When I was little, we would spend a lot of Saturday nights at my maternal grandmother’s house and then attend Methodist church with her in the morning. She was a teacher in the Sunday school.
Wilda Vickery Peterson was one of the kindest humans I’ve ever known, and my belief in a social justice warrior sort of Christ really comes from her (to begin with. Later in life, I found Merton and Day and so many Catholic mystics but that’s another story).
My grandmother had a large kitchen and in one section there was a chalkboard, which everyone loved, and a small table surrounded by windows. It almost gave a small sunroom effect.
And I would stand at those windows in the good weather and stare out at her large vegetable garden. What mystified me was this: at the end of that garden, year after year, there were always a couple of rows of gladiolas.
October 1917
Wilda was born in October of 1917. She was born into World War I still raging. She was born as the Bolsheviks were completing their overthrow of the Russian government. She was born mere months before the Spanish flu would explode all over the globe.
She would spend a big chunk of her 20s living through and having her first daughter during WWII. She knew what a victory garden was through direct experience.
And she would live through the rest of the century — past her own century mark — seeing too much change to list here. She would not pass from her human form until June of 2020 at the age of 102 and a half.
I bring all of this up to say that she saw more than what many of us are seeing. She, too, lived through times that felt “unprecedented.” Over and over, actually.
And yet she was covered in and surrounded by flowers on her wedding day.
And she grew those few rows of gladiola every year until her oldest granddaughter could stand and admire them out her kitchen window.
Gladiola — a “magazine” of sorts in her honor
I have been thinking for a couple of years of writing over on Substack. There were reasons why I kept not doing it, but I have satisfied my own sense of what’s right and good and admire so many writers over there that I know it’s time.
I will still write here and will replicate some of what’s here to over there and there will be material over there there’s not here.
I will write about movement and the body, of course, but also my love of literature and flowers and anything else that is feeling like it must be written, anything else that I am geeking out about and need to share for the joy of sharing.
And that space will be called Gladiola: Move. Write. Plant. (Click to go over and check it out and it would be great if you wold subscribe. That space will always remain free of charge.)
I realized that those two rows at the end of that practical vegetable garden are the perfect metaphor for the times we’re living in, when we can sometimes forget that beauty for beauty’s sake still matters. When we can forget that we must also feed the heart and the soul and that sometimes the best food for those things are often materials and experiences we start to think of as “unnecessary.”
Gladiola is also perfect for its meaning. Flowers have carried meaning for as long as humans have loved them, and the gladiola is about strength, resilience, moral integrity, and remembrance. Perfect things for Wilda to have planted in so many ways and a perfect name for what I hope to share.
My larger garden
And for those keeping track, this Gladiola will be part of a growing garden of my work: Peony Somatic Dance, of course, is my core passion and my true work in the world and is named for my soul cat, but there’s also Lillian Rose Movement Project, the name under which I create choreographic community experiences, which is named for my paternal grandmother.
May this garden continue to grow and continue to nurture others.
