My beautiful Mom is 90!!!

“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows.

And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows.” 

― Audrey Hepburn

Luella Mary Kendall - Lorne F. LeMieux

August 31, 1943

Today, my beloved mother celebrates her 90th birthday and I'm so incredibly happy to have her with us still. I remember a psychic once telling her she'd live to be 92 and that upset her...she didn't want to live that long, she said. But here she is - still in relatively good health, enduring the aches and pains of later years with barely a complaint, still driving occasionally, cooking, and working daily on the computer to complete the most expansive family tree you could imagine!

For all the poetry I've written, including pieces about my children, my spouse, friends, my siblings...I've never written one about my mother. I just never could find the words to express everything I feel for her - not just boundless love and affection, but admiration, respect and sometimes a tiny bit of envy, if you must know. She is, as you can see, a beautiful woman, and she honestly has only grown more beautiful with age.  Her hair is pure silver, like her dad's, and naturally so - no tints or toners. Her eyes are still a rich dark brown and are alight with the contentment she has always expressed at being exactly who she wanted to be her entire life - wife, mother, homemaker. And that last...home-maker...that is exactly who and what she is. 

She made our home home - not just comfortable and welcoming but a place where love was made visible in every little touch...in her knitting, the small personal collectibles that were scattered throughout the house, the books -leather bound and gold embossed - that are everywhere and for which she personally made the decorative bookshelves that hold them. She laid the floors, (seriously - pegged pine floors), she laid the stones for the fireplace, the stairway, the living room wall. Every inch of this house, which now belongs to me, speaks her name and holds the precious memories of all our times together. 

Her friends think that there is no one in the world like her - and they'd be right. There isn't. I have always said that my mother was the perfect "lady." She never raises her voice, is never ever vulgar, wouldn't swear if her life depended on it, doesn't whistle (not ladylike), and every single morning of her life, she dresses as if someone special is coming to visit - including jewelry - some necklace or broach that is special to her, a gift from her Dad or my Dad or one of us children. She's never owned a pair of jeans and wouldn't be caught dead in them! 

When I was in high school the boy I was madly in love with (and truly I was and stayed in love with him until after he died in an automobile accident on his way to ask my Dad if he could marry me)...that boy/man used to tease me and say he loved me because he adored my mother and the old saying was if you want to know what your wife will be like, just look at her mother. She adored him right back - they had art and music in common and he would come and visit with her often while I was away at college. That's where my touch of envy came in - I sometimes thought he really would have preferred my mother had he been older! 

Sadly, I am not like my mother though all my life I aspired to be as wonderful a person as she is. She was the center of my father's world until the day he died - I don't think he even realized any other woman existed. Oddly, in a way, that is true for my brothers as well - they adore her and everything we all do is somehow measured against whether Mom would like it or be upset by it. 

I dedicated my second book of poetry to my mother with these words:

"To my mother, Luella Kendall LeMieux, whose indefatigable spirit has been my guiding light and whose encouragement and faith in me has made all things possible."

I might add that her personal sense of integrity has been a model for me my entire life and in that respect, at least, I hope I begin to measure up to the woman who is still and will always be the heart of my home and the most beautiful person I know. 

We've stretched the celebrations over a three week period so as not to overtire her and there's still more to come. Just another day, she's says..."Don't make such a fuss!" If we could, we'd give you the moon - just as Dad always tried to do.  Happy birthday Mom - I hope we're both around for your 100th! I love you very much. 

Here's your favorite poem from my book, Mom, that you made me read aloud every time someone came to visit...

The Road of Infinite Grace

I met a man today,

just an ordinary man,

who taught me more about love

in one brief encounter,

about the infinite grace of loving,

than I have learned in a lifetime

of trying, or crying,

or praying or saying it aloud.

His old pickup was stopped

on the side of a country road

so I pulled over to see

if he needed assistance,

if something was wrong,

if he needed a lift.

Just a little elderly man

standing in an untended field and

as I approached I saw him

bend low to pick a flower or two,

some Queen Anne’s lace,

a handful of daisies, some buttercups,

cornflowers and purple spikes

whose name I didn’t know.

“I’m fine,” he said, “but

that was kind of you to stop.

I’m just picking a bouquet, you see -

today is my 60^th anniversary. 

My wife had a stroke two weeks ago

so I’m on my way to spend the day

at the hospital with her.

She always loved wildflowers best,

not fancy garden flowers,

they suited her, you see,

for she was just like them.

