There is something enchanting, magical even, about falling leaves. They don’t just flutter to the ground, they dance and whirl, as if enjoying their freedom. Even when they land they aren’t content to lie still, they take flight again in a gust of wind or in the wake of a speeding car. I could watch this ballet for hours, except you never know where the next show will be.
I recently spent a weekend chasing fall around Western North Carolina and while the colors weren’t as vibrant as what I’ve seen in the past, there was a different beauty to the landscape. Perhaps spending my whole life in Florida with little to no fall color that made this trip so spellbinding; maybe it was the much needed reprieve from the stifling heat; or maybe it was taking the time to see the world from a different perspective.
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As I watch my photos from this trip slip through the screensaver on my computer, I’m struck by the thought that fall is a chance for God to show us what a master artist He is. There is the side of a mountain with red, yellow, and orange spattered among the deep green of the pines and spruce. There are the fallen leaves, some brown, some still golden, that found a resting place on a moss covered rock in the rushing rapids of a clear stream. In the front yard, red and pink roses are still blooming in front of trees that are changing color daily.
Back in Florida, I can immerse myself in the photos and videos from this trip and find inspiration. There is so much beauty in the world, sometimes we just have to take time to change our perspective.
When our children were young, Bill and I loved to go camping at the springs and when the kids became teens, we took one Sunday off each month to camp, because Renie and Billy, and Bill and I were all so busy we didn’t have time to be together, or to talk. Yes, we missed church once a month, but we usually had a sweet service of our own, and everything turned out fine in the end.
We invited the young married people in our Sunday School Class/Small Group to come along. We were all close because we prayed together, commiserated with one another, helped each other through “stuff” and studied the Bible together. That weekend, Onisha and her family went, Pam and hers went, and The Crouses and their three children went too. I don’t know who else. If you were there, let us know.
Decades later, Pam, one of the people from that group, and I drove over to Ponce de Leon Springs for breakfast and a look around. We went to the Old Mill where you cook your own pancakes on a griddle in the middle of your table. The waitress asked if we’d been there before and I said I had and I told her jokingly that Pam thought she had been there.
“If you only think you’ve been here, I’ll explain the menu,” said the waitress. “I’ll bring pancake batter in our signature pottery pitchers, the one with the red speckles holds our special blend whole grain batter, the blue speckled one, has white batter. Spray the grill with the oil and pour out enough for your pancakes. You can order nuts, bacon, sausage, and eggs, too, if you want. We’ll cook those for you.
Every time I’ve been to De Leon Springs in the past forty-five years, the same woman was waiting tables. Of course she was younger in the beginning and so was I. I’ll always remember how airy she looked in her tee-shirt and tiered cotton skirt. It could get very hot in there with the grills heated up, even though the fans were going. There was always a room full of people and no AC, just big open screens that showed the out-of-doors to perfect advantage.
I always think of that woman as the quick, friendly person who was working with her family who owned the place with her family and since my novel, Sacred Spring, was published, I’ve wanted to give her a copy, because in a way, I used her for a model for Elaine in the story. I was thrilled to see that as always, she was on the job. I told her we were old customers from long before the state bought the place. Her eyes lit up when I gave her the book and autographed it for her. She was so pleased, she gave me a big hug and because of her joy, I too, felt wonderful.
Pam and I then sat and talked for a long time. We like to talk about our grandchildren, books, our association with Rebekah Lyn Books (Pam is the public relations assistant). We talk about our churches and about movies. After a bit we decided to walk and talk. The Garden Spring Run and the pool itself take your breath away. We went into a tiny museum that has many beautiful historic photographs of Ponce de Leon Springs and the buildings. They have three ring binders full of newspaper clippings about archeological digs that have taken place there.
The museum was in a small room in this building.
When we finished the museum we thought we’d walk up the trail to see Methuselah, an ancient cypress tree, but it started to rain. Because we’d left Pam’s raincoat, my umbrella, our hats, and our “rubber” shoes in the car, we decided to retrace our steps, even though we got rained on before we arrived at the car.
