Referring to it as synchronicity will not affect the meaningfulness of my conjecture that, long before we decided to establish our hearts’ home in one of the ancient duchies of France, there must have already been some molecules, firmly nested, incorruptibly awaiting our arrival.
I hadn’t even met Ivory yet and was still processing a previous relationship gone south in a rather painful way, turning to my already demented mother for advice on whether to go on with this quest for love or get comfortable around the prospect of finding happiness in solitude.
Although by then she had lost her ability to speak and I didn’t really expect an oral dilation but certainly the maternal comfort she nevertheless still richly offered, my sister, who was in the room with us, can still testify that she produced an unprompted ‘Barry’, leading me in the right direction, rather confused though, not having connected the dots yet and incorrectly focussed on pronunciation rather than spelling. If you had to believe Ivory, and why wouldn’t you, she spoke again years later, even more miraculous, when he, driven by his oldfangled romantic nature, asked her to confirm his request for my hand in marriage.
She unfortunately couldn’t attend our most special day in the flesh, but we assured her presence in mind by handing out brooches like the ones she used to make herself from ribbons attached to the flowers she received, always avoiding too much waste, the queen of recycling. These colorful circles sculpted the abstract florets that together composed the field of joy we celebrated exuberantly that day, and all the days since.
After an energetic start the lavishly sown nasturtiums at Les Pierres have had a very hard time this year, courtesy of an extremely invasive army of flea beetles they could barely fight off, but they somehow managed to start a whole new cycle of profuse flowering.
These ‘little yellow fellows’ were amongst my mother’s favorites. Her magical insights, sometimes cryptically packed but never displaced, have softly blown forward in many synchronized ways and have found more than fertile ground in the actual garden we now call home. Our home in Le Barry, eh, Berry.
