Wildflowers and Present Tenses: A Memoir, Real and Imagined

By Patricia Lucia and Bridget Van Otteren

Wildflowers and Present Tenses is the first book in a series of three by Patricia Lucia. Lucia presents the stories in her memoir with a magical twist, creating a Crone narrator, her future self, who tells these stories by a fire to an audience of fairies who gulp up the libation the Crone has left out for them and throw the petals fro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Noble Light Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780578779287

Patricia Lucia

Patricia Lucia, a Massachusetts native, is an English teacher, writer and former business owner. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from City College of New York where she also earned a New York Times Fellowship for Creative Writing. After moving to Florida shortly after 9/11, she operated her own scratch kitchen cafe for ten years, and created dozens of signature dishes including a product line. "Wildflowers and Wooden Spoons", the second book in this series (2021), will feature recipes from her cafe and kitchen magic stories.

Book preview

Wildflowers

and Present Tenses

A Memoir

Real and Imagined

Patricia Lucia

NOBLE LIGHT PRESS

The events and conversations in this book have been set down to the best of the author’s ability, although some names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Some parts have been fictionalized to align with the author’s imagination and her manifestation of future tenses.

Copyright © 2020 By Patricia Lucia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

First Edition November 2020

Illustrations copyright © 2020 Bridget Van Otteren

Cover Illustration by Bridget Van Otteren

Author’s photo by Kelly O’Brian of Coastal Click Photography

Illustrator’s photo by Ashley Rodrigues

ISBN 9780578779270 (hardcover)

ISBN 9780578779287 (ebook)

First hardcover Edition November 2020

Noble Light Press

noblelightpress.com

What People are Saying about

Wildflowers and Present Tenses

Patricia Lucia's debut collection of short stories, Wildflowers and Present Tenses is an anthology of unfeigned adventures that sparkle with a rare and distinct magical element of intimacy; the author has invited us into the heart of her home, traveling through a path of wildflowers, to sit by a crackling hearth. Embodying the archetypal character of The Wild Crone, she casts true life events , cleverly crafted into the embers, as each tale unfolds in front of an audience of playful misfit fairies. The result is a raw, quintessentially human and wildly engaging romp through a thoroughly authentic, courageous woman's life. Every seed a story, sown together with insightful quotes and whimsical art.

From navigating through struggles with body image in Weighty Matters to first kisses, She Was Always a Gentleman and twin flames Her. Patricia Lucia shares her journey and deftly makes us feel like we are riding along beside her. In Torches she writes about Politics and Aliens (having met Betty Hill, whose 1961 abduction, along with her husband Barney, stirred worldwide interest) when she innocently knocked on her front door while canvassing for a politician. She recounts memories of living in NYC on 911 in Standing Memory, reflects on writing her first short story when her father died in Mother's Day, speaks of the innocence of children in Trusted and Treacherous Adults, engages with the many sides of voodoo priestess, Miss Cleo, in Coffee With Cleo and Company and more.

I recall reading a passage once, If a novel is like lighting up a room using all the house lights, then a short story is like using a flashlight to illuminate a hidden corner. Wildflowers and Present Tenses is ablaze.

Debra Dipiero, Florida

Wildflowers and Present tenses is a book that takes us through a journey of emotions. We see, taste, smell and feel every story as if we are one of the fairies sitting by the fire watching each story unfold. When I got to the end of the book I wanted more stories to magically appear. I am hoping for a second book to take me back again into the land of fairies and crones.

Robin West, Arizona

Reading Wildflowers and Present Tenses invokes all of the senses and emotions. Lucia invites us to smell the burning embers of the fire and feel the flower petals between our fingers. I sometimes felt like I was peeping through windows of the most intimate chapters of her life. Other times, I became her, and felt the crashing waves of love lost and moments of self awareness. It felt as if Lucia was casting little spells on my soul. A real treasure!

Julie Seaver, CEO, Compass LGBTQ Center, Florida

The Crone narrator in Wildflowers and Present Tenses embodies truth and self love while telling stories of generational longing. The Crone is a time traveler who takes us on a journey to the dark places of her past then delivers us again to the fire side, weaving her love, her uniqueness, her courage and her magic between her past and present tenses. In the end, it is a journey of healing that brings the reader to the fires edge among the fairies, sharing libation, laughter and tears. Wildflowers and Present Tenses is a courageous story of love, loss and wisdom.

Taylor Callahan, Tennessee

To (Her)

and all the wild women whose stories

have mingled with mine

and

to the woman

who calls to me

from the threshold

Table of Contents

Prologue: A Crone by the Fire

Weighty Matters

Like Water

She Was Always a Gentleman

Mother’s Day

Tasting the Ocean

Torches

Taina

Standing Memory

(Her)

Coffee with Cleo and Company

The Centripetal Velocity of Jessica Su

Trusted and Treacherous Adults

Dharma

Cultivating Courage

Epilogue: The Crone goes to bed

Acknowledgements

Prologue

A Crone by the Fire

The Crone sits by the fire, poking a log and watching the embers fly into the night. Fairies and spirits have joined her. Wildflowers, libation, and sprigs of thyme rest on the log stools next to her. Offerings for her guests. She has emerged from the long dreams of winter with new inspiration, new stories and the desire to release her past tenses.

