Signs of Abundance at OUR House by Pamela Francis

This month’s full moon at Aries – Libra marks “the Harvest”.  It’s a time of plenty… a time of abundance.  Whenever I hear the word “harvest” I always get images of going out and gathering up all the bounty that has been building over time.  My arms become the cornucopia, with all the met goals and their expected gifts spilling out onto the table that is my gratitude. So I thought I’d kick off with an anecdote about abundance and how that concept has evolved for me over the years.

When I first moved to L.A. from NY in the early 90’s my roommate and I struggled to catch up to and maintain the pace alongside the status quo.  Having relied upon New York City’s more than adequate mass transit system all our young lives, neither of us had a car at first in California, nor were we used to or prepared for what it meant to be living in a car culture: in$urance, regi$tration fees, tire$, ga$, oil change$, parking meter$, parking ticket$$$, the car wa$h, etc., etc.  In those early days of catching rides from friends — and in many cases sadly staying home, we dreamed of one day owning and driving the cars of our desires.  For him it was an NSX, the low-slung sex machine his buddy Blair Underwood (LA Law) was driving.  For me,  it was the Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible — forest green, please. Our impressions of what it meant to be living the life of abundance were almost totally fueled by what our entertainment industry friends were able to experience at any given moment.  So, for instance, when we visited “Johnny Fever”‘s plush pad one sun-soaked afternoon, it was the crystal blue, Hollywood hills-top swimming pool and all that beautiful Spanish tile-work throughout Howard (WKRP in Cincinnati) Hesseman’s  home that spelled abundance for us.  When we hit up Duane (All of Us) Martin’s it was the Victoria’s Secret-styled boutique that was wife Tisha (My Wife and Kids) Campbell’s underwear closet alone.  After a jaunt to Malcolm Jamal Warner’s enclave in the Sherman Oaks hills my roomie came away with, “wow… did you see how many pairs of white socks he had…!”

Twenty years and two kids later I still think about that with so much fondness.  The way blessed abundance can sometimes simply come down to an unopened 10-pack of white gym socks.  Or a ruler’s length box of rechargeable Duracells in a household full of electronics.

My five-year-old just started kindergarten last month and Grandma kindly bestowed us with the bounty of her recent online shopping spree.  We gasped with glee as scads of red polo shirts and khaki pants began to arrive almost daily at our house for Junie’s first day of school.  As I opened the boxes, removed the size 5 little items from their plastic packaging and reached for hangers to place them gratefully in the closet, I got the urge to fling them into the air and watch them settle where they may like that infamous scene in 1974’s The Great Gatsby.  My writing partner roomie and I had also dreamed of doing a remake of that classic scene — decades before Leo DiCaprio (who would have been 19) and Carey Mulligan (who would have been all of 9!) inked the deal to star in same.  That scene where Robert Redford and Mia Farrow revel in the pure joy of so many shirts and ties, and he goes “I’ve got a man in London… buys me all my clothes…”  We loved the part where Mia Farrow’s character grows tenderly sad as her voice trembles, “I’ve never seen such beautiful clothes before…”

“Oh my god, we’re going to do a remake of this scene,” we vowed, guffawing like fools.  It’s going to be called “The Blassics” (black version of the classics).  And in our version he’s gonna go… “I’ve got a man in Brooklyn… buys me all my dope gear.  Kangols and Timberlands…  Karl Kanis and Doc Martens…”  And she’s gonna coo, “I’ve never seen such dope gear before…!”  Aaaah dreams of the 90’s….

As a mother of  two growing boys living an almost constant demand to keep everything stocked to the gills, (gym socks, long johns, boxer briefs, cereal bars, double AAs, game controllers, box tops…) all I can say is… “I’ve got a mom in Brooklyn…” ; )

Tags: parenting as a later mom