RHETORICAL QUESTION
When was the last time you looked into the mirror and said, "I love you"?
Learn to forgive yourself, accept your visible flaws (as you see them) as beauty marks, and thank God for life and courage to move on in his wisdom.
To some it can be daunting. Baby steps are needed. Most importantly, there are those who love you as you are and that's a good thing. That's what keeps us going.
We are all a work in progress inside. The fascinating part is that we can learn to become better and feel confident as we grow.
Continue to develop and exude the beauty from within.
When was the last time you looked into the mirror and said, "I love you"?
Learn to forgive yourself, accept your visible flaws (as you see them) as beauty marks, and thank God for life and courage to move on in his wisdom.
To some it can be daunting. Baby steps are needed. Most importantly, there are those who love you as you are and that's a good thing. That's what keeps us going.
We are all a work in progress inside. The fascinating part is that we can learn to become better and feel confident as we grow.
Continue to develop and exude the beauty from within.
Eden's Garden release date is TBD. I know ... your patience will be be rewarded. Hugs.
The textile mill is down. The wealth of Wheatenton, NC is collapsing. Residents are in turmoil as they watch their once thriving Town of Future slowly collapsing into crime ridden despair – that is, until a convincing wealthy developer, Dominick Serpentyne, offers potential hope to restore their beloved town...or is there a possibility Wheatenton is again about to become bamboozled. Hasn’t the loss of their entire investment in the mill been enough?
Meet Eden Mural, a descendant of the Future legacy. While recovering from a brief hospital stay, Eden is faithfully cared for by her recently widowed daughter-in-law, Chastity, who regrettably captures the wanton eye of the town’s nemesis. Seeing what’s transpiring, it’s up to Eden to maintain her senses and keep her beloved family and town in check with a far better hope than what their manipulative rival can offer. Will Eden, with the help of dear friends and family, be able to save their town from plummeting into the clutches of the wealthy undermining developer, Dominick Serpentyne?
Meet Eden Mural, a descendant of the Future legacy. While recovering from a brief hospital stay, Eden is faithfully cared for by her recently widowed daughter-in-law, Chastity, who regrettably captures the wanton eye of the town’s nemesis. Seeing what’s transpiring, it’s up to Eden to maintain her senses and keep her beloved family and town in check with a far better hope than what their manipulative rival can offer. Will Eden, with the help of dear friends and family, be able to save their town from plummeting into the clutches of the wealthy undermining developer, Dominick Serpentyne?
AS PROMISED, A SNEEK PEEK INTO "EDEN'S GARDEN" :)
Chapter One
I’m going to die soon.
How soon?
I don’t know, but soon.
In just a moment’s notice, it’ll be all over. The burden I carry is more than what I can bear. What choice do I have with a semi-automatic to my head?
My once vigorous and fit body has now betrayed me—no longer the strong temple I once possessed. As of late kidneys are weak—praise God for disposal undies and a little dignity. My memory’s lapsing, arthritic backache keeps plaguing me more than usual, and don’t forget my heart.
Oh, Lord, my heart.
It was mostly broken from years of caring and watching a husband fade away with progressive dementia along with our poor sick son.
Madison.
My sweet boy.
Shortly after I buried Winston, I had to bury my son.
Madison was my life you know. He was always there for me and his daddy. I tried not to bother him so much. He needed to enjoy his life, but he always sensed when I needed him. That’s how he was.
Special.
Intuitive.
My baby defied anything from holding him back, including his illness, by spending years working hard and keeping our home beautiful despite my worrying and warnings. My son could do anything and when you look inside our home his handiwork can still take your breath away.
But his other favorite pastime was gardening. Something we both enjoyed. His daddy scoffed at our son’s love for nature as being effeminate. He ignored Winston’s ridicule – in fact, laughed at his daddy’s playful ignorance. His heart may have been weak, but Madison was still strong as an ox and would welcome the sun as he worked up a sweat under the solar rays that rejuvenated his winter pallor to a glow.
