I’m beginning at the ending today, with a card/collage that holds deep personal meaning …

It grew out of this cloth, Land of Flood and Drought, which I deeply love …

Having drawn the Five of Cups, it struck me that the cloth had five strips of blue documenting the rainfall during the year 2015. As I went through the blog, I found five images that fit alongside the strips of blue.

A FEMA map of the floodplain behind our Hill Country house …

The bridge over the Blanco River that was overtopped by the Memorial Day flood …

A close-up of the stitching on the Land of Flood and Drought cloth …

The prayer flag I stitched following the Halloween Flood that same year …

And the cloth stranded high in a tree above the river, witness to the peak floodstage …

Five for the water that brought such unimaginable sadness … until now, the time of Covid-19.

• 78 Degrees: Fives concern struggle and pain … the emotional reaction to loss … the river represents the flow of sorrow, but the bridge symbolizes consciousness and determination … it leads from the loss of the past to the new beginnings of the future
• Kitchen Table Tarot: walk respectfully away from the past … drink in the present … walk so carefully toward your precious future
• The Creative Tarot: there’s something still left, you just need to turn around with clear eyes and see it … part of the process, however, is to mourn the loss

Addendum:

Dee’s comment reminded me there is more to the Five of Cups that I meant to convey …

From Kitchen Table Tarot:

The person is staring intently at the three cups that have spilled and is completely ignoring the two cups behind them.

Imagine the person crying until their eyelids are swollen. Taking a few deep, shuddering breaths … the shoulders go back. They’ve probably got the whiffles (when you cry so hard you can’t catch your breath) and won’t be able to stop shaking for a bit.

They turn around and nearly walk into the full cups behind them. They pick those up, drink deeply from one, and then walk away toward that bridge in the background, carrying the other so carefully, to avoid spilling a drop.

This was the time of year when I most loved walking the land, greeting each wildflower by name, welcoming them back. How glad I am that I took my iPhone with me, capturing fleeting moments in pixels, never imagining the dislocation and darkness to come.

• 78 Degrees: after the storm, peace … light coming out of darkness … for the moment, the journey can wait
• Kitchen Table Tarot: everything has changed … what you need is a light that will fill your soul and shine on you so gently … it’s okay to put the sadness down for a minute and focus on the beautiful things around us … relax and stop anticipating trauma
• The Creative Tarot: [this is] a card of healing … you are exactly where you should be and doing exactly what you should be doing

I wandered through the Texas: Wildflowers links on the blog, looking for flowers with five petals, my idea of what stars look like. Except that the Smith-Waite card has eight-pointed stars …

So eight-petalled Zexmenia then …

and beyond that, seven more five-petalled flowers to attend to it. No surprise that I found exactly that many.

Along the way I decided on a dewberry background, remembering how those walks included picking berries, each one a gift of the land …

along with this patch of memory …

The original layout looked too contrived …

Fortunately, a quick fishing expedition in the scrap box yielded the bits I needed …

Light for the darkness.

I have been fortunate beyond measure … beginning with a comfortable upper-middle class upbringing on Long Island … then on to college in Williamsburg, Virginia, where I met Don on a blind-date at the tender age of 18 … we married in 1977 and had two daughters, Meg in 1982 and Meliss in 1986 … along the way we became educators, which is to say we spent our careers learning … our daughters in turn married two great guys, Paul and Jake, in 2008 … between them we were graced with granddaughters Logan, Parker and Ellis and grandsons Jackson, Griffin, and Jace … we also welcomed family-by-choice into our lives, Barb and Ray, Heather and Keith being chief among them … and we have loved every home we’ve lived in, however short or long the time spent, from mountains to beach and back again.

So this card then …

• 78 Degrees: The Ace of Cups means happiness and love, a gift of joy … love, and ultimately life, cannot be seized, but only accepted
• Kitchen Table Tarot: this is the heart of the Tarot, overflowing with bounty and blessings
• The Creative Tarot: this card represents the soul … a higher version of yourself

In these days of COVID-19, I feel deep gratitude for all the family and friends who inspire me to try to be my best self, in real life and in the ether.

Truly, I have been dealt the best of hands …

and hope that all shall be well.