‘Many a night I saw the Pleiades rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid’
Tennyson
the seventh sister
"…One is silver and the other gold"
preface:
I pull the truck over and wave to my new friend , waiting by her Subaru at the ‘4 Corners Mini Mart.’ Big boned Victoria had "done herself up" for the occasion of our luncheon.
Victoria, resplendent with quarter size rouge dots on her cheeks, eye brows drawn carefully, arched over small wide- spaced, heavily- massacred brown eyes. She had dusted her plump-purplish nose with pale patches of pink face powder. The face framed by chin length gray hair, held at bay by a thin plastic purple hair band. Victoria’s massive ancient form is strangely fragile and regal.
I am meeting her at ‘4 corners’ to lead her through the complicated maze to our home for a luncheon with my husband and me.
I pass by the trunk of her car and I turn my truck back around and say off handedly out my window to her. "Did your know you car's make, "Subaru" is the Japanese word for ‘ The Pleiades’?" Victoria looked puzzled like I had lost my mind or something.
undaunted, I continued,
"The constellation of the 7 sisters in the Pleiades are on your back trunk"
I point to the little silver circle of plastic stars affixed to her trunk.
She leans out her window and says bluntly and with complete authority,
‘There are only six stars in the Pleiades… They are about 440 light years from here. ’
I say, feeling as if I have been put in my place, "the seventh sister star is legendary for being hard to see. "
I roll to a stop and half jokingly quip; " Catch me if you can". Victoria ,true to form, does not look amused however she snorted then relinquished kind of a air pressed laugh.
I hardly know her at all, but I feel comfortable around her. I do not know why because she is edgy-fluorescent in her communications and I am at best fuzzy-candle light in mine.
We head out and I am still thinking of the Pleiades constellation being all those light years away. I turn onto Smokey Mountain Parkway and head home. I wonder as I merge into traffic, how can we even be sure if The Pleiades exist? Given the great distance of this constellation, the stars might just be an echo of a distant light.
The Seventh Sister, Ahh now there is a mystery.
I continue to ruminate as I turn onto an old country road where we live deep into the Smokey Mountains. The arching trees on either side of the road seem to form a natural tunnel making a temporary portal into long forgotten memories. Dry-cleaned by time memories of halcyon days seem to emerge from the golden sunlight flickering through the green tree leaves.
I think of my childhood home ‘Jubilee’. I remember the great ancient grand walnut tree where I used to swing all the way up into the stars or so it seemed when the summertime fireflies came out.
Memories shimmer through the mountain mist, like Haiku poems. The clouds make fluffy white watercolor canvases mirrored on a still mountain lake as I skim by letting the summer breezes of memory take me further back into another time, another place and seven sisters.
On the water colored canvases my mind paints Seven Sisters, my Grand mother and my Great Aunts, who grew up in an old Castle, named ‘Glen Ellen,’ in Loch Raven Maryland.
My memory as the miles fly by takes me back to another time-another place.
I glance in my rear view mirror, my friend Victoria is following my old truck. I can see she too has been transported by the beauty of the mountains... and so it goes.
7 sisters
aka
' THE GIRLS ’
Somewhere back in the 1950’s the Blink- Blink of an orange directional arrow flashes on then clicks off, after the new Dogde turns right towards "Jubilee". Jubilee is the transitory host to anual gathering of ‘The Girls’.
Looking like George Washington crossing the Delaware, Aunt Caroline glided her boat of the gray 1952 Dodge over the clattering planks of the wooden floor of the old covered-bridge. The noon day sun light strobed through the bridge floor and bounced off the wooden walls, then flashed quickly on the car’s occupants. Four silver-blue- hair-do's, powdered, chinless profiles, blinked brown eyes coming back into the sun light out of the worn wooden bridge.
These likely candidates as models to finish Mt. Rushmore were known to us as ‘The Girls’.
Two of ‘the girls’ sat in the back seat and two in the front.
The driver, Aunt Caroline, was way too clean for my comfort level. Her car had crackly clear seat covers and scrubbed rubber matts.
