Dear Daisy

 

       Jane Marla Ver Dow

 

         Rising Sparrow Press
 

 

Copyright © 2004  by Jane Marla Ver Dow.  

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced    or transmitted in any form or by any means, without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

 

                      Published by Rising Sparrow Press                           

                                 Rochester, New York

                                                  

Rising Sparrow Press

P.O. Box 29, Williamson, NY 14589

 

RisingSparrowPress.com

 

Requests for permission should be directed to:

Email:  verdow@RisingSparrowPress.com

 

Reader Reviews welcome

 Library of Congress Cataloging Number:  2004091496

 

Ver Dow, Jane Marla

Dear daisy : a novel / Jane Marla Ver Dow

First Printing   June 2004

Hardcover 

ISBN  1-932878-03-3

1.  Spiritual  – Nonfiction.  I. Title.

 

                                         10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

 

                          Printed in the United States of America

 

Dedication

 

This work is dedicated with all my love to Daisy. 

Her warmth taught me love, her gift of patience taught me to search my heart for patience with others, her Soul taught me strength equal to compassion, and through her love and guidance I learned to reach for my World.      

 

Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over and whispers, “Grow, grow.”               –The Talmud

             
                                                                 

                                                             Janie  3  years

 

           

Janie  3  days

 

 

Childhood is nothing more than, absolutely nothing       less than, the courage to discover for the first time with innocence and openness, the faith and passion to explore the next, and the inner wisdom to sense the value of each moment along the path.                                 

                                                                                – Janie

                                                    

Author’s Preface

The sunrise I could write how breathtaking beautiful it was that first morning.  That would be fiction.  I can tell you the night before had been dark.  That must be true.  Truth told I woke after the sun had decided all on its own to rise and the night before I choose not to remember the dark details. 

Survival pulled at my heart and motivated my first step; that I do remember.  The rest; all I know was that I was there, life started or just moved from what had been to what would be, my eyes and ears were open without me being connected, and I tagged along.         

   

This book was created from fact.  It was written in the spirit of transformative hope, historical roots, and life.  It is a story of a child’s lifetime, a then remembered in a now, and because memories continue to shape a life of today.  The process of re-creating days past, to re-connect in a moment now, required detailed memory that I was blessed to hold.  In this moment forty years later, I had an inner guiding sense that I needed to return to this yesterday for what felt like the necessary tools to survive this current day and yet at the same time, an intense pulling forward.

 I engaged my child’s mind to stretch past the adult, now frozen in the latest crushing details of this day in the hope to rediscover self and Truth buried under a lifetime of social and behavioral conformities and prejudices.  The adult World   I was now part of.  At least my age said this to be true.  My mind and heart were far from being a seasoned Adult.  I had certainly faced enough time, losses, hardships, challenges, and heartbreaks to qualify as an Adult.  My mind simply couldn’t understand this Adult World. Then again, I didn’t understand much of the Child World.  Said another way, perhaps closer to the Truth, it wasn’t that I didn’t understand these Worlds that I traveled through. It was more a matter of not liking what I saw and understood.

In a time between sunrise and sunset one day and long after sunset another winter night, from somewhere deep within there was a voice calling me home.  I had to listen.  When a child of any age hears that voice, there’s no denying  it, least not to yourself, especially when the call becomes a whisper.  Daisy I sensed near and days and nights that followed I dreamt the story told through our words, what our ears surely would recognize as words we shared of our hearts.  Pages to be filled with common everyday words, even American slang filled with history and time origin built into the phrases, words of the heart and Soul, cultivated in the minds of Earth people, grounded in soil, fed by Sun and Water.   

I have been given all kinds of advice about how to get through life when it comes without a map.  This book was no exception.  There were many well-meaning people to advise me that Dear Daisy had to be written in proper context.  Spoken English language is so full of rules it is regarded as near impossible to learn.  The written word is cast in stone.  When I revealed that I was taking on the challenge of writing a book   of my childhood relationship with a Black migrant worker and finding it most difficult to write words that didn’t have White proper written form, I was cautioned not to offend.  Offend whom?  My ears were hearing what I needed to communicate back then with people who were of the Earth, real, some God created of different color, and at the time I wasn’t concerned with writing skills.   

