back to posting California pictures - and deja-vu experience
This is a picture I took in cousin Rosie's house of a picture that was painted by our Great Grandmother Carrie Montgomery. (So there are other artists in Kathy's and my backgrounds! - this may be where we get all our sensitivity and ability to cry so easily) First of all I find the subject very interesting - at first glance it is just a picture of a girl with a basket of apples but then you see the apple peeking out of her bodice - very Freudian. And then I remembered the mosaic I made a few years ago called "Opened Heart Girl" - deja-vu. Where did I ever get this obsession with a open chested girl that I have - I used to think it come from the religious pictures of Mary or Jesus holding their chests open to reveal their hearts but maybe it goes even beyond that to my DNA! (I know - I sound crazy huh?) After I processed the picture and got a closer look at it I noticed in the reflection of the glass cousin Rosie's face at the right edge of the basket and my hands (actually holding the camera) looking like they are reaching up for the apples and my mouth over the apples like I am partaking of them. I see all this as a good omen - a blessing. Coincidences of favor. A connection with the past.
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And another connection with the past - on Sunday while just wandering aimlessly around my parents house as mom napped I opened the hall closet and came across a book I never had noticed there before. That closet is full of old catalogs, boxes of puzzles with pieces missing, yellowing gift wrap, a set of encyclopedias from the 1950's - in general useless junk that hasn't been touched since the mid 80's. But there was a book called "The Light of the World" that called to me so I picked it up and leafed through it. The inscription in the front said, "To Mother, with love, from Bill and Rene" so from that I know it was a book that belonged to my grandmother on my father's side. She had tucked a card from an old friend named Ethel Griffieth in it, a picture of my cousin Anne, a funeral home remembrance card from Iola, her sister in law who died in 1954, assorted other little things - and the most meaningful thing to me - a little handmade book made by an ancestor named James Montgomery. I don't know who he is yet but he might have been before my grandmother's time - maybe one of her ancestors and she somehow was the one to come to carry this little scrap of her history. I'm thinking suddenly now that Montgomery probably was the boy's middle name as the other poems in the book he just signs Montgomery and the back of the book has "M - 22" (1922?) in the bottom corner. I need to find out who he was now - what sensitive boy was our ancestor or distant relative? Montgomery is a family name and it turns up in middle names frequently - my father's middle name was Montgomery. Oh - another thought just came to me! I have a distant cousin named Jim and his father was named Jim too - maybe he was this James Montogomery _?_! I will call him later!
A Mothers Love -
How sweet the name!
What is a Mother's love?
A noble, pure and tender flame,
enkindled from above,
To bless a heart of earthly mould.
The warmest love that can never grow old,
This is a Mother's love.