Seeding the Future

(Continued from pg. 25)

may have called for a sweet cherub, but the result instead resembles more a mischievous imp. This also is a part of breathing life into your creativity as you pour your heart and soul into your work.

“Each and every time a new doll comes into being, I am humbled. I never know in advance, what will come about. It’s a process of letting go and letting Spirit direct my actions.” Chris Flynn, from “How to Create a Spirit Doll”

Bio for Patti Lightflower: I have always enjoyed working with textiles. As a child I watched my grandmother turn colorful cotton feed bags into play clothes. I designed and made dresses for my dolls from scraps of fabric and shoes for them from orange peels, which I pretended were leather. I’ve attended art classes at the University of Cincinnati in the 70’s and have studied with textile artists at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, as well as with many other professionals in their studios over the years. My long-time passion has been the study of hands along with their owners, being creative and expressing my artistic side allows for manifesting something tangible whereas reading hands is more esoteric.

Patti Lightflower can be contacted at pattilightflower 2@gmail.com and more information can be found at her website: https://www.ireadhands.com/

by Cynthia M. Brown

It is Spring. Since my mother died, everything reminds me of her. She loved spring. She was an avid gardener, self-taught and extremely gifted in creating outdoor spaces of beauty. Everywhere, I see her and hear her wit and wisdom. I am older now and I have come to appreciate something about her I simply took for granted my whole life.

I wrote in this column shortly after her death that she always chose joy. She did. But, it was more than that. My mother so loved life that she found the joy in everything. I have been looking at pictures of her. She was always smiling or laughing. Even in the last three months of her life when she was in agony and was frightened that she might not have any remedies left to preserve her life, she was always smiling and laughing. I have pictures of her in a hospital bed with tubes everywhere, smiling with her nurses and doctors just because they indulged her and allowed a photo to be taken. I have a photo of her eating a chocolate glazed donut with her granddaughter in a hospital bed and she is smiling from ear to ear. There are pictures of her baking cookies with her great grandson and even though she was almost blind, she still slowly mixed her ingredients and helped him drop them onto the pan, laughing when she missed the pan and the dough hit the floor.

My mother celebrated everything. If it was cold and windy, she sighed that it just made the hot coffee feel, taste and smell better. She loved a good patty melt sandwich whether it came from a truck stop, family diner, or a national chain. What made it good? The bread was grilled with real butter but not too much; the bread was crisp, not greasy; the onions were caramelized but not mushy and the swiss cheese was very well melted and the burger was juicy. She would wipe her mouth and her eyes would sparkle and she would say “Now that is a good patty melt. Only thing it needs is a crisp fry,” and she would pop a golden french fry in her mouth and sip her rootbeer, wink, and laugh at herself.

My wife and I were talking just a week ago about

how much we loved doing the most mundane things together. We wished there was more time to just be together doing the little things, weeding the garden, changing the fluorescent bulb above the laundry, cleaning out the storage area in our basement just sweeping the sidewalk and then sitting on the patio watching the dog play fetch. The small things seem so sweet, ordinary, and so very precious, and somehow, so essential I guess that is part of what made my mother so magical-the small things were not small; they were THE things; they were everything.

As I think about this season of rebirth, and I ask myself what seeds will I plant in my own life, I just want to try and make the apparently mundane matter. I want to see each experience and moment as a celebration and a gift. I know each moment IS a gift now it is time to live it. What seeds will I plant? With a little helping of Beanie magic… seeds of joy..

About the Author: Cynthia M. Brown is a Writer, Culinary Genius, and Midwife of the Local Food Revolution.

She can be reached at 740-285-7136 or cmbrown203@ yahoo.com.