I did however recognize that I needed some reference  to transform the sound lodged within my mind to what the eye would cross-culture recognize.  I traveled to a bookstore that was Black owned, stocked with Black culture and Black History, with predominantly Black patrons in the heart of the City.  Scanning through the shelves of books, a Black woman approached and asked if she could assist me.  Could she ever!     I gave her the short version of what I was writing, where Daisy was born and lived, the time period of her life, and asked if she knew any book or author that would be able to give me this visual picture of how the words would appear in print.  She handed me Zora Neale Hurston’s work.  I began reading and tears appeared in my eyes.  I owe this woman in this bookstore for her insight.          

Somehow my inner guide tells me the World will understand, that the book will be more truthful and real if I disregard the White version and Black version of rules, and simply write from my heart.  How many people fail to put their stories into words or to pass their stories down to the next generation simply because the “rules” get in the way?   

I needed to tell a story of a time back then and now about how people treat people, address “properly”, even how people of different “colors” mix.  All this, labels, words, even laws changed with time, but truth of heart reflected by ways people share space always speak truth.  Over time, I learned and relearned people aren’t good with truth, telling or hearing it, but truth of heart always rises to the surface through action.   

I’ve been known to invent words as I speak and write or to substitute one for another.  You’ll come across at least one changed consciously that serves my intended meaning for this account.  English writes some as two words, purposefully I write them united as one.  “Eachother” is my favorite “misspelled” word “corrected” in my writings to serve my heart.    

You will soon discover that this book contains no breakdown of chapters.  I used page numbers under protest and conformed merely to be kind to those publishing and collating the book.  Life is not arbitrarily broken down this way and none of us ever know what page of our life we are on.  Purposefully I designed this work to reflect life as life is presented to each of us, day-to-day and by seasons.  I recognize also that I use commas differently than most of the World.  I place them where my brain naturally hesitates, caught in a thought and where I would want the reader to slow down.  I have stayed true to my heart and have successfully broken every rule of language to bring this story forward. 

I believe strongly in Truth and nonconformity.  I have walked many places; kept my heart open and my mind available to the mystery, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I have a million stories.  I need to speak to our adult obsession with order and chaos, the costs of human created obstacles, and social systems under crisis.  Our society attempts to turn everyday nonfiction into something that feels more secure or comfortable if censored, edited, or presented as fiction.  We lose much of our awareness and Truth this way and learn to block or insolate ourselves through the characters we create.  I prefer real characters and have been blessed to meet many over the years.  As hard a reality as Truth can be, life plays out as non-edited nonfiction, though seldom is there  a life born or lived, that one would not choose their own, if possible, to be re-written with more fairy tale beginnings and happy endings.  

Life is a journey.  Sounds great until the parts with pits and valleys, hills to climb and moments to overcome, short failings and skinned knees, blocks and partial openings, and time invested for healing and learning.  Nothing I can do by words can change the events or days that played out.  I can however, look back as well as forward in this moment of today recognizing that what was then and what will be tomorrow is shaped by how I live and how I convey my nonfiction of a lifetime.   I feel blessed to have lived what at times feels like multiple lifetimes in this one.  Other times I would have settled to live less.  

I believe there are reasons that I would author and publish my first writings as nonfiction.  I believe in Truth.        I have spent my life searching for Truth.  I believe most in finding Truth within the details as they exist and seeing both the tragedies as well as the beatitudes in each detail and manifested by every life.  I believe this is depth, why we live, why the seasons come and go, and why the Universe is still here despite the mistakes that we all have made and will continue to make.  Our purpose, the strength of our Spirit, and the depths of our Souls cannot be found, fully lived, nor shared without Truth. 

