#thenancywhodrew — Public Fediverse posts

Woman With A Bundle

A few months after my guides told me to write how I got here—I didn’t know they were guides then, I just thought it was voices in my head—plus I wasn’t sure what they meant by ‘here’—my mother died in Illinois. It was sudden, unexpected, and I was six thousand miles away in the British countryside where there had just been a hurricane, also unexpected—the worst they said in five hundred years. Trees were down, there was no way I could get to the airport, so I took my watercolors and sat outside. The air was fresh and clear after the storm, and I painted a picture that’s taken me almost forty years to fully grasp. It sounds weird, experiencing a level of mind in a picture before I knew what it meant. But there it is.

It was a melancholy picture in pinks, purples and blues of a woman striding forth, holding something close to her side. The air was like a restless sea. The wind blew her skirt as if it too was part of the sea. Her expression was sad but determined. She paid no notice to the three figures surrounding her. Her feet were firmly planted on the ground while the two figures on her right beseeched the heavens and the one on her left looked away. Here was a woman who would brave anything to protect what she carried.

This was back in October 1987. When the roads were cleared I flew to Illinois, and on the way the pilot announced the stock market had crashed. I took no notice. I was going back to bury my mother. The stock market was nothing to me.

The years passed and I became a mother with a child of my own. When he grew up and left home I took out the baby blanket I’d crotched in squares of blue and cream-colored wool when I was pregnant, and began sleeping with it folded up by my side. I didn’t make a thing of it, but it was comforting somehow, having something soft by my side, and after a while I exchanged it for a summer blanket in baby blue I happened to have, again folded in a neat bundle.

Then for some reason just the other day, I thought of the picture I’d painted all those years ago when I got the news my mother died. It wasn’t surprising really, as I’d been endlessly writing about the past, trying to make some kind of sense of it. And along the way, quite recently in fact, I realized I’d had a soul agreement with my mother. Something that we’d agreed upon before I got here, and everything that happened between us had been preordained on a soul level. And when I took out the watercolor to look at it again, this time I saw what she was carrying close to her side was the egg she’d reserved for me.

It made sense, now I thought of it, since ten years before she died she’d dropped the bomb on me that she’d conceived me in revenge for World War II. A wave of heat had rushed through me like an electrical charge and I knew she was telling the truth, and that it was my truth too, and I’d been in on it all along.   

Before I left for England that October of ’87, I’d had a premonition something might happen to her while I was away, and I did something I’d never done before—I called a psychic that had been recommended by a friend to tell her my concern and ask her advice. The psychic told me not to worry, that my mother would be fine. I still called my mother the night before I left, and again at the airport to tell her goodbye. Then the night before she had the stroke in Illinois, I dreamed one of my pair of goldfish had died and I was called onto the stage. But to fully understand the extent of our soul agreement, I’ve had to go behind the curtain so to speak. Behind the actions and the words that had played out in real time, and see what was hidden in my soul. I’d have to spend an untold number of nights sleeping with a bundle by my side before I could relate to a woman protecting the egg she carried. It’s taken me thirty-nine years to catch up with what I knew amidst the grief and loss after the storm. But there it is.  

Woman With A Bundle

A few months after my guides told me to write how I got here—I didn’t know they were guides then, I just thought it was voices in my head—plus I wasn’t sure what they meant by ‘here’—my mother died in Illinois. It was sudden, unexpected, and I was six thousand miles away in the British countryside where there had just been a hurricane, also unexpected—the worst they said in five hundred years. Trees were down, there was no way I could get to the airport, so I took my watercolors and sat outside. The air was fresh and clear after the storm, and I painted a picture that’s taken me almost forty years to fully grasp. It sounds weird, experiencing a level of mind in a picture before I knew what it meant. But there it is.

It was a melancholy picture in pinks, purples and blues of a woman striding forth, holding something close to her side. The air was like a restless sea. The wind blew her skirt as if it too was part of the sea. Her expression was sad but determined. She paid no notice to the three figures surrounding her. Her feet were firmly planted on the ground while the two figures on her right beseeched the heavens and the one on her left looked away. Here was a woman who would brave anything to protect what she carried.

This was back in October 1987. When the roads were cleared I flew to Illinois, and on the way the pilot announced the stock market had crashed. I took no notice. I was going back to bury my mother. The stock market was nothing to me.

The years passed and I became a mother with a child of my own. When he grew up and left home I took out the baby blanket I’d crotched in squares of blue and cream-colored wool when I was pregnant, and began sleeping with it folded up by my side. I didn’t make a thing of it, but it was comforting somehow, having something soft by my side, and after a while I exchanged it for a summer blanket in baby blue I happened to have, again folded in a neat bundle.

