CLOVER

The Color Purple

As of this moment I'm reflecting on when I went back to "Sweet Home Alabama" on my Ancestral Journey shortly after my Parents passed to do my Documentary. I couldn't help but think of this PHOTO up above........

It was around this time of year, actually in October I went on my Sankofa for Granddaddy Ike and anything else about my Family History I could find. 

Over the few days I was there to film and research. I can remember in the evenings I would walk around Aunt Sallie Bea's driveway and walk to the end just so I could get a look up and down the road. 

Can you close your eyes and imagine with me for a moment?

 Her white house that use to have a dirt road going up the drive which is now paved. Through her yard, I can see my Aunt Nettie's house from her backyard, but when I go out to the end of the drive I can see all this Purple CLOVER along the road which both of them live on. Just swaying in the wind. That photo is the view I saw all day long coming and going on that road.

I remember when I walked back to the house and I asked "Aunt Sall" what's those purple flowers out there by the road called?" what flowers, True Ann!?  Those.....I went back out and walked across the road and grabbed a few. These Aunt Sall, "what are these flowers called"? Laughing enthusiastically, she said in her Southern voice, those Ain't nothing but weeds grown up out there.

Ohhh!

Well, to me they weren't weeds, they were the prettiest flowers I had seen in a long while. I've seen them at different points in my Life. Faint loving memories.   

I felt like that CLOVER on the side of the road. It all swayed in one direction as the wind blew or a car went or came. It swayed from side to side. 

CLOVER has always been with me as a baby, a child in the yard, or the time I was loved-lorned over a boy at 16. Clover was Constant.

CLOVER has many meanings, the one of many that I found that spoke to my Life was: Living a life of ease, comfort and prosperity.

Clover 

Just in a short time to me, that doesn't seem so long ago when I was there in Alabama and so much has changed. Aunt Sallie Bea and Aunt Nettie aren't there now. They are with their children. 

CLOVER greeted me when I woke. It wrapped me up in the evenings. CLOVER was part of my winding down, a time of reflection. It was like a blanket of comfort. It rocked me. It soothed me. 

Are my days gone when I could just sit by the way side on either one of my Auntie's land, and look out over the road for that CLOVER? 



This is a memory that must stay with me.

That is what CLOVER will always be for me. No matter where I am and when I see CLOVER. 

That sweet looking CLOVER from Looking out on that old dusty road, it will always be COMFORT.

Next time I'm Down Home. I'll save some of that Clover just for Me...

What's the CLOVER in your Life?

As for me.....

That's what the "Color Purple of Clover" does for me.........

Me with my "Clover" age 3.

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