 

 

Introduction

               Daisy was Colored.  I never heard anyone ever refer to her as a Negro.  Somewhere down my road, one of those points in time when knowing just was, I must have put together that “Negro” was a term people used to describe people like Daisy.  

In my child’s World, “Negro” was a formal word used by TV folks or in school when language was something that had to be right rather than what just flowed out your mouth.  As I gained more listening time, I pieced together that words that were used to label or describe someone had most to do with proper context or place, emotional levels, and the level or age of the speaker.  Daisy helped me solve this mystery by reminding me that words that came out of people’s mouths to be cruel said “mo’ ‘bout dem dat do de talkin’ than dem deh talks ‘bout.”  

In my World, Colored people were simply Colored.  Unless I was thinking ‘bout the difference because it was “in front my eyes” or I had to “be proper”, a person’s name and where they worked told all there was to know.  To me and mine, Daisy was Daisy.  

I recall a few embarrassing moments when someone’s words would slip out their mouth without their brains connected.  Daisy was within hearing distance this one time.  Colored wasn’t the word used.  I was the one told that I was “dark as a Nigger”. Words certainly complicated my World back then.  Words still complicate my World.  

“Nigger” was an outside world word as I first heard it.  Then it was a word I’d hear occasionally in an older relative or neighbor’s home.  It wasn’t a word I heard used in the house I grew up in and I had been with my family since 1959.  The only explanation I can come up with for this is that I guess my parents didn’t know any.  Watching peoples talk, I put together that “Nigger” was a word that you had to set your face just right to say.  The looks on people’s faces told me that it wasn’t  a word used to describe a friend, and especially not to call a friend face to face, even if they made you mad.  The word would resonant inside me if I heard it.  It wouldn’t go away, stuck there in mid thick air.  It still does.  Best you could do moments like these was to shake it off.  My reaction told me more than anything else that it was an “evil” word of hatred, degradation, and ill intent.   

The conversations that I shared with Daisy sometimes had words, many did not, or at least not many.  She often spoke a few words at a time rather than language sentences, as my World would later teach me to use.  This was an advantage for me, new to this World and especially new to words, and I found over time that this left plenty of time for my child’s mind to travel with her rather than fill all the space and time with empty words that I didn’t know much about.  I asked her one-day after getting home off the school bus ‘bout this word “nigger”.  She answered that question full sentence.       

Daisy was a woman of strength who lived and breathed her convictions that I never witnessed anyone challenge, and yet the most gentle Soul I’ve ever known.  I would dare say the gentlest Soul this modern World has known.  I don’t recall hearing a single word come out of her mouth that wasn’t kind.  She could say it all without speaking a word, hold back a reaction until she knew she had my full attention, teach a history lesson by living in the present, and teach about God with her eyes. 

She taught me ‘bout Truth and being honest.  Her speech patterns had a rhythm that my heart beat found connection with and taught me to pace my fast firing brain with my tongue that always needed more time to get the words out so they sounded right and didn’t switch themselves around without my permission.  Talking like Daisy spoke helped me be in control of what came out my mouth instead of my tongue having all the say.  Times I’ve made mistakes with others or tripped over my own words, my word river was overflowing and I’d forgotten how important talking speed could be.  

Believing in telling the Truth, knowing the safe when and where, how to speak Truth people could hear, and accepting that not all people are into hearing or telling the Truth when I think that they should be I have discovered over time and obstacle.  Much about Truth telling requires time, patience, practice, and courage.  It always takes courage.  Daisy gave me time and space to explore.  

To receive or to hold Truth as the foundation stone or as a building rock is much more complicated in this World than my child was prepared to accept.  The mystery of Truth for me was and is an ongoing curiosity, an energy that drives my passion, an obsessive force from layers deep, and what I least understand.  I know Truth can lead to freedom and that lack of Truth and half-truths can be used to cause hurt or can over time lead to destruction.  I know this on both sides.  I know that Truth has a way of finding its way to the surface from the deepest of depths, I have faith in the Biblical words that “Truth crushed to Earth will rise again’’, and I believe with all my heart that God guides the hearts of children to lead the way.     

