​In Celtic mythology, the ash tree – Uinsinn, pronounced ooshin - is The Tree of Life. It’s said to have roots equal in length and spread to its branches. Imagine, then, all that’s happening beneath the surface – the pull of opposites, each side reaching, stretching just as far as it can. From their struggle? A magnificent creation of beauty and light.

Ancient folklore noted the balance of three in this scenario  - branches representing the gods, the trunk linked to humanity, roots entrenched in the underworld. Thus, “Everything is connected, and no action taken without widespread consequences.” It’s good to think about that in a world gone crazy. How the even the smallest acts born of ignorance or fear can begin to poison the whole. Yet, ipso facto, the opposite holds true.  A loving act at the roots will strengthen the entire tree.
What if human beings were to think as trees?

Witch lore credited the ash with magical properties and witches made tea from the bark to attract their true love. They burned ash wood for prosperity, slept with the leaves under their pillows to woo prophetic dreams, and carved  broomsticks from the branches.

Saint Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland with an ash branch and Irish emigrants to America brought pieces of ash with them as a charm against drowning
Ah, to remember our magic? What we could do!

In British folklore, the ash was credited with a range of healing properties, mostly to do with pediatric health. Newborn babies were given a teaspoon of ash sap, and ailing children were passed naked through a cleft carved in the tree. Afterwards, the cleft was bound together to heal over as the child also healed.
Imagine, in a world bereft of healers, having that gift at your fingertips, in your heart. Imagine the faith it takes to open yourself and bind other’s wounds.

And yet, here, in the midst of the lunacy we call life, is the tree. It’s no mistake that green is color of the heart chakra, which represents love, forgiveness, compassion, hope – and neither is it hard to believe that God created the tree a few days ahead of mankind.
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Maybe someday we’ll catch up.

 “I heard the sound of thunder. It roared out a warning. Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.”

Watch the rain from the shelter of your porch with your back yard gone to glittering emerald and, with nothing else to do, think about the blue-eyed son in Bob Dylan’s song and how, if you could access your earliest memory, it would be one of blissful floating.

And even now, even if this deluge should end, you might seek water. Maybe a dappled green pond where the minnows kiss the surface and the frogs swim their version of Potter’s ballet. Where if you stare into the murky depths long enough you, might scry tomorrow in the clouds above-below-in-the-water.

Or a laughing creek, chill mud between the toes, cottonmouths, like flood debris, bouncing with the current, their eyes unblinking and their fangs terrifying. You’re a gypsy or a pirate or any other sort of free spirit who doesn’t wear shoes or pay a cable bill. A lost child in the mermaid lagoon, a freebooter on the Black Pearl’s deck, except for that, of course, you need . . .

An ocean. Endless beckoning of blue, a thousand shades blending and shimmering and dancing all the way to the horizon. Tidewaters like a heartbeat, whoosh and pull never-ever ending, and how could you ever see it and doubt that water is, must be, our very life blood?

Bathe in it, baptize with it, quench your thirst and cool your brow. Die without it.
Watch the rain, the ceaseless, slanting, glittering fall, and try not to think about drowning. ‘What did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh what did you see, my darling young one?’

Think about the way Noah sailed for forty days and nights and hasn’t it been raining that long now?

Think about tarot and how the cups are the most uplifting cards in the deck; and cups, after all, have everything to do with water. Cups filled to overflowing, cups raised in celebration, cups pressed to waiting lips. Half-empty is only a trick of the light, a misperception, and these showers are only a temporary hitch; maybe, months from now, rain will seem a blessing again.

Watch and think,  think and watch. Let the rain tattoo a song into your heart. Tie a ribbon around it and stash it in your ‘dry tomorrow’ folder, where today seems a lifetime ago.

Happiness, I think, must have been hard-won during the Great Depression. My grandmother planted flowers. Not just a daisy here or there, but a glut of them. Row upon row of iris, tulips, gladioli. Peony bushes so heavy with blossoms they toppled over. Roses climbing trellises, poppies wagging bonneted heads, lilies stooping, sleepy on their long stems.

Of course, of course, a garden! Times were hard, so – tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, carrots, onions. Yes, all that and more, but the flowers . . . the flowers were her happiness, and I love to picture my mom working with her, small girl with straight bangs and a cotton dress, crouched beneath a sun hat, between the pink-lavender-scarlet rows.

My mother left the shelter of the valley when she married – moved up the hill where the weather was in constant, vivid motion, a clean wind endlessly scouring the prairie. She planted flowers. It was harder there, the soil not as amiable to the fickle seeds, but she worked at it. And when the wind caught in the lilacs to push their sweetness through the old farmhouse, it smelled like home in every room.

Of course, it became home.

I was a farmer’s daughter, and more interested in my father’s pursuits than my mother’s. Haying or running a combine made flower-work into child’s play, a triviality. Not until I’d moved away - had my own children, an old station wagon and a plethora of unpaid bills – did I begin to appreciate the tender resilience of women and flowers.

I planted cannas - the largest, brightest variety I could get my hands on. From seeds. My little girl followed with a toy watering can while the baby watched from his playpen beneath the awning, and then we checked on them every day. By the time the new shoots poked through the mud, the homesickness and heartache had subsided a bit. We’d begun to call that alien patch of hard-scrabble yard home.

And the blossoms were glorious, big as a man’s palm and red as clown paint. They nurtured me – dazzled my eyes and fed my soul  - until I was strong enough to stand well on my own. ​