THE MEMORY SEEKER

The greatest inspiration for this writer is the opportunity to visit the well, so to speak. That is what I call  the great grace of being mentored.  A deep well for me has been the writings and sharing of the Village's own historian: Arlene Rose Gouveia.  

I have acknowledged her many times before in this blog.

Arlene and I grew up but a few houses from each other on School Street in the Village. She about 5 years older than I.  As adults, my journey took me far from the Village in many ways, her journey kept her closer to where she had been born and raised.

My mother did not grow up in the Village.  Her mother did.  Her parents were memory keepers and imbued that in their daughter.  I would come to it very late, going back in time as it were. She was fed on it, each story and memory being passed on and kept alive.

Up until last month I had probably not seen Arlene in about 50 years, give or take. Perhaps we passed each other on the street as we walked to Church. I remember her, I remember her whole family. My brother was always best buddies with her younger brother.

 For once, a trip to New England had more days to it and a time was fixed for me to visit her in her home.  Like the excellent teacher she once was, she was prepared for me.

I was in the storyteller's lair! I was gifted with more stories and information than my mind and my pen sought to register.  Laughter and sadness was laced throughout. I settled into the lair and let it wash over me. My heart would tell me what my pen might forget.

How do you pass on the history of a place? A loved, wonderful place. You first must live it and then let it come alive once more in your heart.  Then you speak it, record it, write it.  For Arlene and I, the goal is to keep the stories alive and invite as many as possible to enjoy them, to be nourished by them.  In the context of history, there are lessons, there is pride in a people, there is a deep sweetness.

This meeting of like minds will result in new posts, many of them. After seeing her collection of research books bending their shelves, her long and laden table next to her kitchen where the times and days of the Village lay in quiet accumulation,  I took a long deep breath.

When you relive a story by telling it again, you find the nuances and even more humor that was first suspected and embroider it with memory.  From this chair Arlene can reach her bookshelves, her table.  At her side her notebooks and pens, perhaps some historical point she is researching cuddled up to her glasses. When I pulled up this photo from my iPhone I noticed the book or pamphlet with the big HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY. Did I tell you that being a historian can take you far from everyday concerns? There is no such thing as coincidence...this message is for us.

Arlene's table with the accumulation of Village stories and lore

takes up the length of one wall.

There is often loss, sadness, confusion and disappointment in each of our lives. Today there is a frightening lack of family,  community,  common everyday kindness.  The many advantages of today often blot out what truly nourishes us.  "No man is an island " the scribe once wrote.  We are all a part of something. There is a deep need to know what that is - what defines us.   Before the speed of transportation destroyed our anchors, before the constant barrage of texting  there was simple conversation, shared recollection and tight community.

People yearn for stories. Do you know that there is even a web site where you can listen to people tell stories?  How sad that those people have no story tellers of their own, storytellers based on the fact of village life. Stories woven with fact and history dancing all about them. Storytellers are weavers of words, words that are magic.  Words that are of people and events long past. There are also storytellers who weave photographs of old that sparkle among the words and let us wander way, way back and wonder.

Amanda Paterson

The Village life on School Street grounded us in the need for each other.  It grounded us in small classrooms where our teachers cared so much that we felt like princes and princesses. I am unaware of one single disciplining action in those childhood school years.  Bullying was unknown. You looked each classmate and teacher in the eye and read their regard for you.  Each of us was treasured: by parents, grandparents, a slew of aunts and uncles, cousins, by our friends and classmates and by their parents.

The laughter in the playground framed the laughter in our adult lives.  We belonged- we still do - if not in place, then in our memory stories.


In other years, I had driven through the Village was sad by loss and change.  This time I was rewarded by a sight and sound a friend from the Village had predicted.  Above the School Street Bakery is an apartment. It is on the side of the house facing up School Street, facing north.  An elderly man sits by the window in a chair with the window wide open. His arms rest on the windowsill and he peers out. Beside him is a radio, just a little one, and a Portuguese station is on. He watches and waits.  He waits for walkers with whom he can share a greeting, or even someone he can invite up for a story or share the platitudes of life. He might also hear echoes.  He might think he hears the Taunton Band Club rehearsing of a Sunday morning.  Perhaps he is waiting for children to come skipping home for the long-gone Fuller School. He thinks: when did walking become an olympic event and not a time to appreciate a neighbor's roses?  When did earphones replace the sounds of the birds, or the luaghter of children?  When did grandmothers and grandfathers. like himself, disappear from the scene?  When did it require visiting hours to visit them?

We need our stories...each and every one of us....

stories give us the hope that chaotic times may once more be ordered and safe.

