Remembering flowers as gifts and a collection of cards.

Those who respected God thought about Him and talked to each other about Him, and God listened to them and wrote in a book. Then the Lord spoke: ‘ They will be mine. I will save them like jewels like a person saves their child.’

Malachi 3: 16,17 ( Sandy’s understanding if you read on to chapter 4 the words are dramatic).

Each week, I try to remember my past. As some kind blogger asked: “Are you writing your memoire?” Well, perhaps the hooks to hang it on.

There are flowers given by family, then students, colleagues, and friends. Two distinct groups.

During my years as a teacher, the most contrasting in cost but same in affection and appreciation were bouquets presented years apart from ladies. One was a dentist, the other a doctor. These ladies represent the people I taught over the years who came from countries where there was war.

The dentist gathered bouncing bess from the roadsides and daisies with long stems poking through fences. The pink minute flowers in flourets contrasted well with  the structured petals of white and yellow round soft centres of the daisy.  This large bunch tied with raffia and a card signed with messages from students are a memory sealed with affection.

The other was from a student whose experience of life left her on edge and with her husband by her side for the first while she developed an ability  to cope with a class of multilingual students. One day, when she was no longer in my class, I received a florist bouquet of pincushion protea and South African vegetation delivered to my desk. She was well on her way to professional acceptance using a new language that had to be earned.

To be human is to have a collection of memories that tells you who you are and how you got there.

Rosecrans Baldwin

My teaching colleagues were more than generous to me with time and flowers. My mum being diagnosed with cancer in late November , and dying in early April, this was a shocking event that would have been far more difficult if it hadn’t been for them. They were generous in providing cover for my classes and sending flowers. I can’t help putting in this quote as it says well what I feel.

I’m very proud of the people with whom I’ve worked. It’s an amazing collection that just by happenstance happened.

Norman Lloyd 1914 – 2021

This then leads to a collection of cards. Roy and I met in a mathematics class where the lecturer saw and said things were  Mickey Mouse when nothing really was for me. Roy helped me. He later asked me: ” Will you go out with me? ” (Will you be my girlfriend?) Yes. ( A simple answer.)

From then on, Roy gave me a bunch of flowers every Friday, sometimes picked from the mountain or bought, and then a card every month on the day that he asked me to be his girlfriend. Here are two of the early friendship cards.

I looked at  some quotes about collections  that took me down an interesting road, ending up listening to an intriguing author.

Well, that is what life is – this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all.

Alexander Payne

Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also the epic emotional struggles,  epiphanies, transformations.

David Grann

David Grann is an American journalist, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and an author. In his writing, he tries to convey what it was like for the people who actually lived through moments of merky uncertainty about what was going to happen next. You can listen to him speak. If you are time limited, dip into it, but listen to the  end.

May today have memorable moments .

Sandy🙂