I have never...but I just did!

I am not a very impulsive person when the impulse in question involves money. Or maybe I am and I just don't think I am. I do buy things for the baby on impulse, because a baby can never have too many clothes especially. But when it comes to myself I'm not too impulsive (unless it's tax season and we have extra cash to burn, like now). My intentions when I started writing this blog entry was not to talk about money, so I'm stopping this now and moving on to the thing I have never done.

I just purchased within the last hour a signed art print. This is the first time I ever purchased artwork with my own money. I know it isn't a true original, but since it's a signed, numbered print I am counting it as such in my mind. The work in question is so friggin' beautiful that I had to buy it. If I could have afforded an original of the work I would have bought it. I feel I have to start this story from the very very beginning, which is with Sage Woman magazine.

I began reading Sage Woman when I moved here to Massachusetts. I would have never seen such a magazine back home in WV where even the New Age section of the book store is not so New Agey. Anyway, Barnes and Noble has such a superb magazine selection that when I saw all the different titles in the "spirituality" section of the magazines, I was litereally salivating. The cover of Sage Woman caught my eye. The artwork on the cover is always so vibrant and eye-catching...and the subject matter of the articles are equally amazing.

The cover of the summer 2005 issue was especially magnificent and I made a point to read the artist info. Apparantly the cover art was from the Gaian Tarot deck, which is a work-in-progress. I did all the research I could on the work and while browsing the cards that Joanna Powell Colbert has already finished, I discovered the Ace of Earth. The piece called to my spirit, my inner child.

When I was a little girl, (I may have blogged about this before) I was my grandfather's little shadow. When I was adopted by my single mother, the only man in the family at the time was my grandfather. My (adoptive) mom lived in her own house, but I seem to remember being at Grandma and Grandpa's a lot as a child. This could be because eventually my mom bought their house and that became the home I remember from childhood. I loved my grandfather so much that I called him "Dad", and this habit formed even before I started calling my mom "Mom". Grandpa and I watched Wild America together, we watched Hee-Haw. Most importantly, it was the time we spent together outside that I cherish to this day.

After my mom bought Grandma and Grandpa's house, they moved to their home state of West Virginia. Every 3-day weekend and holiday Mom and I had we spent driving 6 hours to WV to visit Grandma and Grandpa on the farm. And I do mean farm. They had a huge corn field, horses, pigs, ducks, chickens, (never a goat, though, not one damn goat), cats and dogs, and cows from time to time. They always put out in addition to their multi-acre cornfield, a multi-acre garden filled with green beans, peas, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and various squash. They also had a plum tree, peach tree, and several cherry trees. Some of my fondest memories are of cherry picking season. (My favorite picture of myself, which my grandfather took, was of me as a child reaching for cherries in the tree...oh God I wish I could find that picture.)

My grandfather's days were so simple, yet so full. He woke up before anyone else in the house, before dawn. He had breakfast, coffee, and headed out in Carhart or Osh-Gosh over-alls and didn't come in the house again until sunset, or right before. His food of choice was cornbread dipped in a tall glass of milk (which I cannot stomach) and soup beans. When Grandpa came in for the evening he would sit in his "easy chair" and, if I was there on a holiday or for the summer, I would untie and remove his work boots, set them aside, and climb into his lap to watch TV. This was the routine, this was how it went when I was little in WV...up until I was 13 and Grandpa died, I still sat in his lap to talk about math or nature.

My favorite memory of our walks was the infamous cornfield incident. This may have been two incidents wrapped into one, I'm not sure. I think it's the same, though. One day I went with Grandpa on an inspection of the cornfield. He frequently walked up and down the rows to assess the damage caused by deer, raccoons, and such. The field is humongous...and on this particular day Grandpa lost his way. His solution was to put my 6-7 year-old body up on his shoulders and tell him which direction the house was in. This worked very well, and we made our way to the closest edge of the field, then walked our way around the perimiter to get to the house. The side we were on was the side closest to the woods that was also part of their land. And when I say woods, I don't want to convey an image of spooky woods. These woods were always friendly, and still are. We took many trips into the woods and I remember with fondness the way the sunlight would dance down through the leaves of the treetops.

We're walking along the edge of the woods and Grandpa whispers to me, "Nichole, stop. Come here, quietly now." I approached him quietly, as if I were about to be told an important secret and he crouched, pointing into the thicket. I stuck my head and neck out, squinted my eyes as he said, "See it? With all the spots?"

"Yes! I see it! It's a baby!" I whispered joyfully as I saw the beautiful spotted fawn.

"It's waiting for it's mother."

I remember how he explained to me that we shouldn't scare the fawn, because if it runs away the mother might not find it or it could get hurt. So we stared at the beautiful creature for what seemed like an eternity and I wish I had had a camera...not for the deer, but for Grandpa and I.