fermented wine
by Elouise
life flows through her veins
fermented wine of past dreams
melts my eyes
***
This week was high-jacked. Not by force, but by my desire to spend time with our adult daughter. Her visit coincided with my husband’s determination to get rid of unnumbered books from our academic collection. Most stored on shelves in our large attic.
Deep in the attic, behind multiple shelves of books, he uncovered a mother lode. All belonging to our daughter. Boxes full of school papers, reports, works of a budding artist (she’s a graphic artist as well as a musician), stuffed animals, posters, programs, correspondence, and other memorabilia I’d saved for her.
This week she sat in our relatively small den surrounded by boxes, going through each item. Laughing, sighing, reminiscing, showing and telling, sorting and sifting for keepers. Of which there were an abundance. A paper trail that told the story of her life.
Unexpectedly, the paper trail confirmed the nature and content of our daughter’s character, and the trajectory of her life as an artistic type. Her life has had its ups and downs, and it wasn’t always clear how things would turn out. Or whether our parenting of her–especially mine as her mother–had helped, hindered, or encouraged her.
Thankfully, going through this treasure trove did more than confirm her nature, giftedness, determination and joyful creativity. It also gave me assurance I didn’t know I was looking for until I found it this week. I always wondered whether my mothering helped or hurt her.
I’m an expert on what I think I did wrong as her mother. I found out, though, that what I got 100% right was so simple I didn’t even know I was doing it. I kept boxes for each of our two children. Into each box I put anything I thought they might enjoy seeing when they were older. It was that simple!
Given my personality, I erred on the side of putting in too much material instead of too little. Before dropping it in, I penciled on the back of each paper item our daughter’s name, age and a brief note about when or where the item originated.
Tears, laughter, memories, hoots and hollers of recognition — all that and more because of those old pieces of paper that capture in vivid detail our daughter’s personality, creativity, and musicality. She is a strikingly beautiful forest flower–grown up now as her own wild woman.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 February 2017
Photo found at Pixabay.com
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Juicy
Oh I love this, Elouise….thank you for sharing it with me. In my heart’s imagination, I could feel both your joy and Sherry’s. I need all the help I can get finding things to smile about these days – thanks for providing me with this dear opportunity.
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You’re welcome, Nancy! Praying for you.
Elouise 🙏🏻
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Simply wonderful. Reminds me of “they shall rise up and call her blessed.” I think your students would join in the chorus. 🙂
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Thank you, David. It’s so good to be on this side of parenting! 😊
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Oh how lovely is this Elouise, a treasure trove of memories and goodness which in turn created a beautiful moment of being together and sifting through the past to share the abundance ❤
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Precisely! I love the way your mind makes connections. 💐
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Would you believe that less that an hour ago I was arguing with the W.O. on the importance of ‘old stuff’ ; she’s a firm believer in tossing out stuff I think is relevant and worth keeping, and keeping stuff that is worth throwing out.
I shall have to train my next wife better 👿
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I’m definitely with you on this one. Old stuff unlocks memories and can get conversations started. Granted, you can get swamped by the old stuff, and you can’t keep everything. It sounds like the W.O. has her own ideas about which old stuff is good and not good to keep. Maybe your next wife can train you better, too! 🙂
Elouise
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Impossible
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Brillent! I wish I had saved more and chucked lessees a mother, but we moved a lot. I can just image the fun and laughter that was had. My grandmother did this for me and honestly finding the things she saved after 48yrs. I was completely touched!
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I’m so glad you enjoyed the post! Sometimes I wonder whether the habit of putting so much of our histories in electronic form is going to make it more difficult to connect with ourselves. I like holding and touching ‘the real thing.’ Three cheers for your grandmother! 👵👵👵
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