Our values rest in that order, when they are threatened on all sides

we find truth and help in the stories of our peoples..

When did it seem so important ro read your messages on your iPhone than to just have time to be immersed in quiet - where just maybe God might whisper to ou or you might have a creative thought or inspiration. We did not need tools to immerse ourselves into connectedness back then.

Arlene's's hands are painful with arthritis and mine are getting there - but, we have a mission and our hands are strong enough for that! A true mentor does not regard distance as an obstacle, a true mentor collects every story that comes her way. A true mentor keeps up with technology. Arlene and I talk via phone, e-mail, message, and through the wonderful I'm from Taunton Facebook page. Arlene has a e-tablet and keeps up with this blog faithfully.  Arlene is not my only mentor, but she is mentor par excellence to so many. A true mentor knows her task is to pass it on!

                        May the stories you hold dear keep you warm in the storm.  All you need
                                      is memory and imagination. God bless our storytellers!

Sources:

-Pinterest Storytelling Boards

-http://amandaonwriting.tumblr.com/post/59695483205

-http://www.teachthought.com/literacy-2/30-storytelling-tips-for-teachers/

                                                       - Photography by Sandra Pineault

INTRODUCING THE BELOVED MATRIARCHS

Many readers commented on the Facebook page, I'm from Taunton regarding our last post.  How these memories find a fond place in the hearts of those who grew up in the Village. I feel honored to be a Memory Keeper and do not take it lightly.  Often, when I am remembering and writing it feels as if I am transported to that other place in another time. It gives me courage and joy to relive those halcyon times, if only in my memory.  There are lessons there,  reassurance and knowledge we did not possess before.

Following up on the Heirloom Plant trilogy - here are the Matriarch plants we spoke of, still growing strong. green and hearty!  These photographs were taken by my sister, Kathleen Souza Campanirio.  She is the keeper today of these original living treasures. The plants  must know that they are family. It is no little thing to maintain and nourish these plants and we thank our sister with the very green thumb. She then is the Family Plant Keeper.

Stories abide in these plants, stories of generations of Christmas', Easters, Baptisms, weddings and the sorrow of passings. The chimes of children's laughter and the joy of shared remembering live in their roots.  The sweet fragrance of Portuguese cooking nourished them and still does.

We come and go, we Souza's. We are born and grow and the family grows larger.
No matter, the plants remember and cherish...maybe that is what keeps them flourishing. Maybe that is what keeps us flourishing.  Love. of course, is the ingredient that maintains us, plant and person alike.


Delphina's original Christmas Cactus- the mama of them all sits proudly in place. When an heirloom such as this likes it somewhere, you do not move it!  We believe this plant to be over 100 years old.

The Hoya plant below is probably around that age as well.  The children of this plant are scattered around the country living and being treasured by siblings such as myself, grandchildren, a plethora of cousins and friends.  All from this beautiful flourishing plant still living in my sister's sunny kitchen window.

These plants are cherished as are its offspring. Living keepsakes holding memories and the touch of loving hands. It never crossed my mind when I started writing about grapevines that this would turn into a trilogy of another aspect of family, another aspect of times gone.

Now into their third generations, these matriarch plants seem secure for generations into the future
Like the leaves of the pages of a Family's history they await discovery and recognition.  Their task of remembrance goes on as long as they are kept safe. We are blessed with these that still accompany their families on their journeys.

FOUND IN AN OLD GARDEN - THE ROOTS OF A FAMILY

In the last post we wrote about the historical importance of grapevines in the Village. The topic  found an enthusiastic audience.  This 

inspired me to dig deeper for more such green roots.

For a minute, though, let's harken back to Village grapevines.  Here is a beautiful photo of our long ago neighbors facing Wilbur St. This is directly in back of our family home on School St. the family homestead from way back in the 1900's.   A low little wood fence separated us, a token rather than a barrier. 

 I recognize them our reader and her brother!  They are celebrating his graduation from High School. If I recall he was a few years ahead of me. This grapevine is vivid in my memory. After all, we played in back of it growing up.

The background is intriguing farther in the back is our home. There was a large lot behind it which once had been planted when other family lived there.  Eventually my Dad got tired of mowing it -even getting sheep did not help.  He also tired of making that drive to Cape beaches with a carful of kids while we always ending up in  traffic jams on the old Cape road. Remember those days?  He finally dug an inground pool in the back lot. With four kids that was a good investment.  He next rounded up almost every kid in the neighborhood and taught them to swim, just in case .  The pool was heavily fenced, but you never knew. Generations of kids swam in that pool, starting with us and then grandchildren. Ah, the weiner roasts and swim family get -togethers. There could be four layers in that pool at any one time!

