This is Mimmy. And me... as a wee thing. My Grammy Mim was my first teacher of all things mystical. She was born in 1920, seventy years before I was. And she used all seventy years of experience to guide me through her magical world.
She was a poet and a lover of life. Mim lived on the side of a beautiful green mountain in Vermont. Her strange, windowy house perched above a slope of birch trees down to the reflection of sky on a tiny pond where her pet ducks lived. Then the landscape swooped back up with purple mountains jagged above the trees.
She even had a fairy circle. On the meadow by the pond next to an enormous pine tree, little white and brown mushrooms grew in a ring. But be warned, don't enter the circle! Fairies will whisk you away like they did in one of the story books she kept.
Whether it was palmistry or another dimension, my grandmother was into it. And then so was I. One time she tried to teach my cousin how to find the cordless phone with a dowsing rod. She had pictures of angels in clouds and unicorns and trinkets from all over the world lining every crevice of her eclectic home. Crystals and shells, metal boxes and feathers. Her entire house was like an altar to the mystical world.
She had all sorts of fantastical stories and notions. Not all of them entirely true, but that was the magic of it. She was a terrible cook, but the way she stirred words together was electric. I remember sitting down with her and reading through my entire class's poetry book. She oohed and aahed over my contributions and I felt like I could light up the world.
We would have long conversations over stale ginger snaps and decade old salt water taffy pieces. We would talk about the fairy realm sometimes, about tales from Greek mythology, or just about what each of my 13 cousins would be when they grew up.
I am so grateful for my Grammy, Millicent Allen (born Millicent Ewell) being there to show me the mysteries of the world and broaden my mind at such a young age. I always looked forward to driving through nighttime snowstorms during which (much to my mother's chagrin) my sister and I would play "freeze" opening our windows and snuggling together under blankets. We would arrive to ancient galoshes and raincoats hung in the doorway and an alarm that always managed to go off no matter how expected our arrival. We would enter into a shag rugged open room with a fireplace and large stuffed tiger, its little cousin the black cat my grandmother loved, meowing from a safe distance. Mim was never ready for us when we got there. But when she did swoop down the stairs in her colorful wraps and always a pair of warm slippers, she would gather us up in hugs, her pixie form just the right size for us kids to embrace.
She developed dementia when I was in middle school and soon passed away from Alzheimer's. But even though it was painful, I knew she would soon be watching out for me from her star. She always said that's what would happen. She would go to her star. And I know someday when it's my time I will go to mine and we will shine while we tell stories of fairies and gods with all our loved ones in the sky.
This deck is lovingly dedicated to everyone who has supported me as I have developed creatively, but most importantly to the woman who showed me how to believe, my Grammy Mim.
Comments