The Keepers of Jetty's Soul

This will not be long.

When I think about how it was that the little girl in this picture, in ecstasy over a feather, came to keep her belief in goodness and in magic for all her life, I think "Mommy, Grandma M., and Jean Ellen."











You can simply read my last entry and the referenced posting to get what my sister did for me. She's woven in and out of other posts, but those two say the most.

A Celebration of my Mom's Mom talks about Grandma Magee, right around when this picture of her was taken, I believe.  Grandma was in the nursing home near us at last, and had been there for a few years.  She LOVED music, as did my mother.  Grandma was singing when this was taken, and the woman holding her hands was the musician who used to come twice a month to lead people in music.  Mom had had lunch with Grandma that particular day and started us BOTH laughing as she recounted Grandma throwing her hands in the air, saying, "Oh, Goodie! String beans!"

She had done this when my friend had been at dinner at our house once, when Grandma M. was visiting us. Gail said she'd never seen anyone so excited at string beans. Mom had looked at her and said, "You should see how she acts over jello."

 Gail is just under five feet tall.  When she met my grandmother, Grandma said, "My God, you're just sawed off and hammered, down!"

Gail did not bat an eye as she looked DOWN at Grandma and said, "Who do you think you're talking to, Pipsqueak?"

They were delighted with one another.

Another thing Grandma did when delighted was raise her arms and wag her hands, shouting, "Dighdy, Dighdy, Doe!" But, that's covered quite a bit in my other post. I look at this picture and I see her shining so brightly.

She never lost her sense of wonder.

And you can see why my friends said Mom looked like Mrs. Claus. Mrs. Claus in polyester pants, overshirts, and saddle shoes. I look at this picture and I realize, she was just 64 at most here. She is, quite simply, everywhere all the time... in so many of my posts.


I end with this picture of my sister as I choose to remember her. She was my age in this photo, fully engaged in telling someone about a pen and ink sketch she'd made. It was shortly before she began to leave us all, hiding from this world, this life ... preparing to flow into the next. She taught me to draw, to drive in search of the perfectly imperfect tree, to accept people as they are, and to be gentle from the inside out. I don't know which lesson was most valuable.  She is the one who first pointed out that I curled my pinky whenever I was enraptured. She was my number one fan and always believed that I would one day take the world by storm with either my singing voice, my painting, or my writing ... or all three.

I don't need to take anything or anyone by storm. I do not need to make waves to honor all three women. To honor their importance in my life and in keeping me from losing myself entirely through the craziness, the violence, the injuries and illnesses, I have only to sing, to write, to paint, to love my friends--to do all these things for the pure joy of being alive.

... but oh, how I miss them.