Witchvox Article

Author: Lady Abigail [a WitchVox Sponsor]
Posted: March 3rd. 2013
Times Viewed: 2,582

Magick comes into a child�s world likes fairies playing in the morning sunlight. There was no need to ask if the sparkle dancing above the flowers is just a glint of a fairy wings caught by the morning dew. You knew it was.

I lay on the hard wood hone floor gazing out the screen door of my Great Grandmothers house. It was early morning. So early that night sounds were mixed with those of nature�s morning song. The sun was pushing her light long and slow across the glistening yard and I could just being to see the sparkle of dew on spring flowers that my Great Grandmother and I had planted along the front path to the house.

I have always loved the mornings. The idea that the day, even the world, was still new with no mistakes yet in it. I love the quiet peace of that time that comes in between the veils as dusk turns to dawn and everything slowing being to awaken. As a child and living on a farm that gave way to many calls from the animals for food or milking as will as the songs of nature in the birds singing, frogs croaking and bees buzzing. But my favorite morning sound was that of my Great Grandmother humming as she cooked in the kitchen.

Just then I heard my Great Grandmother calling me to breakfast. It was always the first feast of the day. We would have bisques with gravy, eggs, bacon, sausage and ham, fresh honey and sweet cold milk. Sometimes I was allowed to have a little coffee like my Great Grandmother. That was always a very special time and made me feel very grown up even if my coffee would be made of mostly milk and honey, to me it was just like my Great Grandmothers.

As soon as breakfast was finished and we had cleaned up the kitchen, my Great Grandmother started lunch. This was not the norm, since in the spring and summer we would usually have sandwiches for lunch made from the bisques and ham or sausage from breakfast. She put on a big pot of beans and I mixed up the fixings for the cornbread. Then we placed the pan in the stove to cook. It was a wood-burning stove so the cornbread would cook as the wood burned away and we could do other things.

Those other things, on this day were to clean just incase anything was out of place. It wasn�t. And move everything out off the main room of the house. I helped my Great Grandmother push and move the big chair out from in front of the fireplace and I even got to move the little tables. I helped sweep the floor as my Great Grandmother quickly mopped the floor with sweet rose water and lavender. Things had to be perfect when we were going to have company, especially when the Aunts were coming and going to spend a few days.

We were going to have a quilting. It would be 3 days and 2 nights of busy hard work but most of all 3 days and 2 nights of stories and magick. As the Aunts arrived we were sitting up and lowering down the quilting frame that hang from the ceiling of my Great Grandmothers main room. Once it was in place the back and batting are put into place and the top pieces, which my Aunt Celia had fashioned together, were carefully placed on the top. Then the pulling and tugging and rearranging it would go back and forth until they all agreed it is in just the right place to be pined sewed. (Getting 7 ladies to all agree on this could take a while.) Then everyone pulled up a chair, pulled out their sewing boxes, needles and thimbles and begin to work.

I would try to sew from time to time, I would stitch small areas, but I wasn�t very good and I pricked my fingers, a lot. So after a very short time I would slip down to hid and dream under the quilting frame while the Aunts worked. Plus, it was the perfect place to listen to all the stories being told and history they passed one from the other as they worked.

I learned the magick and secrets held within quilt making. I learned how each quilt had a story and some were stories of families others of life or death. Some were made to bring love and some were made to end love. How they would make special quilts for those who were getting married or having babies. They even made quilts of those passing unto the Summerland and would be wrapped in and buried in these quilts to keep them safe within the veils. I learned the secrets of how many families would hide papers, spells and even money between the layers of a quilt to keep them safe when they traveled across countries and even worlds. Many families may have a little of this magick hidden in their closets or cedar chest even today.

I loved the Aunts. Each one was so different and so special to me. I think I was well into my teens before I realized that they were not my blood relatives. But I believe the Goddess gives us those that shall be our family in life as She sees the need within our lives. I cannot imagine my life without a one of these wonderfully magickal ladies.

The sisters as my Great Grandmother called them, my Aunts were a mix of traditions, bloods, backgrounds, histories and yes, even color.

My Auntie Aunt was an amazing woman of color. She was taller than the other Aunts thin and had white hair. She had the softest voice I have ever heard even to this day. When I was small she would hold me in her lap and rock me to sleep telling me stories of her life and how she used to walk and walk until one day she walked into her husband gone for near on 50 years.

My Aunt May was a small stout lady with long dark braded hair. She loved to cook and when walked into the house the kitchen was hers. No matter who�s house it was, and the Aunts always seemed to move out of her way and give her charge over the cooking. She didn�t talk a lot but had a smile that could melt butter. I found out years later that she was an immigrant and that she spoke every broken English. Or as my Great Grandmother would say, she was �new English.�

My Aunt Claire and Aunt Bulia lived together in a green house with a red roof in town. They had the coolest house, to me anyway. I loved it because from their living room I could look down on the town and see the trains when they went by. I think the one thing I remember the most about them is that they seemed to always be fussing with each other. Never in a bad way or hatefully, but at the same time I don�t think I remember either one of them ever agreeing with the other. They would fuss and fuss until one or the other would say� �Let it be then and give us a hug.� and it was over. I still try to remember that one for myself today.

My Aunt Bee was a funny lady with red hair and freckles. She believed in the leprechauns and fairies and taught me how to watch for their signs and always leave gifts for them around your home. She could out spit any boy and would call her boys home by hollering across the forge. For those of you that don�t know what hollering is. Hollering is yelling, yelling or shouting at an ear piercing pitch that dogs can here in other states. Now I am pretty sure that I did learn that.

My Aunt Celia was a very serious all the time. She was like the watcher. She keep up with the when�s and the where�s and the who�s for the Aunts. She was always late to everything but when she did walk in the door you knew she was always going to bring cakes, cookies or something sweet. My Aunt Celia had blue hair and dark skin. She and my Great Grandmother both would never been seen without bonnets, long sleeves and even gloves. They wore these in the summer or winter to cover their skin and keep it from darkening from the sun.

My Great Grandmother was the light of my life. For most of my life, I would be with my Great Grandmother. She was the one who raised me and the one who loved me. Her face was careworn from years of life and could only give a glimpse of the knowledge she held from worlds long since past. She was a small gentle woman with long, thick, silver-gray hair that she kept wrapped into a French knot on her head. My Great Grandmother was Cajun and always wore a long skirt covered with a crisp, clean, white apron. She spoke French, English and her Native American language of Quapaw. She taught me to watch the signs of nature, to see beyond what others see, and trust my own heart, even when others would ridicule and try to hurt for what I believed.

I still have one of those wonderful quilts the Aunts made. It is torn and worn and has been used to stir magickal memories for most of my life. I now have it stored away, but will proudly pull it out when my grand daughter is visiting. So I can share with her some of the stories I enjoyed as a child.

The Aunts and my Great Grandmother have all passed into the Summerland now. But they are still a part of my life and my heart. Like the patchwork quilts they made, each one added something special and personal to everything they did. Without even knowing it, they share in a history and legacy of love, family and magick that will be passed down forever.

Sometimes we forget, we allow the boundaries of the mundane to tell us who we are. But the truth is, we are all one family. It does not matter what traditions we study, what bloods move in our veins, what backgrounds we come from, what our history is or even what color we might be� We are the Patchwork of Magick and, in this, We are all one family.

In peace shall be blessed.
Lady Abigail
Copyright � 02222013

Copyright: Lady Abigail
Copyright � 02222013

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Lady Abigail

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