No matter how much I fretted over him digging and shoveling the ground, he insisted he felt good and enjoyed the exercise, with his feet bare against the rich soil absorbing its nutrients, living longer and beyond the years his doctors had prophesied.
"They ain’t God," I told him. The sunbeams of the Lord’s glory kept him alive. They don’t know anything about how long one should or shouldn’t live. And he did prove them wrong. He lived until he was thirty-two. He should’ve been dead since the age of five – according to them.
The only thing he feared, of all things, was love. Had a bad experience of losing who he thought was the love of his life for another, which I swore almost killed my baby dead. When he had just about recovered, that Jezebel returned, pleading for his forgiveness and reconciliation. Against my warning, her serpentine mojo overpowered his senses and he took her back, but in a few months she was gone again. He already knew she would despite my suspicions, warning him over and over again. His passive heart knew she would.
“Whatever happens happens,” so he said, but I was the one who had to nurse his reopened wound and restore his shattered confidence, pleading for him not to waste his precious life on the likes of her that almost took him away from me. Not just yet. Please, not like that.
In time he had finally gotten over her and moved on. He sold his beautiful home, a fixer-upper he restored with his own hands, and moved back in with me shortly after Winston passed. He didn’t want me to live alone.
“It isn’t safe, Ma. We can take care of each other.”
And we did. But as much as I enjoyed my son’s company I knew he deserved the fulfilling company of a beautiful woman. Nights seemed to repeat themselves as I stared into the dark, mostly praying, wondering, asking.
Who, Lord?
Where?
Seasons had come and gone and time was ticking, more so for him than for me. Oddly he seemed content just being with me and doing the amazing work he was doing. Eventually, I was about to conclude this is what our lives were destined to become, that I would never see my son in love, to be loved by someone other than his mother, who would give up her remaining years of life just to see him in love, whose limited time would be complete with inner contentment with someone special.
And then the unexpected happened.
Our next door neighbor’s little girl, no longer little, had just graduated from a college up North and returned home to her family. Such a beautiful and sweet young sparrow with a heart of gold.
Chastity was her name.
She was in love with my Madison since they were kids. He used to call her pipsqueak—ew, she hated that name. She was just a cute little kid to him, but she wanted him to like her more than just being a pipsqueak.
What seemed to have been a naked scrawny twig—flat chest with not near a curve on her lanky body—had now blossomed into a vibrant crepe myrtle bush, with curves that would set a bull on his heels.
I always liked her. And my surprised Madison liked her more, but he was too afraid. No more hurt, no more disappointment. He was convinced love was no longer allowed into his life.
But that little thing was determined not to be treated as that lanky tomboy of yesterday. She knew what to do and as time went on, they grew closer and closer as I watched from a short distance smiling and praying for the day when he would accept true love into his tender life before he left this earth. With her coaxing he was soon nurturing the neglected garden in her mother’s back yard just as he did mine.
Chastity loved to watch him tenderly nurture the ground and plant in early spring, and would soon join in. Side-by-side they would toil together talking, laughing. For the first time in years I saw new life grow in Madison’s eyes. Doctors warned him about his indulgence, to take it easy but he felt different. The damp earth and sunshine were his friends, his energy. He felt himself getting stronger and stronger. And with Chastity by his side, he radiated more than the sun itself.
I saw it, too.
“What do doctors know,” I’d always scoffed.
I fed him nature’s own from old folks’ recipes to strengthen and restore the weakened tissues. He was then twenty-eight.
Doctors were baffled. But why should they, just because he was living far longer than they predicted? Why must I repeat myself? They’re not prophets, just mere aides to folks’ healing -- God they were not.
I proudly declare being a descendent of nurturers and strong women who knew the medicines of the earth. I took good care of my baby, just as my mama and her mama and their matriarchs before them. But I couldn’t do it all alone, but with the grace of God.
I watched as Madison and Chastity links tighten. Their friendship and loyalty for each other so strong, I almost felt consumed by the love they possessed, the love I prayed so hard to happen for my boy. A passion so strong, even my Madison knew he could no longer ignore it.
