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A Picture of Abundance: Gummie & Violets
By Cornelia Powell | March 23, 2009
As I headed out for a mountain hike the other day, taking a short cut through a golf course to a favorite rhododendron trail, a grassy slope covered with violets stopped me in my tracks. Oh, wow, it’s really spring! And with that obvious reminder, there also came — in one fell swoop — such an abundance of feelings, images, and memories that it gave me a little shiver!
One of those “image memory flashes” was of my grandmother Gummie, my father’s mother. I always think of her when I see violets and their heart-shaped leaves; a flower so true to its name that we give it to a particular color. That was Gummie. So true to her passion that when she gave you a “tour” of her spacious yard — a favorite rite when I was a little girl — it was as though the flowers appeared just to please her. She knew them all by name, she spoke of them as family, she tended them with love, and they rewarded her with their abundance.
Violets are one of those delicate flowers that hide underneath its large green foliage to the extent that you have to almost get on hands and knees to really see them. It’s like they are a personal invitation for intimacy. Shakespeare writes of the violet as a symbol of innocent love. Botanist Marina Heilmeyer say’s that “hardly any other plant is so forceful and successful in its growth.” Abundance at it’s most appealing!
That was my Gummie. Not only a force of nature (although a soft Edwardian-like lady, when she couldn’t find anyone to build a chicken coop for her, she built it herself), but she was also a “force” of abundant love.
Gummie never went visiting up the country Alabama road in her blue Oldsmobile without a bunch of flowers from her yard — as well as a portion of her famous farm-butter pound cake — to share with a neighbor. It seemed that as Gummie gave her treasures away, she gave her love away and her life became more abundant.
So when I’m feeling small and stingy and insufficient in any way, I think of Gummie’s generous twinkle of a smile and all the tiny violets spreading their tendrils of new growth, popping up on forever hillsides! Then I look around at all the abundance in my world as I breathe those images deep into my heart, and say “thank you.” Thank you for everything I can see, everything I can’t see yet, and for all the miracles still to come.
Topics: Empowering Girls, Inspiration, Relationship, Remembrances, Women's Notes |
March 24th, 2009 at 2:45 am
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