We were happy. We’d found our way back to our first years as friends and to our children’s childhoods, and now we are finding our way back into a precious friendship that we both became too busy to nurture. It’s so comforting growing old with people you’ve known for a long time. Friendship surely is the dew of God for our lives on this earth.
To learn more about De Leon Springs, it’s history and activities visit their website.
Our little girl grew up to be sweet, successful, and smart and she married a good man, just as our son married an excellent woman.
I met Mary Harwell Sayler when she came to teach at a writer’s conference run by our church. Mary is a consummate poet and wonderful teacher and I drank poetry, the reading and the writing of it, like
Author, Poet Mary Sayler
a person dying of thirst. I signed up for Mary’s poetry writing correspondence course and as we got to be friends, she invited me to her home in DeLand, an hour away. I drove up once a month for about five years and we talked about poetry, nature, and our families and from there became associates and each other’s loyal advocates.
For another eight years I drove to Melbourne once a month to meet with Julian Lee Dulfer who taught a class in writing and copy-editing novels that I couldn’t have done without.
With all the writing I was doing I didn’t have time for much else, but then I read that writers need hobbies. That gave me permission to do something I’d always to – take art lessons. I was so excited the first night, I couldn’t wait to get my brush dipped into water and paint. I’ve been through four teachers and a lot of different kinds of art since then and I never lost the thrill of it. The gallery experience and the Art League workshop I was in were true highlights for me. I loved giving art lessons to my two grandchildren and they benefitted from them as much as I did.
One day in Wal-Mart I met a young woman, Rebekah Lyn, whose mom I’d known for a long time. I knew Rebekah had started working on a novel and as we stood there discussing writing, we made a pact to help each other. For about a year, we each brought our efforts to a meeting and read aloud, she read my manuscript and I read hers. It helped a lot. She went on to publish with Amazon and I followed soon after with my Florida Springs Trilogy. Her mother, Onisha, is our publicist and another friend is our public relations agent. Rebekah Lyn started her own book website and now four writers are represented there, Mary Harwell Sayler, poet, novelist, nonfiction writer, and teacher, Janet Perez Eckles (who is blind and who has written an autobiographical book about her experiences with the living God) Rebekah, and me.
One day in Wal-Mart I met a young woman, Rebekah Lyn, whose mom I’d known for a long time. I knew Rebekah had started working on a novel and as we stood there discussing writing, we made a pact to help each other. For about a year, we each brought our efforts to a meeting and read aloud, she read my manuscript and I read hers. It helped a lot. She went on to publish with Amazon and I followed soon after with my Florida Springs Trilogy. Her mother, Onisha, is our publicist and another friend is our public relations agent. Rebekah Lyn started her own book website and now four writers are represented there, Mary Harwell Sayler, poet, novelist, nonfiction writer, and teacher, Janet Perez Eckles (who is blind and who has written an autobiographical book about her experiences with the living God) Rebekah, and me.
Rebekah has just launched, Jessiethe story of a teen aged boy who grew up in Titusville, Florida in the early sixties during the beginning of the Space Program. It’s an excellent and timely book.
Presently, I’m working on a book that takes place in Colorado in the mountains. It’s historical, western, and has a strong love story in it.
I was born in Lovelock, Nevada, which was on a Blackfoot Indian Reservation. My dad worked as a meat-cutter for Safeway and when Mother was expecting me, she worked in a laundry. A pregnant Blackfoot Indian, Wapun, worked alongside her, and mother was astonished when Wapun went into labor, got word to her husband, went home, had the baby, and came back all in the same day. When Mother went into the hospital they kept her in bed for two weeks, which was normal for that time, but I can imagine how tired she was of being there.
Baby girl Bowers still didn’t have a name when it came time to go home. She didn’t have a birth certificate because they had to have a name to give her one. She didn’t have a name because her parents had confidently selected a boy’s name, even though it was before knowing the sex of a baby before it was born. Finally, the nurse came in to talk to Mother about it, suggesting a name with letters from both parents’ names: Ivan and Dora.
