 | |
| Keshia Thomas (L) shown with Karen Simpson (R) at the University of Michigan in March, 2013. |
This year to celebrated my birthday and the publication of my novel I bought myself a fancy bottle tree off eBay. I planted the spiky pole in the black cast iron washing and cooking pot my dad hauled back from his mother's farm after her death. I always loved this sturdy pot because it reminds me of the few precious memories I have of my Grandmother Simpson. After many years of planting flowers in the pot I decided to erect a elegant bottle tree to celebrated her memory. I'm not a big wine drinkers so I only have a few bottles to hang on it for now. May have to ask friends for their empties.
Bottle trees are prominently featured in my novel. I've always been fascinated by their deep connections to Africa.
The best explanation about about the tradition, history and function of bottle trees is in a wonderful book by Stephanie Rose Bird called Stick, Stone, Roots and Bones: hoodoo, mojo and conjuring with herbs. Bird writes:"Bottle trees stem from the Bantu tradition of tying bottles and other objects to trees to protect a residence or vacant land from thieves. The bottles draw and then trap wayward spirits inside the bottles. Our ancestors can safely be used to scare off wrongdoing. Bottle trees are also considered a new home for departed love one where we visit and be close to them
There is little doubt the custom of guarding yards and household for all evil with branches decked with glass vessels came form Kongo and culturally related territory in Central Africa. It arrived in memories of blacks from the Kongo via New Orleans, Charleston and the West Indies."
In my novel my protagonist Grace learns that her eccentric, but spiritually powerful aunts Casmil and Peaches have erected a whole forest of bottle trees to protect her. Below is that scene from the novel :"We also put up a grove of bottle trees at the back of the property,” said Casmil.
“Bottle trees?” That turned me around to see if they were kidding, but the calm expressions on their faces told me that kidding lived in a whole different universe of thought.
“You know what a bottle tree is,” Casmil asserted.
She was right. I had seen pictures of the trees from the 1930s in a book. Their upward growing limbs were stripped of leaves, and each branch ended in an empty blue or green bottle. These trees were thought to protect a person’s home, the gleam of the glass capturing and disempowering evil forces and troubled spirits. When out of curiosity I had checked out bottle trees on the Internet, I found that most people used artificial versions of them only as yard art. I had never seen bottle trees erected as a “visual prayer for protection.”
“Ok, what are you protecting yourselves from?” I put the question out like bread and waited for the meat that would make it a meaningful sandwich.
“You,” Peaches corrected. “We’re protecting you.”
Bottles trees as yard art are now extremely popular. Even when shorn of there original spiritual meaning they are for me a beautiful additions to the landscape. At one time I had hoped to built a bottle tree and maybe when I have more time I still will. Maybe I'll build myself a whole forest of them to honor the ancestors.
THE OFFICIAL ACT OF GRACE NOVEL CAKE. A GIFT FROM MY SISTER, DELPHIA. 
Pre-heat oven to 320 degrees
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings lying about, and sometimes, for no reason whatever, she went swooping about like a great wind and hustled them away in cupboards. She called this "tidying up," and the playthings all hated it, especially the tin ones. The Rabbit didn't mind it so much, for wherever he was thrown he came down soft.
One evening, when the Boy was going to bed, he couldn't find the china dog that always slept with him. Nana was in a hurry, and it was too much trouble to hunt for china dogs at bedtime, so she simply looked about her, and seeing that the toy cupboard door stood open, she made a swoop.
"Here," she said, "take your old Bunny! He'll do to sleep with you!" And she dragged the Rabbit out by one ear, and put him into the Boy's arms.
That night, and for many nights after, the Velveteen Rabbit slept in the Boy's bed. At first he found it rather uncomfortable, for the Boy hugged him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on him, and sometimes he pushed him so far under the pillow that the Rabbit could scarcely breathe. And he missed, too, those long moonlight hours in the nursery, when all the house was silent, and his talks with the Skin Horse. But very soon he grew to like it, for the Boy used to talk to him, and made nice tunnels for him under the bedclothes that he said were like the burrows the real rabbits lived in. And they had splendid games together, in whispers, when Nana had gone away to her supper and left the night-light burning on the mantelpiece. And when the Boy dropped off to sleep, the Rabbit would snuggle down close under his little warm chin and dream, with the Boy's hands clasped close round him all night long.
And so time went on, and the little Rabbit was very happy–so happy that he never noticed how his beautiful velveteen fur was getting shabbier and shabbier, and his tail becoming unsewn, and all the pink rubbed off his nose where the Boy had kissed him.
( To be continued)
