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| Grandpa, Grandma and me as a baby. |
Have you ever read a book that made you laugh out loud? If you have then you can appreciate the feeling
I have had the past couple of nights reading Christine Wicker's fabulous book on
Lily Dale, New York. I reread it because
of the horrible week I had. I needed a
laugh. (Topping my list of woes this week was digging for my septic by hand at 10 below zero...after being unable to clear the main drain line.)
Lily Dale is located in Chautauqua County and is a
spiritualist community which sports séances, classes in spiritual healing and
well as the books says… ”talks to the dead” … or does it?
Christine is the quintessential skeptic that
visits and is drawn back to the “Dale” to write about it and ends up trapped in a
personal dilemma of what she does or doesn’t believe. She thoroughly explores
what makes people flock to this spot that some consider a vortex of spiritual
power.
The humor and good natured questioning of all of the
inhabitants and mediums and their teachings, brings not only a smile to your
face but actually acts to reawaken your own sense of what is real, what is
possible, and most importantly the question… is there another world beyond?
My favorite quote is one attributed to Susan B. Anthony who
visited and spoke at the Dale… When given a reading supposedly coming from an
aunt of hers on the “other side” she responded, “I didn’t like her when she was
alive and don’t want to hear from her now… can’t you bring someone exciting out
like Elizabeth Stanton? “
Most hysterical are her moments of classroom exercises where
she practices giving messages to others in the class…and then her being
astonished at actually giving a message that her read…ee was actually looking
for?
What is wonderful is Christine manages in her journey to
unlock herself and comes away with a feeling that she has opened herself to the
world around her. Magically she gets the
reader to do it as well.
So last night I closed the book, turned the light off, and suddenly began picturing the rocker in the
next room. The rocker was my mother’s…
but sitting in it was my grandmother… and she was crocheting. It was a memory I had forgotten of grandma making
a wool afghan for my mother when she stayed at our house for a while. It was my grandmother Messere.
Grandma was a great person and I could still hear her
telling me stories and laughing until we both cried. She was always working hard even in the
evening after all her chores were done… sitting and crocheting. She always looked a bit like Madame DeFarge
in the Tale of Two Cities I thought. I
always wondered if grandma was putting the story of her life into
perspective… writing it with the hook and loops?
One of my favorite quotes of hers when something went wrong
was… (With a laugh)… “It only happens to the living!” I never really got the message of what it
meant until I was in my sixties when I repeated it to a young woman with
troubles. I said, “Things will be okay …
it only happens to the living!” Right… it can’t happen to the dead!
Grandma was an orphan who lived as a child servant with a
boss who starved her young workers. She
came to America as an indentured servant. In her life she lost many babies at childbirth…
one to green apples …and her youngest to war, but she never gave in to remorse,
she accepted life for what it was… full of ups and downs.
So I began to wonder if maybe she was sitting there with me in the dark, reassuring me that
all that was wrong would pass. I like to
think that it was so!
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