Then for some reason just the other day, I thought of the picture I’d painted all those years ago when I got the news my mother died. It wasn’t surprising really, as I’d been endlessly writing about the past, trying to make some kind of sense of it. And along the way, quite recently in fact, I realized I’d had a soul agreement with my mother. Something that we’d agreed upon before I got here, and everything that happened between us had been preordained on a soul level. And when I took out the watercolor to look at it again, this time I saw what she was carrying close to her side was the egg she’d reserved for me.

It made sense, now I thought of it, since ten years before she died she’d dropped the bomb on me that she’d conceived me in revenge for World War II. A wave of heat had rushed through me like an electrical charge and I knew she was telling the truth, and that it was my truth too, and I’d been in on it all along.   

Before I left for England that October of ’87, I’d had a premonition something might happen to her while I was away, and I did something I’d never done before—I called a psychic that had been recommended by a friend to tell her my concern and ask her advice. The psychic told me not to worry, that my mother would be fine. I still called my mother the night before I left, and again at the airport to tell her goodbye. Then the night before she had the stroke in Illinois, I dreamed one of my pair of goldfish had died and I was called onto the stage. But to fully understand the extent of our soul agreement, I’ve had to go behind the curtain so to speak. Behind the actions and the words that had played out in real time, and see what was hidden in my soul. I’d have to spend an untold number of nights sleeping with a bundle by my side before I could relate to a woman protecting the egg she carried. It’s taken me thirty-nine years to catch up with what I knew amidst the grief and loss after the storm. But there it is.  

Woman With A Bundle

A few months after my guides told me to write how I got here—I didn’t know they were guides then, I just thought it was voices in my head—plus I wasn’t sure what they meant by ‘here’—my mother died in Illinois. It was sudden, unexpected, and I was six thousand miles away in the British countryside where there had just been a hurricane, also unexpected—the worst they said in five hundred years. Trees were down, there was no way I could get to the airport, so I took my watercolors and sat outside. The air was fresh and clear after the storm, and I painted a picture that’s taken me almost forty years to fully grasp. It sounds weird, experiencing a level of mind in a picture before I knew what it meant. But there it is.

It was a melancholy picture in pinks, purples and blues of a woman striding forth, holding something close to her side. The air was like a restless sea. The wind blew her skirt as if it too was part of the sea. Her expression was sad but determined. She paid no notice to the three figures surrounding her. Her feet were firmly planted on the ground while the two figures on her right beseeched the heavens and the one on her left looked away. Here was a woman who would brave anything to protect what she carried.

This was back in October 1987. When the roads were cleared I flew to Illinois, and on the way the pilot announced the stock market had crashed. I took no notice. I was going back to bury my mother. The stock market was nothing to me.

The years passed and I became a mother with a child of my own. When he grew up and left home I took out the baby blanket I’d crotched in squares of blue and cream-colored wool when I was pregnant, and began sleeping with it folded up by my side. I didn’t make a thing of it, but it was comforting somehow, having something soft by my side, and after a while I exchanged it for a summer blanket in baby blue I happened to have, again folded in a neat bundle.

Then for some reason just the other day, I thought of the picture I’d painted all those years ago when I got the news my mother died. It wasn’t surprising really, as I’d been endlessly writing about the past, trying to make some kind of sense of it. And along the way, quite recently in fact, I realized I’d had a soul agreement with my mother. Something that we’d agreed upon before I got here, and everything that happened between us had been preordained on a soul level. And when I took out the watercolor to look at it again, this time I saw what she was carrying close to her side was the egg she’d reserved for me.

It made sense, now I thought of it, since ten years before she died she’d dropped the bomb on me that she’d conceived me in revenge for World War II. A wave of heat had rushed through me like an electrical charge and I knew she was telling the truth, and that it was my truth too, and I’d been in on it all along.   

Before I left for England that October of ’87, I’d had a premonition something might happen to her while I was away, and I did something I’d never done before—I called a psychic that had been recommended by a friend to tell her my concern and ask her advice. The psychic told me not to worry, that my mother would be fine. I still called my mother the night before I left, and again at the airport to tell her goodbye. Then the night before she had the stroke in Illinois, I dreamed one of my pair of goldfish had died and I was called onto the stage. But to fully understand the extent of our soul agreement, I’ve had to go behind the curtain so to speak. Behind the actions and the words that had played out in real time, and see what was hidden in my soul. I’d have to spend an untold number of nights sleeping with a bundle by my side before I could relate to a woman protecting the egg she carried. It’s taken me thirty-nine years to catch up with what I knew amidst the grief and loss after the storm. But there it is.