Influences

Fairy tales and Disney movies alike are full of stories about the influence of our ancestors.  Many spiritual traditions today suggest when seeking our unique purpose or higher calling that we look to where we came from to know why we’re here. And in my case it’s so true.

The Farmer - Adam Peacock

I am the granddaughter of a Farmer, a Teacher, a Doctor, and an Artist.  That their DNA is encoded within me is something I’m aware of each and every day.  And although only one, The Teacher, lived long enough for me to really get to know her I feel the influence and presence of all of them from time to time.  In spite of the migraine headaches, high cholesterol, and heart disease that are also encoded there (thank goodness for what we know now that they didn’t) it’s a rich legacy.  And one that certainly validates my path.

Brilliant Father always tells me “my people were all dirt farmers.”  His father Adam Jesse Peacock was a farmer.  He was also an agricultural extension agent who helped other farmers and descendant of a long line of ministers.  So the fact that I have always had a deep spiritual nature and regard for and love of the land makes sense.

I actually surprised Brilliant Father not long ago after tracing our genealogy back several hundred years.  Although she surely didn’t know it his country-girl grandmother, Simeon Marius Sumrall Peacock was actually the descendant of several knights, a handful of English Ladies, two Lord Esquires, and a Lord Mayor of London!  So I think it’s odd how people sometimes make snap judgements based on ”lineage” or occupation.

The Teacher - Vera Raines Peacock

Brillant Father’s mother Vera Raines Peacock was a teacher.  She began in a one room school in Arkansas as a 17 year old, her students not much younger than she was.  And she taught right up to her retirement forty-plus years later.  She taught learning disabled children and sewed clothes for me, my brother, and cousins.  Her life was always about teaching young people.

Vera was also a quite determined gardener.  She cultivated cuttings and shared bulbs with us each season.  Brilliant Father and I both still have plants and flowers on our small farms that came from things his mother shared with us.

I was actually pregnant with my third child when my grandmother Peacock died.  Long before she was old enough to have heard stories others might tell of my grandmother Dazzling Daughter has talked about the things her Mimi taught her – pre-incarnation, I can only assume.  They are always uncannily appropriate to what I know my grandmother would say or do.

The Doctor - Charles W. Reid

Beautiful Mother’s family is the source of a lot of my intuitive gifts.  Her father Charles Willard Reid was a physician in a moderate-sized Arkansas town.  He was so gifted as a doctor and healer that many who knew him claimed to feel better just being in his presence.  In the region around where they lived other doctors sometimes brought their worst undiagnosed cases to my grandfather.  My mother recalls that he seemed to have the ability to simply “know” what was wrong with people who were suffering.

I still have a collection of dolls that my grandfather Reid kept in his office for children to play with.  And although he died when I was in elementary school I’ve benefited more than once from mid-crisis “energetic visits” from him when he offered unlikely remedies for a stubborn or worrisome issue I might be having a problem with.  One of these in particular brought giggles from my aunt when I recounted the story, as she recalled him giving her the very same remedy when he was alive.

Frances Geraldine Williams Reid was a force of nature.  My mother’s mother was a fiery redhead and crack marksman who often bagged the largest deer on the family’s frequent hunting trips.  The granddaughter of a lumber baron whose mill created the floors for a post WWII renovation of the White House, she was also a painter and passionate gardener.  Geraldine once drove all the way to Tyler, Texas from her home in Arkansas to buy dozens of rose bushes for her gardens directly from the rose farmers there.

The Artist - Geraldine Williams Reid

My grandmother Reid also had a powerful intuition that could intimidate.  When pregnant with my mother’s little sisters, twins, she so hated the doctor on call that she vowed to wait to go into labor until her regular physician returned.  And she did just that.  Hearing this story about her always validated my own feelings about a woman owning her childbirth experience.  In our “disease care” system today too many do not.

If not a formal “artist” in the simplest sense of the word, my grandmother Reid certainly displayed the same drive to live a “hand-crafted life” – one of her own design - that I always have.   Though she died while I was still in elementary school I seem to share another “drive” with her.  I have to drive an hour over to Tyler, Texas myself for the antique rose bushes I adore and just can’t find in my hometown!

In looking at all of my beloved grandparents and how they’ve contributed to who I am it feels completely natural that my calling – one I’ve held to myself for many, many years - is to one day develop a special kind of farm…a center of healing and teaching about scientific advancements in health, intuition, and the arts.

With influences like these, how could I not?