Knife Stabs and Lemonade at Halloween

My favorite witch

It was late. I'd worked on my beautiful cat cabochon necklace for hours, and then decided sort of spontaneously to get into the holiday spirit by getting out my Halloween decorations. I don't subscribe to the "let's make every holiday Christmas and decorate the hell out of everything attitude," but I do like a couple of things around to acknowledge "All Saint's Day," which has many different types of celebration and commemoration. It is the day we acknowledge the world of Spirit.

I love witches, their history, their mystery, and the good work that they do. My husband and I have favorite Halloween movies and shows that we watch, including The Good Witch, Hocus Pocus, Witches of Eastwick, Fairy Tale: A True Story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and others. It's just what we do.

So I went down into our basement to bring my witches upstairs and my little purple furry bat and my paper pumpkin dangle pull-string doll that I like to hang on the front door, but I forgot that we had a basement flood and everything was moved in a frenzy to get things out of the water several weeks ago.

I stood in the basement next to the Christmas ornament tubs on the shelves, and put my finger to my lips, wondering where my pink tupperware tub of witches was. It used to be right on the floor next to the Christmas ornaments.

I thought maybe I'd forgotten, and they weren't in a pink tub. And I opened the lid of a big plastic tub which held my daughter's cheerleading pompoms and outfits and I spun around, reeling - oh! Oh! That was not my witches.

So I realized they might be in the next basement room and walked through the semi-darkness into the area where we had put all the tubs full of my daughter's sacred things. They had been stacked against the wall in the driest spot, safe from floods, and I discovered they were piled atop with all kinds of other things, one of which flipped my heart right over.

It was something her birth father "created" in 2001 when he'd taken her for a major haircut. It was a stupid box picture frame with her photo in it and a long, long ponytail of her beautiful hair. Jess had said when he gave it to her that she thought it was kind of creepy. And when she sorted out her stuff in the basement one year while visiting, she had put it in a bag for the trash pile. He'd installed a brass plaque with the date, along with her ponytail and I picked it up and flipped it upside down and it made a very satisfying thump. But my heart thumped along with it. What the hell do you do with something like this when your beautiful daughter has passed? It is not right to put it into the trash. And it would kill me to hang it up somewhere, "Oh I have my daughter's hair but I don't have her!" I couldn't do that.

So in the wee hours of the night I brought it upstairs and took it apart. I didn't care about the stupid brass plaques, I kept the beautiful photo, and I took the ponytail out. Oh so beautiful and oh such sparkly suncatching hair so soft. I took off the damn velcro around the ponytail and I made a new ponytail with my soft little tiny rubber bands and I wove two love braids, a big one, and a little one.

Beautiful sparkles, which I'm sure she's still sparkling

I tried hard not to curse my ex-husband for making me do this. I tried to make it a beautiful experience, yet more caretaking of what my daughter no longer needs. Owie. Love braids.

I had some volunteer snapdragons that had grown by the doorway of my studio and I picked some.

Volunteer sunshine happiness

Sonofabitch. So I wrapped her beautiful ponytail in soft paper towels and with my collection of beautiful snapdragons I went, as dawn was rising, into the backyard and walked to our peach tree where we had sat as the sun set in the evenings, on the grass, drinking wine and talking during her last visit home.

The walk was supported by my little yard fauna and fellows.

My beautiful fern and hosta friends encouraged me to keep going.

My buddy

My little gnome gave me encouragement to keep going.

I kneeled on the ground and felt my knees get wet with dew. I inhaled the beautiful fragrance of the earth, oh so sweet, and dug a hole. And put flowers in. And put her beautiful hair in. And covered it up. And put flowers on top.

Flowers guarding

And I said a prayer.

And I got up with the dawn rising and the mists all around me and I was comforted by beautiful flowers on the way back.

Sweet flowers on the way back

Sweet garden friends on the way back

And I said to myself, "It's okay. It's okay."

Life in all its stages

And it is. Life blossoms, and it makes seeds, and seeds grow to blossom again.

Young witch

Old witch

Flying witch

Peace in the night

So we have put yet some more painful things to rest and tried to create ceremony and beauty around that. Yes I kept a tiny lock of her beautiful sparkly hair and put it in my treasure box. 

And I slept a lot.

And now we turn our attention to other stories of the season - Leprechauns, Fairies, and Dreams.

Movietime

Sweet relief

Thank goodness for all who work in the realms of happiness. Even amidst our sorrows. When we have lemons, we make lemonade.

We can do hard things.

Namaste,
Jen