Just off to the far left in the photo one can just see our sweet Fuller School.  This is a photo snapped out of time.

Well, like all historians I digressed a bit.  It is in our DNA.  

Another photo found in my archives set me off

on a related subject: how all plants can be heirlooms linking us to our family roots.

The above is a very old photograph of my Grandmother Delphina Souza, my Dad's mother.

She is gazing fondly at her Christmas cactus. That plant is a legend in our family.  I will bet that she acquired it years before this photo.  She had been in that house since 1906. That plant must have witnessed a lot of family tears and celebrations.  I like to think that it watched 7 children along their journey and it may have watched the loss of a father.  You can see that it is already a large plant in the photo.  It outlived Grandmother Delphina and continued living on at 184 School St.  Its offspring found new homes in the homes of my sisters and myself. Each offspring flourished  Mine ended up in a long planter, each year gifting my family with heirloom blooms.  One day mine was not doing well.  I called the Plant Doctor: my Mom. She advised splitting it.  Oh, no, I dreaded the task not knowing the result.  My brow would need mopping as I worked to keep the patient alive. It needed surgical saws but it was handled as tenderly as possible.  Alas, it did not survive the procedure and had to enter the compost heap where it returned to the earth

.

But, I knew that my sister's was still living  taking the legend into the future.

That was our first Souza heirloom plant. 

My sister and I at the side of 20 Blinn's Ct. in front of

one of my Mother's rock gardens, 1950

Which brings me to more about heirloom gardens and plants. Remember the story I wrote recently of the woman who bought an old house with a empty dirt garden? Remember that in the first Spring that garden sprouted a carefully planned rainbow garden? A living legacy.

Above is one of my mother's early gardens.  She gardened all her life, knew each plant by common and Latin name.  For her gardening was a devoted  hobby.  Her gardens would grace the two  homes where she would live. In our Village home they surrounded the house lighting it up with color. In the little mobile home where she spent most of her older years they climbed rocks, stone walls and  hills all the while attracting butterflies and hummingbirds. They surrounded her beloved St. Jude's statue. 

 My mother's garden hats were legendary and always hanging on a hook beside her door- unless she was outside wearing one.  She went into eternity with one of these hats by her side.

My Mother is standing speaking with a gardener at a Nature Preserve on 6A on the Cape,  a favorite place for her and I to wander the gardens and learn new things.  Once I illustrated a children's environmental book (never published) and her genes in me really activated as I learned all I could about marsh plants and animals that translated into a story..

 My mother spoke the language of nature with much love.

Angi in her garden, where one could always find her.

The following is a sweet story about someone's mother and her gardening. It is from this

that I found the title of this post.

Always in my mother's pocketbook was a little plastic bag where she could safely nestle a seed or pod from something growing that she met along her way. Those little bags and her camera accompanied her everywhere she wandered.  

Every plant in her garden had a lineage and a story.  Each visit with her ended with a walk 

 visiting the blooms and green spikes listening to her stories and advice.

My garden became an heirloom garden in its own right. When I visited our visits ended the same way with a walk in her garden. When she visited me it was a walk in my own garden, where some of her heirlooms could be found.  In time, my daughter's became an heirloom garden, only this time with two generations of plantings.  The first time my daughere and I walked through her garden, my heart bloomed like the garden at my feet. There are roots in one's hearts, too.

I am in my later years now, my southern garden is far from their Village cousins . But, snuggled in my patio is a Hoya Vine, an heirloom descendant of my Mothers vine.  My mother's garden lives on, too, in many of my paintings . I often sat and painted or drew in her garden.  Many of those paintings were sold so her posterity spread far.

She loved everything about her garden, especially the wonders of spider webs which she immortalized with her photography. From one of her photos, I painted this abstract.  

   Spider Spins a Moonbeam,

Her garden was a symbol of the love that my mother gave to her children and grandchildren.

Her real garden was in her heart. This poem seems written just for her, like this post. She indeed is our greatest heirloom rooted deep within us.

"My garden is my refuge, I find a solace here.

I tiptoe toward the the rhythm and a rhapsody I hear:

The feathered ones give concerts, it seems they all agree

That now they are together, there needs to be melody.

The flowers show their colors as blossoms come to bloom-

they outdo one another in a wonder of perfume!

Extravaganzas greet me in the most exciting ways:

My heart is overfilling with the marvelous displays.

My song is not perfected, nor is my beauty rare,

But I receive a welcome within my garden prayer.

I dance within the stirrings of the love which takes control,

and I am elevated by the flutter in my soul!

      Rhapsodies within by Jeani M. Picklesimer.

Photograph by Angi Souza