Summer: Beauty and Resilience

When my late husband, Ken Wilson, and I first began an online correspondence in 1999, he had his own domain and his personalized email address: ken@sunflower7041. So until we actually met, I naturally envisioned that he favored sunflowers. Gleefully, I mailed him a gift of a giant potted plastic sunflower, motion activated so that when anybody strolled by the plant would churn out a player piano version of "You Are My Sunshine."

Later I learned that Ken preferred Asian lilies. He'd only selected the domain name because his eye fell on a calendar print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers while he'd been filling out the online application. But, he confessed, that song was one of the only two he knew all the lyrics to. I wasn't surprised to learn from this man who loved Western movies and TV shows that the second tune turned out to be the theme from Paladin.

Nevertheless, I still think of Ken when I see a sunflower. Therefore I'm happy that Tending Your Inner Garden, just in time for what would have been Ken's 78th birthday on June 23, has announced the publication of the third of its series of season books. I love the title: Summer: Women's Wrings for the Season of Beauty and Resilience.
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My story in this book is about attending my first husband's memorial service in 2005. The allusion to me is in the book description below:

We’re proud to announce Summer: Women’s Writings for the Season of Beauty and Resilience. It’s the third of our four-book series, featuring women writers from around the world as they reflect on the meaning of the seasons in their inner life.

Summer blesses us with both gifts and challenges: Riotous color and parched grassland. Thunderous storms and blissful sunny days. Hot, buggy evenings and cool early mornings. Kaleidoscope-like butterflies and ravenous locusts. Most of us welcome summer if for no other reason than it surprises us year after year.

Summer: Women’s Writings for the Season of Beauty and Resilience will delight you with the adventures it offers and the memories it evokes. Open your heart to a grandmother who recalls her own summer barefoot childhood as she shares a beach adventure with her granddaughter. Empathize with the resilience of a gardener who fought the bugs and worms in her garden by learning to work with nature, rather than resist it. Listen to the warm remembrances of an ex-wife who decides to share stories only she knows at her former husband’s funeral.

“Now is the season to call back your heart,” Celeste Snowber tells us in “Bodypsalm for Playing.” This volume will help you do so by evoking feelings associated with both storms and resilience, beauty and mindfulness. Then take pen and paper and use the journaling questions at the end of the book to capture your own memories of summer.

My stories are in the earlier Winter and Spring volumes, as well. All three of these inspirational books for women are available on an introductory special right now, $14.95, through the online bookstore:

http://tendingyourinnergarden.com/bookstore/

Here's a version of You Are My Sunshine from a 1969 album featuring the unlikely duo of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

This one's for you, Kenny D. You're still my sunshine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SKjL5dIb0