grace | silkannthreades

So, perhaps, you have heard of the old tradition of “First Footing at New Year’s, but have you heard of ‘First Mailing’. It’s unlikely that you have since I just invented it, in the excitement of receiving my first mail of 2014. It was hand-delivered to my door at 10.30 a.m. by our postie on his eco-friendly bicycle . He doesn’t usually deliver mail to my door, unless the post needs a special signature and this mail did need my autograph…..because….. it was a VIP package all the way from BERLIN and the wonderful Nath of BEAUTYCALYPSE.

Nath had her first ever ‘ethical’ giveaway last year and I was the winner. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Nath tried her best to get the prize to me by Christmas but, obviously, the postal services thought it better for me to have it for New Year, and I don’t mind a bit.

First post from Berlin, first prize, first mailing

First parcel from Berlin, first prize, first mailing

: From Deutsche Post

: To New Zealand Post

I am not going to show you what is in the parcel today, ( that will be another post ), but, if you are eager and curious to know, you can have a search on Nath’s blog for the giveaway post 🙂 Have fun! I always do, and I learn something interesting every time I visit her blog.

Yesterday, for example, I learned that we are both Tuesday’s children; remember the old nursery rhyme ~~~~

Monday’s child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go,

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

This was one of my favourite rhymes when I was very young. I loved to think I was full of grace because surely this meant I would eventually dance across the stage as a beautiful, elegant ballerina….along the lines of my idol Margot Fonteyn. Not even being cast as the boy, Hansel, in our little ballet school’s production of Hansel and Gretel,

The only male role and it’s mine 😦

or being cast as clumsy Badger in The Wind in the Willows,

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could permanently deflate my belief in my essential physical grace-full-ness. It didn’t occur to me, as a child, that ‘full of grace” could have any other meaning than graceful ballet or walking or swimming (and I did swim very gracefully 🙂 ).

As an adult, getting creakier in the body with each passing year, I have come to understand other concepts of grace. I would love my life to be full of those other, *spiritual* concepts, as, I am sure, does Nath. She is already on her way to “grace- full- ness” in her choice to live beautifully and ethically.

In her manifesto, Nath says, “I believe that you can only make better choices by being aware and having access to knowledge. I believe that there’s no beauty without kindness, intelligence, freedom or community.“

Nath’s feet are set firmly on the path of ‘grace-full’, and, because of her choices, a parcel of goodness has made its way from one Tuesday’s child to another; makes me want to dance with joy 🙂 and maybe a little imagined grace as well. Thank You Nath.

The other day, when I was preparing my post Me, the Tree, and Helen , I found, tucked away in my Helen Connon book, a thank you letter, from a very old, Helen Connon Hall Old Girl. It is a hand written note and closes with the lovely words, “Grace begets Grace.” The ending made me smile and remember the pleasant few hours I spent in the Old Girl’s company, listening to her stories of days gone by. She was a gracious hostess.

The words also made me smile for another reason; in fact, this time, I not only smiled but I chortled, as well, because it occurred to me that, in my back garden, I have a perfect, and down to earth, example of grace begetting grace, in the form of my Aspidistra. My Aspidistra is a descendant of a large and lovely Aspidistra who lived comfortably, and well, in a purple hued pot near the fireside in my grandmother’s living room. My grandmother called her Aspidistra, Grace, or more accurately, Gracie, after Gracie Fields who sang, The Biggest Aspidistra in the World; a hit song in 1938. Gracie lived by the fireside for decades and when my grandmother died, Gracie went to live in the home of a daughter in law where she thrived under tender, green fingered care, for more decades.

A few years ago, my aunt, perhaps feeling that my fingers had finally obtained a worthy, lighter shade of pale green, asked if I would like to care for some of Gracie’s great, great, great,and probably more great, Graces. I was only too happy to welcome some of Gracie’s progeny to my home.

Sadly, my little Graces don’t have a fireplace to warm them; they have to live in the rough and tumble outdoors and ,sometimes, this leaves them a little bedraggled. But I love them dearly and, more than that, I love that this simple plant has graced our family for at least 70 years and maybe longer, according to some versions of our family history. How amazing is that! And, imagine, what stories our old Gracie and her Graces could tell of our lives.