Picking up the Pieces...Part 7

“HOLD YOUR BREATH, MAKE A WISH, COUNT TO THREE”…  It seems expected, from EVERYONE, that we triumph over this tragedy…  Without knowledge of the life we created for ourselves, without understanding our genuine nature as artists – our imagination and spirit that guided us in a direction all our own…

 For I have already triumphed over tragedy, again and again and again, to create the life I was living!  And I’ve lived an EXTRAORDINARY LIFE!  It was a preciously unique life!  It took me 46 years, working tirelessly – endlessly – to build, maintain and preserve my amazing life…  46 years to become the remarkable woman I was – confident in knowing who I was, and what I was put in this existence to do…

Our life, and our home, were inspired by 2 lines from Saskia’s favorite movie; “A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others!” and “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard.”  Thank you, L. Frank Baum, for such gifted and insightful words of wisdom to have really lived by!

“We’ll begin, with a spin, traveling in the world of my creation”…  I was once a young, overly creative artist.  I had a dream – and I dreamed BIG!  “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high - There's a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby…  And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.”  I saw life as something you create, and mold, and shape…  I knew one thing, with absolute certainty.  I wanted to be a mother!  I wanted to be surrounded with children…  They are incredible creatures, little children.  So filled with purity, and awed by everything!  Untouched by the prejudices and influences of the adult world, they truly live in the realm of imagination…  And in having my own children, working with children – I was afforded to live with them in the realm of imagination for a very long time…

“Come with me, and you’ll be – in a world of pure imagination”…  I experienced so many things, again and again, through the eyes of children!  The beauty of snow, falling.  How magnificent the moon can be, and how scary it can become after a ghost story.  The abounding wonder in discovering the world – the essence of childhood itself!  And love…  There just is no greater love, than the love from a child!   The elation they feel, in loving mommy and daddy.  The excitement, when they ‘love’ a butterfly.  The bliss, when they ‘love’ ice cream.  My world was filled with wonder and love, just for simply existing in their realm!  

“So shines a good deed in a weary world.”  And I was too artistic to live in their world without giving back!  So I created our home to be it’s own little world – a little of Egypt, a little of the rain forest, a little of Hawaii – everything in our home was designed for and around the children!  “Someday I'll wish upon a star, and wake up where the clouds are far behind me.  Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops – that's where you'll find me!”  A place of wonder, and joy, a place for their imaginations to take flight!  I think adults found me to be a lot like Willy Wonka…  For I believed, ‘There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.”  Maybe, because I lived by that creed.  I thought that each day, “If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it.  Anything you want to do, do it!  Want to change the world – there’s nothing to it.”   I have always been the eccentric artist to them, and yet, when they stepped into my world, they loved it too!

“There is no place like home.”  I raised my children in that land of imagination…  “Someplace where there isn't any trouble…  Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto?  There must be!  It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train.  It's far, far away…  Behind the moon, beyond the rain.”  When we first bought our home, Saskia and Kessa shared a room.  Kessa liked monkeys and angels.  Saskia liked mermaids and ponies.  How to design a room for ‘both’?  Saskia’s side was the deep blue sea, where she was the mermaid.  Kessa’s side was the beach, where monkeys were having picnics and playing volleyball.  And in the sky, above them?  Over Kessa’s bed, was a cloud that looked like an angel.  And over Saskia’s bed, was a cloud shaped like a pony.  And Ian’s room?  A boy’s room is his castle, where puff the magic dragon keeps watch over his kingdom.

We never did have to look any further than our own back yard, to experience all the faraway places we’d like to visit…  We designed our backyard to be the place, every day, we could go on vacation!  We wanted to go to Hawaii, so I brought all the tropical plants in, and created a thriving eco system where hummingbirds and butterflies amass…  We wanted to go camping, so we had plenty of room for our tents…  We wanted to have a playhouse, create an atmosphere that pulled you out – made you want to explore!  “Little surprises around every corner”.  So we bought 3 sheds from ShedWorld – one, that was a beach hut, for storing our pool toys; one, that had shelves in it, to store our Christmas and Halloween things in; and one, with a front porch and windows, just for the kids to play in and hang out in.  We built these sheds into the fence line, so as you looked into the back yard, there were these ‘buildings’, with paths leading to them…  We designed our pool to look like a lagoon, with a large first step, 5’X6’, a mosaic crab embedded in it.  The ‘crabbie step’ is where the children could safely sit together and play with their toys.  Mosaic seals, one on either side of the pool, marked where the shallow part ended and the deep end began.  And at the very end of the deep end?  A 5’ tall mosaic sea horse, that you really couldn’t see from anywhere except underwater!