Aunt ‘Lena’ rode shot-gun. I do not remember much about Magdalene except she had large bumps on her head. Aunt Lena always seemed to wear the same thing, a worn shiny brown rayon dress with her white cotton slip showing. She smelled kind of funny like over ripe fruit. In retrospect, she had the kind of beautiful glow some people get, as they fade back out of time and grow transparent.
In the right back seat, sat the pencil- thin, Aunt Anna. To my endless fascination, my parents laughed that Anna held the distinction of being the only " meat- eating vegetarian" in all of Christendom.
I specifically remembered Anna eating a boiled hot dogs, slathered in mustard and sauerkraut in her kitchen. Anna would eat and speak to on the virtues of vegetarianism.
Back then when we visited Aunt Anna, I would take this educational opportunity to slyly look above the ice-box in her kitchen and inspect the "9x12" gold- framed, watercolor .
The picture was of an elaborate horse- drawn carriage with a long list of hand written names, in brown ink, above the painted white feather plumed horses.
The long twisty wire from the back of the frame caused the red jacketed coachmen to look down on top of the ice-box onto a plastic bag of hot dog rolls.
My parents said the watercolor displayed a list of ‘professional mourners’ hired to attend Aunt Anna’s funeral upon the event of her death.
I do not know who died first, Aunt Anna or her hired mourners. I do hope they got it all worked out in Heaven.
The next sister in the car, was the pleasingly plump, short, Aunt Dorothy who occupied the left corner of the back seat. Dorothy was the perfect Munchkin to Anna’s Wicked Witch.
Our family told the well known secret, spoken behind hand over mouth whispers that, Dorothy was kept from marrying by none other than the aforementioned Wicked Witch Anna. Why? Because, Anna a WWII widow did not want to live alone. And so, Dorthy moved into Anna’s home and gradually entered into the quicksand of an old maid.
Pretty, Aunt Emily always drove herself to ‘get togethers’. I believe the quick get away technique was employed by Emily, because my childhood memories of her mostly involve her arriving a little late, unstressed, smiling, laughing and waving ‘good-bye’ very early.
The five sisters were on annual pilgrimage luncheon visit with their sixth sister, Wilhelmina, my beloved grandmother.
I never did not ever see the seventh sister. I have been told that life was lonely and hard for all of the sisters. They grew up in a Castle named Glen Ellen in Loch Raven Maryland.
The seventh girl died very young and it was said that she had understanding heart.
What does that mean ?
Anyway, when ‘The Girls’ arrived, my father escorted them one by one, to the lawn chairs on the sloping hill by the walnut tree. There they sat totaling approximately 440 years of life on the planet. Catchy number.
‘The Aunts’ did not do the faux ‘let me help you’. Mother never got to say, "Thank you, but I just want you to enjoy yourself" .
Nor, did I see them bring her hostess flowers. There was something about them that made me feel like they lived in their own constellation back in the isolated days of Glen Ellen. I learned back then that love and appreciation is not always shown in the way we would have it revealed.
We can choose to hear with an understanding heart and sometimes to find the beauty of unspoken love.
I believe those old birds loved every pampered moment of their vist to Jubilee.
About 30 minutes after lunch, they gathered their large mysterious black patent leather pocketbooks, took out initialed handkerchiefs and wrapped up left- overs. They took their individual little bouquets of violets in white paper lace dollies with stems carefully wrapped in water- soaked tissue and wrapped once more tin foil.
At the end of the day I would get a ‘tip’ of a shiny silver George Washington quarter from each sister. Once again Washington in command.
Real gifts:
In the long-term their gifts were much richer than what 25 cents could buy.
Those crazy sisters helped give me a wonderful funky earthly connection in this world. Perhaps, it is they who gave me the gift of finding diamonds inside seemingly hard hearts .
and as for the elusive
7th Sister, who eludes us still,
she can only be seen with an understanding heart. A heart that knows the importance of seeing love beneath the surface.
we are all guests at the Inn for such a brief moment.
afterward:
Victoria, she passed peacefully last fall.
we shared laughter.. for a moment ...
in the laughter of an understanding heart
and so it goes
on and on
painting by artu
thank you for reading
LOVE. LOVE,
candace
still available on CD
The mystery of Loch Raven
