happens I may be doing some workshops for her organization…an outcome I didn’t see coming.
There was a 2 1/2 – 3 year old sitting in his stroller, buckled in. I smiled and said to him as he passed my table being pushed by his Dad: You’re sitting in there so well! His Dad said: we ran all around ‘the lavender pit’ first so he’s exhausted. Great strategy. The lavender ‘pit’? It’s so interesting how people see things– I think of a pit, like a gravel pit, which I see as nothing growing there, or possibly nothing going on there…So I see the perfectly manicured, intentional planting and careful managing of the lavender as a viable crop here as anything but nothing. Which I thought about– maybe the next time I pass by a gravel pit– I need to think about what is actually going on there– maybe more than I can see.
After a conversation about cyanotype at my table, a lovely woman pulled out a colourful business card from her purse and invited me to join The Victoria Floral Artists Guild as her guest. She was so welcoming, friendly and positive and wrote her name, telephone number, the day they meet and the address of where this next meeting was on the back of my price labels – the only paper I had.
As it turns out, they meet in the same room where I used to go to a Gardening Club meeting- and like all guilds of this type, they have a lending library of books, tea and a donated cookie is $3, a table of things you can buy before the meeting and lots of things going on.
So on Tuesday night I went there. I walked in and at the sign-in table was my new business card. However, at 7 the meeting had already started. The meeting starts at 7 but the activity starts at 6:30.
The lovely lady who had invited me to this came to the back where someone was off to find another chair from behind a curtain – “You came! Welcome” She exclaimed in an energetic hushed voice so as not to interrupt the announcements from the front of the stage.
I have been needing to solve a flower problem – there was confirmation that such a floral product existed right there on the tables set out between the chairs and the stage. Synchronicity I think. They were having a workshop that some people pay to do and others can learn from the speaker and listen. When the participants start the making of the thing, other people start chatting..
I had the loveliest conversations with so many kind and interesting women.
I was even asked questions that I thought everyone would know– a reminder when you are immersed in a world- as I have been for the last 7 years of my flower business, I guess I didn’t realize how much I had learned.
After the announcements, there was time to go around- get tea, borrow books if you are a member and buy a raffle ticket. I had $5 so I bought 3 tickets. I got a toonie (two dollar coin) with art work I had never seen before (so rare is it these days that I handle cash or any kind).
You guessed it- they called my number! Each person whose number was called could make their way to the table and choose a prize from the donated items.
I needed a new pair of garden gloves- I love that someone took the time to wrap them in a bow. Afterall, they are a gift.
What I also needed was to be reminded of how much fun flowers are– how I could talk about them all day- it is a world that I will never learn enough from or about– but in making it such an important pillar of my work and my business, it changes one’s relationship with them. It is lovely to be around others who love flowers too, just because. Each person I met had such a different relationship with flowers– from managing a flower department in a grocery store to volunteering at Government House in their cut flower garden to having a garden and growing them… a unique story for each of the women in that room. I’ll bet their relationship to flowers has changed over the years too- just like mine.
It can be challenging to grow one’s own business (pun aware).
It can be Mother’s Day.
It can be a simple act of meeting someone and inviting them to join the group in such a sincere way that they drive across town to do so – after a full day of planting…
It can be the start of something beautiful.
They can wear the raffle prize the next day because they have lent their own new gloves out only to have the tips worn off making them unusable.
They can take these new gloves and the kindness of floral artists as a sign to carry on.
Keep going.
I will.
With gratitude.