When I designed the kitchen, I transformed it into the Rain Forest.  Fabric, vines and tropical parrots hung from the ceiling.  We bought an Amazon parrot, which added that special touch to the atmosphere here, and provided us daily entertainment as he talked to us, and even laughed at our jokes.  I found the perfect outdoor patio table and chairs set.  The chairs rocked, the bench seat was a glider, the table had a hole in the middle for our palm tree umbrella, so we could sit under it each night, more like eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant!  Ian and I cut and laid all the tiles on our kitchen floor.  We created our design with a 1” grout line.  It took us 3 days to lay the tiles…  And a month to grout them!  In the doorway to our laundry room, I carved the Egyptian story of our family…  How Paul and I met, our little family tree, the places our family had lived.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” After Saskia was murdered, I wrote a poem for her.  In my garden of good - came evil 

In my garden I grew lovely, healthy, happy little flowers.

Each one, uniquely different.

Each one, equally precious.

One by one they appeared,

Some were utter perfection.

Others arrived neglected, and in need of nurturing.

I tended my garden, watching over my little flowers

Guarding and protecting them.

I cherished them all.

One day, a peculiar flower appeared.

Its roots stole water from the roots of my other flowers,

Its blossom was so big as to block the sun.

My little blossoms began to wilt,

And they all leaned in a direction away from this peculiar flower.

Then, as swiftly as it had arrived, it was gone.

My little flowers bloomed once more,

Now that the sun could reach them,

And as their roots could finally get the water.

My garden grew lovely once more.

What I didn’t know,

Couldn’t have guessed,

Was that the peculiar flower was no flower at all.

It in fact was a demon.

He had surveyed my garden,

Seen how precious it truly was.

He had not left,

But laid in wait outside the garden gate,

And in the dark of night he entered my garden

His shears shining brightly in the moonlight.

He cut and he slashed,

Wounding every flower in my garden.

Annihilating only one.

For you see,

While she wasn’t my first,

She was my most perfect in every way.

The beauty of her red blossoms,

The strength of her stalk,

Her roots firmly planted,

The lovely green of her leaves.

She didn’t start out at the center of my garden,

But as all the other flowers arrived,

They found themselves drawn to her.

It took years to build such a magnificent garden,

And in the end, she was the center.

Now my flowers lay crushed and broken,

And with tending they may recover some of their former beauty.

But my garden will never be the same.

It will never be quite so lovely, healthy or happy.

And the center forever lies empty…

“I shall take the heart. For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”  Of all the children I have encountered in my life, Saskia was the one…  Who completely “got” me, who most cherished the uniqueness of “me”, who was most like “me’…  She was my muse, and artistically inspired me with purpose and direction. She admired my creativity and imagination.  She respected all the work I put in to making life wonderful for everyone, all the details that made her world such a magical place to exist in.  She truly was the heart, the center of so many things – my life, our family, all the children…

“Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted…  He lived happily ever after.”  Losing Saskia?  All the ‘finding myself and my purpose in this life’ was stripped from me…  The magic of our world, destroyed…  Everything I ever knew to be true, right, purposeful, and good in this existence is just – GONE!  “When all the world is a hopeless jumble, and the raindrops tumble all around, heaven opens a magic lane.  When all the clouds darken up the skyway, there's a rainbow highway to be found – leading from your window pane to a place behind the sun, just a step beyond the rain!”

“I can't go on forever.”  “If happy little bluebirds fly - beyond the rainbow, why, oh why can't I?”  Who would START OVER?  Who would want to?  I achieved the ultimate existence, experienced the rapture of absolute love and happiness…  Lived my life in a categorically biblical sense, for I truly walked in the garden of eden…

And now? “Now I know I've got a heart because it is breaking.”

― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz