The Blue & Yellow Post

Is July the month of death?

I always thought so. I expect because my mother, favoured aunt and grandpa all died in July. Perhaps it’s because the cold chills me to the bone. It just feels like a dead month.

Magnolia

But during this month, the most magnificent blooms come into their own. The Magnolia - with their sensuous broad white petals somehow emerging from tightly wrapped spiral shells. Some remain bud-like on the gnarled branches, tightly enlosed and secretive for as long as they can.  But invariably, as the month grows older, they  too start to change, they can’t resist.

They open bit  by bit. Some more eager than others appear almost wanton. Opening wider and wider, leaning backwards in complete surrender, curling back of themselves.  It’s a daring move. So daring, the cold couldn’t get to them even if it wanted to. for they’re beyond caring. They’ve gone to that stage just before death with such abandon I am ashamed to watch. Ashamed, that is, because I can’t be that open.

Gabby told me a story once about the birth of her third child, who was born in the month of July. When she was born there was no bed in the hospital other than one that lay at the end of the ward for mothers of still-born babies. And so, on that morning when the nurses brought her clean, healthy, fair, beautiful and serene baby for her first feeding, they did so through a valley of death.

She was born on our grandfather’s anniversary. And christened Phoebe. Gabby chose the name for a number of personal reasons, only to find out some time later, that same name had been used by our grandfather, as a term of endearment our mother when she was a child. They might have been dead   but I’m starting to think they were there in spirit- endorsing the name and celebrating new life.

My mother loved magnolias. We had one blooming in the garden of our family home. I’ve painted the magnolia for years, trying to recapture the memory associated with it, marvelling at its seductive beauty and calm strength. It blooms for such a short time, the study and execution is intense. I have yet to really capture one the way I would wish.  Perhaps because it represents so much of what is transient.

I painted them when Bloke was sick, using gold-leaf and paint on paper I tried to capture that fragile passing, trying to vainly lock it safely in beaten metal. I’ve painted them on 6 panels - human height, as if in a garden with branches that spanned the width of a wall. But they don’t come close to the beauty of the tree in our front garden and the one I passed this morning.

So in a month or so, when they’re gone, I’ll still look for them. I’ll yearn for them in wonder at that fleeting splendour and its power to bring me undone. Every July when the cold chills me to the bone I’ll miss them. Just like I miss all that have died. And I’ll remember how splendidly open they were in the moment before their passing. Fragile in a world of beating metal and  winter winds.