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Camellias & An Exchange of Hearts
By Cornelia Powell | January 29, 2010
Flowers were the passion of my grandmother Gummie, my father’s mother. I’ve written about Gummie a great deal—stories of our relationship and her contributions to my various little girl rites-of-passage as I was growing up. A walk with her around her big fenced-in yard in any season was not only a botanical education for me, but an education of the heart.
Gummie talked about how she loved the happy “faces” of pansies—they seemed like personal friends to her—and how she could set her watch with the opening of the trumpet-shaped “four o’clocks” by her garden gate. And it wasn’t about just the flowers. Gummie always had kind stories about the people who gave her cuttings, or shared exotic lily bulbs, or told her about a new rose in an irresistible shade of pink. I remember walking under a trellis that she had built, lush with the palest palest pink climbing roses, was like crossing over into heaven.
She always had her clippers and a basket with her on our walkabouts around her spacious yard and before I knew it, we were off up the country road in her big blue Oldsmobile with a vase of flowers going to call on a neighbor—usually someone who had missed church the Sunday before. It was like she put all that love she gave, then received back from friends, into her flower garden, which in turn grew even more abundantly.
On our garden strolls, Gummie didn’t exactly talk to the flowers, but was she talking to me? She knew all their names: Herme japonica, Professor Sargent, Debutante, Purple Dawn, Pink Perfection—and these were just the camellias! Had she fallen in love with their colors, or had she chosen them because she liked how the names rolled off her tongue?
Gummie always wore something blue, matching her eyes. Every Sunday during the winter, when camellias were in season, she picked one from her yard and pinned it on the lapel of her dark blue wool coat to wear to church. And without fail, she gave it away, happily pinning the regal purply-pink flower on the costume of a beaming recipient. As a little girl watching this gesture, I always felt I was in the charmed presence of something divine—an exchange of hearts.
I don’t know if Gummie had a mantra or not, but if she had, it would have been something like this: “Give love away and your true heart’s desire magically appears.” No wonder, whenever I see camellias in bloom, I’m compelled to go gather a bouquet and place them on the nearest tabletop, then watch for the magic.
[Reprinted from the January Notes from Cornelia newsletter]
Topics: Inspiration, Relationship, Remembrances |