I have no proof that Daisy remains Colored today.  Negroes were becoming “Black” the last years she lived here and this process of transformation continues.  She left here ‘bout the same time as Dr. King.  If she believed what he was dreaming about mountaintops and some Promise Land here   on Earth, the reality of getting there together, same as for     Dr. King was a hope-filled vision for children and children’s children.  I know for sure that she believed the part about us all being God’s children.  I heard this Truth from her.  Her husband, Jim, I would describe as more Black than Colored but my World at that time called him a Colored man.  His skin was much darker than Daisy’s but that’s not why I’d call him more Black than she.  He would have made the transition from Colored to Black with less need to change anything about him.  He carried himself different.  Early Black pride, I guess you could say.   

I do remember Jim smiling on occasion.  Usually his smile was in regards to Daisy or a smile of pride if his work was being noticed.  His jaw was always set for pride.  Daisy understood him most.  I understood him mostly out of respect.  Being so little at the time and Jim being way over 6 feet, it took looking a long ways up to really see his face.  Sometimes I’d hear him singing in the trees.  Once in awhile I’d catch him listening in on one of my conversations with Daisy as we sat under the tree taking our break.  I even caught him a couple times smiling as he worked listening in.   

Jim lived around here and back home for a year or two after Daisy left.  I’d say he died of a broken heart, Daisy not here to keep him grounded.  Everyone said the same thing.  I don’t know much about the details of his death other than he drank more than he would have dared drink around Daisy.  People would say, “He aint been the same without Daisy.”  We all could see changes in him that last season, but then again, I had changed, too without Daisy around.  We all changed.  Life changed.  I went about everyday business of growing up.  

At the time, I didn’t give much thought to God’s timing.  Time passes and losses accumulate.  Life’s unexpected events press on to find explanation down the road.  Acceptance requires this.  Hindsight rewards this.  I knew always that Daisy being planted on my path was no accident.  I sensed there was a reason, if at first nothing more than an attraction pull of the heart and a curiosity of my child’s mind.  As time passed and distance was traveled, each step traveled away from those days with Daisy, unraveled more of the mystery, layer by layer.  God had been up to something for sure with that planting and then later with the timing of the taking.   

To speak of the timing and circumstance then later the mystical as it re-entered and impacted my life is my side of the story.  Daisy needs to speak for herself.  She always did and I believe always will.  Maybe God knew Daisy like I knew Daisy, and that she never would have been able to make the transition and remained true to her nature as God designed her.  The transition to Heaven was less a step and far more natural for her than the transition to become Black.  Colored to Black has been a transition whether any of us wish to admit the “whys” or “how comes” any peoples would need to follow a pathway back to who they “is” when people are simply born to be the color that they are.   

Maybe God saw more of the path chosen or not chosen by peoples and how paths correct over time.  That is if people don’t get in the way.  God shares insight with me in moments that I feel closest to Presence, and with each day that I face  and close, I sense that God knew then what was to surface on paths ahead.  Daisy remained Colored for a reason and most important, Daisy would remain Daisy, at least for reasons that would play significant for my life path.  God made Daisy.  

Daisy told me that we are all God’s children.  Daisy shared mystery of life secrets and her wisdom with me but I don’t recall if she ever told me what color I was.  I never told Daisy what color she was either, come to think of it.  Daisy’s color becomes significant to tell this story and the story of our time together.  If I could tell you my color, I would.  I really don’t know.      

I give you my truth as I lived and witnessed it, and hope that for one moment you will be content and inspired to read nonfiction.  May you connect with a line or see yourself in a story retold.  May you see that in Truth there is a freedom path and that in the absence of Truth, we always live or cause others to live under conditions of oppression.  No matter how different we appear or how different the World tries to make us, we all share heart and pathways on our way back Home.

  

This is my path shared with my friend, Daisy.