BEST WRITING TIP RECEIVED

The journey which led to the best writing tip I have ever received, started when, at the age of seven, I was introduced to an incredibly old lady. She owned a small holding, where she raised chickens, ducks, and geese also a large vegetable patch as well as a fruit orchard. She became my step greatgreat-great grandma.

Her face and hands were wrinkled and told many stories. One day, early in our relationship, she took me by my hand and led me into her vegetable garden along neatly laid out pathways, pathways which had dual functions. They were the waterways for the vegetables.

You see, she said, “if you use sprinklers too often you do not allow the bees and bugs to do their jobs on the leaves and flowers of the vegetable plants, but if you occasionally, allow the water to run along these waterways. Then you water the roots of the plants, and everybody will be happy, including the little insects, and our dinner tables will be filled with good fruits and vegetables,” and all of us will get to live in harmony. She turned and smiled at me and without hesitation she said. “I want you to learn to enjoy these walks. We will be taking, weeding, pruning, and harvesting the vegetables and later the fruit. You will get to smell the earth and understand the smells of various vegetables and fruits and if you do that, then you will be an amazing writer of all you wish to write about,”

She smiled at me, truly a warm smile, as she continued her walk and again spoke saying “one day this little garden, which fed me and now your generation, might not be here anymore. All she was saying never entered my mind at the age of seven, but it certainly manifested.

Then a few months later, she gave me a basket to carry, and I followed the ribbons of her apron into the fruit garden, there we stopped and picked guavas. She brought it to my nose to smell. Then she broke one open and said “close your eyes dear, and smell the ripeness of the guava, now open your eyes and take a bite” I did as asked and then she said now we will go and cook these guavas and we will bottle it for when we need it. When we are done I would like you to write a story about the three smells of the guava you helped to water which allowed them to grow and now we are picking them, soon we will be cooking them.” She smiled down at me, her soft hand touching my cheek. The sun was so bright and warm, I smiled back at her and found myself saying “of course I can do that”

My Step-Great-Grand Mama, without thought, taught me to ‘study’ the topic of any piece of writing right there in the waterways she created for the fruit orchard. She also used it to water my enquiring mind. GREEN PATCH allowed me, to watch tortoises being born, raised, and released under the grapevine canopy, allowing them to be in a shaded areas to enjoy their lives within her world.

She passed at the ripe old age of Ninety-six, having given me a large fruit glass bowl and five gold rimmed glasses of no significant value. With her more wrinkled face looking directly at me, with a warm smile she said, “take this my dear, I know when I pass, you will not be considered.” She closed her eyes and that was the last time I heard her wise positive and encouraging voice.

My deepest regret is that I never published my writing during her lifetime. But I am replicating a GREEN PATCH. The original GREEN PATCH, where I learned the BEST WRITING TIP EVER, is no more. A modern homestead was built on the memories of that piece of earth, which I had learned to love and miss to this day.

Now during my late season, when I sit down at my desk, with her wrinkled face now poised on a shelve above my desk in a white picture frame, I hear her voice. As I begin to nurture, not the pathways, but my research documents.

I start my journey of enjoyment along the ‘paths’ of discovery. I focus and allow my fingers to tell the BEST story of which I am capable to deliver.

She is ever present in my daily life, a meeting, I warmly believe was from GOD