She will tell her stories to the fire - an ancient alchemy - and to the fairies who have always been her audience.

The voice in these stories, she says, is the voice of my younger, less wild self.

The fairies nod, patiently. Yes, yes, they whisper, we know.

A woman who did not believe she was magical, but held out for magical possibilities, the Crone continues, who believed any magic in her life came from lovers and friends or spirit guides. A woman who feared her wild spirit - part fairy, part pixie - even as others recognized it or fell in love with her forested interior.

Yes! The fairies whisper, Forested!

The Crone says, These are my past tenses.

The fairies tilt their heads. Tenses?

Stories are etched into the lines across the Crone’s forehead. Her passion has filled the grooves between her brows. Her green eyes hold mystery between the crows feet that stretch out from their playful gaze. The dirt from her garden is under her fingernails and on the bottom of her feet. She has been digging and dancing. Wild, colorful flowers grow in her garden next to the tomatoes and butternut for her beloved. Rosemary for the herbed bread she bakes in the morning. Thyme for the fairies. Her pixie smile pokes at her own magic.

She has always moved about the world in other-worldly ways. Awkward in ordinary places. Out of place where she was supposed to belong. Even as a child, everything seemed peculiar. Clothes for little girls made no sense. Patent Leather was such an odd material for shoes, she muses, and lace on ankle socks. Her sisters’ excitement about dolls confused her. She preferred solitary adventures in the woods, climbing trees to the very top to see as far as she could or digging for hidden treasures. The Crone smiles and sighs at the memory. The world of her imagination and the freedom of the forest had always felt more like home. But one cannot live there forever, and so the awkward child grew into a restless adult.

She had wandered from place to place, lover to lover, purpose to purpose, looking for home. A reluctant gypsy. She would rather have stayed put somewhere, found her true beloved and baked bread for the rest of their lives. But her wild and restless spirit tugged and pulled, reminding her that she had stories to write. Stories she needed to live into and out of again before pen could meet paper.

The Crone sits quietly in her present tense. She has lived into new stories not yet written. For now, the fire burns and the fairies wait for the stories tucked into the folds of her poncho. A poncho made many years ago from a colorful table cloth, adorned with mother of pearl, silver beads, carnelian, turquoise and shungite, sewn into the cloth with younger hands. The poncho holds the smoke of all the fires she has tended and the gazes of fairies and spirits gathered around them.

The Crone knows her audience is moved by the untamed and eccentric, the odd and courageously weird. She knows better than to expect applause. If a story pleases the fairies, they will weep. Then, they will find another fire and another audience eager to weep, and retell it. Human stories are their favorite genre.

The Crone stokes the fire as if to make sure it is listening and to catch a glimpse of her audience in its flickering glow. She puts a log on the embers, sips from her paper cup and takes the first story from a fold in her poncho...

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If I was a flower at all, I was a wildflower growing in forests and on the edges of cliffs, in the company of misfit fairies.

I didn’t feel good about my body until I was beyond my seductive years, says the Crone. The fire twinkles in her eyes and her smile has the swagger of a young woman buying a drink for some beautiful sirene at a tiki bar. That’s when I finally fell in love with the right woman and had the most satisfying intimacy of my life. She laughs and throws the contents of her cup into the fire. An offering. The fire leaps with blue and green flames then settles. The fairies giggle.

The story of my body begins with breast milk...

Weighty Matters

I went on my first diet when I was two months old. Our family doctor, concerned

about my rapid weight gain, instructed my mother to replace breast milk with skim milk. I don’t think I ever got over that trauma.

He thought I was being dishonest with him, my mother said when retelling the story, because you kept gaining weight even on skim milk. Imagine! A diet failure at six months old.

This was not my first tussle with a doctor. The time of my arrival into the world was a sticking point between the delivery doctor and I. Apparently, I had dismissed his pivotal role in my arrival and was on my way without him. At the time, the protocol for handling a baby traveling over the speed limit through the birth canal was to set up a road block by crossing the poor mother’s legs. That practice, just like the skim milk for breast milk switch, is no longer. I have often wondered how that roadblock affected me.

I was a good baby in general, entertaining myself for hours in my crib, quietly playing with stuffed animals and listening to my own sounds. But if my older sister took one of my beloved stuffed animals, I turned red and banged my head on the floor of my crib. My mother was so concerned I might hurt myself with the head banging that she mentioned it to our family doctor.

She’ll stop if she hurts herself, he assured her.

I