When I was six months old, Mother’s daddy died in Canon City, Colorado and we three moved back home so Dad could take over the running of the municipal gas plant. By the time I was three and a half, I had a baby brother, and dad had a new job keeping the tomato-canning factory running in Crowley, Colorado.
Grandmother Bowers and DiVoran
Mother told me about our little family’s excursions down to the plant to see daddy. We went in a line, Mother usually carried my brother, then came DiVoran, the dog, the Nanny goat and her kid. The baby goat walked across the panes of glass warming over the baby tomato plants and his little hooves went click, click, click.
Ivan WWII
Dad was invited into World War Two so he moved the rest of us to his parents’ apartment house back in Canon City, where they had a corner apartment available just for the three of us. It was in Canon City that I came to know, from Auntie Elvira, my beginner’s Sunday School teacher, that Jesus loves me.
The Home Front
At bedtime, Mother let us each give her a word and then she’d make up a wonderful story that had the word in it. Sometimes she would color in my coloring book while I slept and I woke up to the most beautiful picture I’d ever seen. On Sunday afternoons, she took us to a movie and to Woolworth’s to shop. She gave each of us a quarter and we could buy anything our hearts desired. We usually bought glass animal toys we could put in the window for the sun to shine through.
Grandmother had her beauty shop with a separate entrance in her home. Granddad left every day at six a. m. to go to work as a guard at the Colorado State Penitentiary. As in-laws, Mother and Grandmother were often at odds with each other. Each knew exactly how to get me to talk, though and I ended up in lots of trouble for reporting to one what the other had done or said.
We were downtown when the war ended. Cars honked, the whistle at the Pen sounded, we were at
1937 Chevvy
Woolworth’s and the owner brought out Halloween noise-makers for everybody.It wasn’t long until Dad came home, bought a blue 1937 Chevrolet and loaded us up for a trip to Westcliffe where he and mother had purchased, “Min’s,” café and restaurant. We lived in an old house, then a duplex, then dad bought the old train depot and renovated it making a room to rent downstairs and family living quarters upstairs.
Mother had always wanted to be a secretary so she bought a portable typewriter and put it in booth where she could practice when business got slow. She said I could use it. One day I was two-finger typing away and Dad walked by. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was writing the story of my life.
“You’re only seven years old, said Dad, it’s going to be a very short story.” However as things turned out it was a long story because I’ve been writing it for a lot of years.
I usually spent a week or so back in Canon City at our grandparents. She wouldn’t have David and I at the same time because we fought too much, but I loved being the only darling. I could walk to the library, check out a book in the Wizard of Oz series, take it home and sit on the porch to read it. It wasn’t only mother who told me everything, but grandmother did as well. One day Mother overheard one of Grandmother’s sisters asking another something and the second sister said, “You’ll have to ask DiVoran, Marie tells her everything.”
I’m sure my Mother and my Grandmother talking to me so much prepared me for understanding human nature and for becoming a writer. They listened too. Dad was a great storyteller, but he never talked much when he came back from the war, so I didn’t hear any of his stories until he was had grown old and he told them again to mother and she wrote them down for me. He never talked to any of us about the war and I knew that he had screaming nightmares, though I don’t remember hearing him for myself.
In Westcliffe, we had a library across Main street from the restaurant, in back of the Community Building. I can see myself crouching in front of the two low shelves where my favorite books lived. I recall confessing to the librarian that I still liked fairy-tales and she was kind enough to tell a small girl that she liked them too.
We had a movie theater in Westcliffe, and my brother and I got to go every time the feature changed, which was every few weeks. We’d watch from the restaurant’s plate glass window and run to the end of the street to the show the minute the neon marquee went on.
Because of the high mountains we had little or no radio reception. But I loved music, so Dad, as a treat, gave me the key to the back of the juke box and let me trip the switch fifty times so that all the songs would play. In school we had folk-dancing and rhythm band and we put on plays. All of that is important to a writer. When I was twelve years old, I started teaching Sunday School because our teacher, who was sixteen became ill and couldn’t teach anymore. I’m happy to say she survived.
Main Street, The restaurant was next to the Texaco station.
