Apothecary Rose

The connection between American publishing and the English houses that supported them were as clear as day to me, as a young apprentice at St. Martin's Press. Editors went on annual buying trips "across the pond" to partake in the comfy literary markets of murder mysteries and tearoom gardens that are so quintessentially British. Excepting for some technical difficulties present in the differences between printing processes, our repackaged series were the house staples we could all rely on. Murder mystery readers are overwhelmingly female, and surprisingly devoted to their fictional, crime-solving heroes; a pat, easy formula that's the perfect armchair read on a chilly autumn night, served with a warm cuppa on the side.

Until a certain female protagonist caught my attention. Because I produced the advance reader copies sent out to reviewers, I usually knew the manuscript well enough to talk about it, and because of the lulls in my work, I actually read most of them, too. We did a bunch of medieval murder mysteries that sought to capitalize on the commercial success of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". This one began similarly, but with a twist: the prime suspect was also the chief investigator. She was a female apothecary working as a laywoman within abbey walls, tending to the same medicinal garden that produced the deadly herbal used as the murder weapon, found on her shelves. Neat plot twist, right?

I was reminded of my own botanist mother who'd cried foul play over my child's bouquet, picked to cheer her up during one of her many "moods". "Agh!" She dramatically cried out when I presented my flowers to her, at her bedside. "That's 'deadly' nightshade!" Oh? Pretty purple flowers. "Are you trying to poison me?!" Uh, no...but, thanks for the tip. End scene, cut, aaannnd...fade out.

Aside from the theater of her daily undoing, I learned a lot about the power of plants from her. She often knew their Latin names by heart, and if we couldn't readily identify the wildflowers we found, we'd look them up. She knew the trees around us by the shape of their leaves, and the colors they changed in the fall. It was a beauty and magic to me that lengthened into homesickness for the forests of my northern woods. Never would I forget the shape of sunlight slanting through the trees, or the happy yellow of a early spring daffodil.

It's become grounding to me with every move I've made, a steadying process that keeps me down-to-earth in a sea of change; collecting specimens, looking them up, and then pressing them between the pages of books. That is the strength of our collective gifts as a mother and daughter: a knowledge that is straight and true. 
And so very beautiful.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/england-to-be-re-dedicated-as-dowry-of-mary/

Strip Mall Cemetery

A liquor store parking lot, and a journey back through time.

I've noticed this lot ever since I moved back up to Rockland County, after many years away. Last winter, I began walking to town, first from my mother's place, then closer to town on my own. It's a little cemetery squeezed in between two shopping lots, a place of history that pops out in contrast to the bland surroundings. But the headstones weren't the only thing that attracted my notice. A lot of loud-mouthed, raucous crows squawked at me whenever I walked to the grocery store, cutting across one parking lot to the next.

Who are they?

I'm no stranger to the bird of my Corvus line, an ancestry of Norman, French Swiss, and Irish, who take their heraldic symbol from the large black crow. Whenever I cawed back at them, they answered me every single time, being the excellent and highly intelligent mimics that they are. The names on the stones read Bogert (http://books.google.com/books?id=WdwNExWb7_QC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=Jan+Bogert+New+York&source=bl&ots=aNFCMqTdtM&sig=5YRC7DNAO9ON14cu-meztwUv8nw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6FNBVMi-LajlsATNs4Eo&ved=0CEYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Jan%20Bogert%20New%20York&f=fals), a family that I thought could be remnants of the old French Huguenots who sailed down the Hudson from Canada, looking for lumber and good farming, which is something this river valley has always had in abundance.

A historical marker: hidden, but also in plain sight.

Since then, I've read excerpts about the Bogerts (www.mytrees.com/ancestry/New-York/Died-1707/Bo/Bogert-family/Jan-Bogert-an001161-302.html), a prominent New York Dutch family who changed their name immediately upon arrival in New Amsterdam, when they began buying land in large parcels. 

A noisy family of crows circled overhead, whenever I came near.

And just like so much in my life, a seemingly random gaggle of circling, noisy black birds led me back in time to a place of big mythological significance to me, because not only am I heir to the oldest Métis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis) and Acadian roots of this New World, but I am also a descendant of the very first Dutch and British families, too.

Cemetery in wintertime.

Such is the nature of inheritance, in this Autumn time when the old spirits and the new mingle in the air over cemeteries from times long past, beckoning to me again and again, by no mere accident or quirk of chance. That's the power of fate.

Ah, yes. This is no accident or random event.

When our local historian, who is also one of our librarians, told me that the old Bogert farm was near a large well and the encampments of two Indian tribes, I had to smile because deep down, I already knew it. I felt it in my bones, just as the crows called it out to me showily, heralding aloud that I had arrived safely home, from travels near and far, surviving adventures both small and frightful, big and powerful, dangerous and heady, just like my ancestors had.  I'm back, and I'm ready to share my story with all of you. 

Marker I.

Marker II.