That’s when he proposed.
The day they shared their joy was the day I felt hot and cold flashes running through my body. A feeling of joy and rapture beyond what I can ever explain. He was no longer afraid. My son, my boy, finally accepted love--true love to enter his life. Her parents, dear friends of ours for many years and who I later learned shared the same hopeful dream were just as elated beyond words.
The marriage union of Madison and Chastity was a dream come true, surrounded by colorful life in our backyard – Chastity’s choice, by the way, because it was where she met her true love many years prior when she was no higher than a duck’s tail. Our lovely garden was large enough to hold the people who came to witness the wonderful event. Even the skeptical doctors were there as onlookers to the phenomenon who had beaten all odds.
As I watched the two lovers become one, I felt reassured I could finally go to eternal sleep without worrying about my son because he has lived to see and experience the joy of love.
They received ownership of the home that Winston and I once cared for and treasured. My gift to them. I stayed in the guest quarters on the southwest side of the house, and wished I had done so earlier because it gave me full view of my garden. I could read and sew and write my letters or my journal while looking out into the beautiful and colorful array of annuals and perennials, and few crepe myrtle and magnolia trees. Never a season without vibrant life, thanks to God and my Madison.
Four years they were together, four beautiful years.
This winter we witnessed our first blizzard in two scores, a record my son and Chastity shared in awe. They played in the thick white cold confetti like children in wonderland. They built a snowman and made angel wings in the snow. She ran to get hot cocoa, but he wanted to keep making angel wings in the snow. I never saw him so happy.
My Lord.
I can remember seeing his smile as white as the luminous surroundings in the late afternoon. I watched him take long deep breaths while slowly waving his arms in the cold white powder… slowly, slowly.
Leaning against the cold pane, staring, the hair on my back stood rigid as icicles. I wanted to call out to him, only my breath mutely fogged the panes. I then tried to call out to Chastity who was busily humming in the kitchen making her husband’s hot cocoa, but I was frozen as the snowman that stood over him.
She soon slipped beside me giggling, passing over a mug of the hot steamy beverage only to read my face and follow my eyes that lingered on my son’s still body. I heard the mug crash on the oak wood floor, her wet boots skidding out the entrance to our backyard, yelling, screaming his name.
I numbly reached for the phone, but what help could bring my son’s frozen body back to life. Thirty-two years he was. Happy and complete at thirty-two. The smile that remained on his sweet face could melt any winter storm and that’s what gave me comfort. Yes, yes, Lord, yes I cried because my baby, my life had gone, but I also cried because my Madison experienced love and joy in the highest level on this here earth.
The only one I mourned and still mourn for is his Chastity.
Her heart remains broken although she knew his condition, trying to prepare for the worse, but no one is ever prepared no matter how much they think they are, and there was no one who could ever comfort her lost. The loss of love, a first and beautiful love. If only she knew there’s always hope for another and life goes on, something I still try to convince myself.
Now here I am thinking I will die soon, how soon? I don’t know.
Either I can break free or stay still and find out whether I have a chance to see my son on the other side of Paradise, or face the blow of a semi-automatic held to my head by this here heathen during a heist at my neighborhood pharmacy.
Chapter One
I’m going to die soon.
How soon?
I don’t know, but soon.
In just a moment’s notice, it’ll be all over. The burden I carry is more than what I can bear. What choice do I have with a semi-automatic to my head?
My once vigorous and fit body has now betrayed me—no longer the strong temple I once possessed. As of late kidneys are weak—praise God for disposal undies and a little dignity. My memory’s lapsing, arthritic backache keeps plaguing me more than usual, and don’t forget my heart.
Oh, Lord, my heart.
It was mostly broken from years of caring and watching a husband fade away with progressive dementia along with our poor sick son.
Madison.
My sweet boy.
Shortly after I buried Winston, I had to bury my son.
Madison was my life you know. He was always there for me and his daddy. I tried not to bother him so much. He needed to enjoy his life, but he always sensed when I needed him. That’s how he was.
Special.
Intuitive.
My baby defied anything from holding him back, including his illness, by spending years working hard and keeping our home beautiful despite my worrying and warnings. My son could do anything and when you look inside our home his handiwork can still take your breath away.
But his other favorite pastime was gardening. Something we both enjoyed. His daddy scoffed at our son’s love for nature as being effeminate. He ignored Winston’s ridicule – in fact, laughed at his daddy’s playful ignorance. His heart may have been weak, but Madison was still strong as an ox and would welcome the sun as he worked up a sweat under the solar rays that rejuvenated his winter pallor to a glow.
No matter how much I fretted over him digging and shoveling the ground, he insisted he felt good and enjoyed the exercise, with his feet bare against the rich soil absorbing its nutrients, living longer and beyond the years his doctors had prophesied.
"They ain’t God," I told him. The sunbeams of the Lord’s glory kept him alive. They don’t know anything about how long one should or shouldn’t live. And he did prove them wrong. He lived until he was thirty-two. He should’ve been dead since the age of five – according to them.
The only thing he feared, of all things, was love. Had a bad experience of losing who he thought was the love of his life for another, which I swore almost killed my baby dead. When he had just about recovered, that Jezebel returned, pleading for his forgiveness and reconciliation. Against my warning, her serpentine mojo overpowered his senses and he took her back, but in a few months she was gone again. He already knew she would despite my suspicions, warning him over and over again. His passive heart knew she would.
“Whatever happens happens,” so he said, but I was the one who had to nurse his reopened wound and restore his shattered confidence, pleading for him not to waste his precious life on the likes of her that almost took him away from me. Not just yet. Please, not like that.
In time he had finally gotten over her and moved on. He sold his beautiful home, a fixer-upper he restored with his own hands, and moved back in with me shortly after Winston passed. He didn’t want me to live alone.
“It isn’t safe, Ma. We can take care of each other.”
And we did. But as much as I enjoyed my son’s company I knew he deserved the fulfilling company of a beautiful woman. Nights seemed to repeat themselves as I stared into the dark, mostly praying, wondering, asking.
Who, Lord?
Where?
Seasons had come and gone and time was ticking, more so for him than for me. Oddly he seemed content just being with me and doing the amazing work he was doing. Eventually, I was about to conclude this is what our lives were destined to become, that I would never see my son in love, to be loved by someone other than his mother, who would give up her remaining years of life just to see him in love, whose limited time would be complete with inner contentment with someone special.
And then the unexpected happened.
Our next door neighbor’s little girl, no longer little, had just graduated from a college up North and returned home to her family. Such a beautiful and sweet young sparrow with a heart of gold.
Chastity was her name.
She was in love with my Madison since they were kids. He used to call her pipsqueak—ew, she hated that name. She was just a cute little kid to him, but she wanted him to like her more than just being a pipsqueak.
What seemed to have been a naked scrawny twig—flat chest with not near a curve on her lanky body—had now blossomed into a vibrant crepe myrtle bush, with curves that would set a bull on his heels.
I always liked her. And my surprised Madison liked her more, but he was too afraid. No more hurt, no more disappointment. He was convinced love was no longer allowed into his life.
But that little thing was determined not to be treated as that lanky tomboy of yesterday. She knew what to do and as time went on, they grew closer and closer as I watched from a short distance smiling and praying for the day when he would accept true love into his tender life before he left this earth. With her coaxing he was soon nurturing the neglected garden in her mother’s back yard just as he did mine.
Chastity loved to watch him tenderly nurture the ground and plant in early spring, and would soon join in. Side-by-side they would toil together talking, laughing. For the first time in years I saw new life grow in Madison’s eyes. Doctors warned him about his indulgence, to take it easy but he felt different. The damp earth and sunshine were his friends, his energy. He felt himself getting stronger and stronger. And with Chastity by his side, he radiated more than the sun itself.
I saw it, too.
“What do doctors know,” I’d always scoffed.
I fed him nature’s own from old folks’ recipes to strengthen and restore the weakened tissues. He was then twenty-eight.
Doctors were baffled. But why should they, just because he was living far longer than they predicted? Why must I repeat myself? They’re not prophets, just mere aides to folks’ healing -- God they were not.
I proudly declare being a descendent of nurturers and strong women who knew the medicines of the earth. I took good care of my baby, just as my mama and her mama and their matriarchs before them. But I couldn’t do it all alone, but with the grace of God.
I watched as Madison and Chastity links tighten. Their friendship and loyalty for each other so strong, I almost felt consumed by the love they possessed, the love I prayed so hard to happen for my boy. A passion so strong, even my Madison knew he could no longer ignore it.
That’s when he proposed.
The day they shared their joy was the day I felt hot and cold flashes running through my body. A feeling of joy and rapture beyond what I can ever explain. He was no longer afraid. My son, my boy, finally accepted love--true love to enter his life. Her parents, dear friends of ours for many years and who I later learned shared the same hopeful dream were just as elated beyond words.
The marriage union of Madison and Chastity was a dream come true, surrounded by colorful life in our backyard – Chastity’s choice, by the way, because it was where she met her true love many years prior when she was no higher than a duck’s tail. Our lovely garden was large enough to hold the people who came to witness the wonderful event. Even the skeptical doctors were there as onlookers to the phenomenon who had beaten all odds.
As I watched the two lovers become one, I felt reassured I could finally go to eternal sleep without worrying about my son because he has lived to see and experience the joy of love.
They received ownership of the home that Winston and I once cared for and treasured. My gift to them. I stayed in the guest quarters on the southwest side of the house, and wished I had done so earlier because it gave me full view of my garden. I could read and sew and write my letters or my journal while looking out into the beautiful and colorful array of annuals and perennials, and few crepe myrtle and magnolia trees. Never a season without vibrant life, thanks to God and my Madison.
Four years they were together, four beautiful years.
This winter we witnessed our first blizzard in two scores, a record my son and Chastity shared in awe. They played in the thick white cold confetti like children in wonderland. They built a snowman and made angel wings in the snow. She ran to get hot cocoa, but he wanted to keep making angel wings in the snow. I never saw him so happy.
My Lord.
I can remember seeing his smile as white as the luminous surroundings in the late afternoon. I watched him take long deep breaths while slowly waving his arms in the cold white powder… slowly, slowly.
Leaning against the cold pane, staring, the hair on my back stood rigid as icicles. I wanted to call out to him, only my breath mutely fogged the panes. I then tried to call out to Chastity who was busily humming in the kitchen making her husband’s hot cocoa, but I was frozen as the snowman that stood over him.
She soon slipped beside me giggling, passing over a mug of the hot steamy beverage only to read my face and follow my eyes that lingered on my son’s still body. I heard the mug crash on the oak wood floor, her wet boots skidding out the entrance to our backyard, yelling, screaming his name.
I numbly reached for the phone, but what help could bring my son’s frozen body back to life. Thirty-two years he was. Happy and complete at thirty-two. The smile that remained on his sweet face could melt any winter storm and that’s what gave me comfort. Yes, yes, Lord, yes I cried because my baby, my life had gone, but I also cried because my Madison experienced love and joy in the highest level on this here earth.
The only one I mourned and still mourn for is his Chastity.
Her heart remains broken although she knew his condition, trying to prepare for the worse, but no one is ever prepared no matter how much they think they are, and there was no one who could ever comfort her lost. The loss of love, a first and beautiful love. If only she knew there’s always hope for another and life goes on, something I still try to convince myself.
Now here I am thinking I will die soon, how soon? I don’t know.
Either I can break free or stay still and find out whether I have a chance to see my son on the other side of Paradise, or face the blow of a semi-automatic held to my head by this here heathen during a heist at my neighborhood pharmacy.