Her eyes are blue as cornflowers,

her cheeks as rosy as these mallows,

her hair had the glow of buttercups

when we used to walk this field

together hand in hand.

She can’t speak right now

to tell me that she loves me still,

but she tells me with her eyes

that she’s never wavered all these years.”

Unashamedly, I wept to see

the bouquet he held in his gnarled hand

and offered water to keep them fresh

till he could bring them safe to her.

“Don’t cry, my dear, it’s nothing much.

She’s graced my life for sixty years,

each day of them a blessing -

I just hope she’ll know that in my heart

she’ll always be my buttercup.”

       

          © Lianne Schneider 2010

This is the song my mother had played and sung at her wedding, at my Dad's funeral and has asked for her own. I hope it's a very long time before I have to find someone to sing it! 

A "Heartful Mind" - Heroic Virtue #3

"The more powerful and original a mind, 

the more it will incline toward the religion of solitude."

Aldous Huxley

Bayou Sunrise *

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/bayou-sunrise-lianne-schneider.html

Meditation is “in.” Everywhere you turn, life coaches, self-help books, spiritual development mentors are teaching and encouraging us to meditate. Part of that spiritual growth and consciousness-raising effort is a quality called mindfulness – being fully present to the moment. So at first glance, you might think the title of this post refers to that and in a way, there is a connection. But they aren’t exactly the same thing. 

I hope you don’t mind my continuing to explore the ideas presented by Sam Keen regarding the qualities he considered essential in order to complete our sacred quest, our hero’s journey. That journey is, he says, first a pilgrimage INTO self-knowledge and then ultimately a journey out of and beyond that new self-awareness. We are reborn in that process to the virtue of wonder and have learned to be empathetic. That applies both to creating and receiving art as it does to any other aspect of life and I’ve addressed those qualities in the past two posts. 

The third heroic virtue is something Keen calls “a heartful mind.” It’s not an easy quality to define, particularly in a world where rational thinking, a scientific and analytical approach to problems or undertakings, and objectivity are the normative modus operandi. We speak of men as more analytical and less emotional than women and then remind women that sometimes to be successful in business (even the business of marketing art) we have to “think like a man.” In other words, we are advised to divorce our hearts from our minds and let the mind dominate who we are.  Keen says otherwise.  We must acquire a heartful mind, he says, and we can do that best through the “cultivated discipline of solitude” and the habit of recollection. Keen goes on to describe in detail why such solitude is necessary in a world where men and women have willingly become passive members of anonymous masses in mindless conformity. Perhaps that’s a bit harsh but think about how readily we adopt slogans or positions and sort ourselves into us and them. “Solitude,” says the author, “begins when a man silences the competing voices of the market, the polis, the home, the mass and listens to the dictates of his own heart. Self-love requires the same commitment of time and energy as any other relationship. I must take time to be with myself, to discover my desires, my rhythms, my tastes, my gifts, my hopes, my wounds. We need solitude to keep the relationship between me, myself and I alive and growing." 

I cannot help but think that there are few areas of life where solitude is more necessary – no, actually fundamentally required – than the act of producing a work of art. Writing, painting, even photography are solitary endeavors (even if one is with another!) And I must be keenly aware of who I am and what I want to express in order to undertake it. For myself, I cannot create at all in a chaotic environment, or when my solitude is interrupted by phone calls, duties and noise. I regularly take myself apart into what I call my “cave time.” [Another subject for another post!]

When the idea of this series first occurred to me, I listed the ten virtues and beside each I wrote the name of an artist I thought exemplified that quality. In some cases, that was more difficult than you might imagine, but in this case, I didn’t have a second’s hesitation. The person who came immediately to my mind is a man I am so proud to call my friend and whose work (for example, in his photo series, “Where the wind carries me…”) speaks consistently to the quality of heartfulness. That artist is photographer Ramon Fernandez. In a recent article in Trillium magazine, Ramon remarked, “I often think about the rhythm and flow of life,” adding that he wants his viewers “to realize how connected we all are to one another and to our planet.” An American living now in Costa Rica, he brings a true sense of presence to his photography and says his personal mantra is, “Home is not where you are, but rather who you are.”  This is an artist who understands exactly what a “heartful mind” is and how it impacts his art. Do YOU possess a heartful mind? Does it show in what you write, paint, or photograph?If it doesn't, perhaps it's time for a little solitude.

 

*The base image is in the public domain courtesy of the National Park Service