Jardin De Las Mujeres Sabias

That was the name on the sign this time.  Many times the name was different.  Once it was El Jardin de Serpente.  Another time it was the place of the Dragon's Blood.  I could seldom find it in the same place twice but I didn't come often.  I found it for the first time when I was 17 years old.  I was walking down Broadway having ditched school for the day.  I had hitched the 45 miles down to this end of Denver and was blissfully assured no one knew me.  They weren't related to either my mother or my father and they weren't in a hurry to report my whereabouts to anyone.  I had a backpack stuffed with thrift store and pawn shop treasures when I saw the tiny dark windows glimmering with candlelight.

It was early afternoon and sunny outside.  The shop seemed to produce it's own darkness, not a scary darkness, more a warm comforting thing.  When the door opened sunlight came only as far as the sill and then stayed out side and waited.  There were bells and tinkling sounds as the door pushed open stiffly.  The two little women knitting behind the counter looked up and nodded then went back to their work.  The oldest one came to the door of the back room and looked out.  She came out wiping her hands on her apron.  "Mi llama es Madre Maria ," she told me while I brought out my high school Spanish and informed her my name was Linda.

 " Linda es bonita," She laughed, I think now at my horrible mix of Castilian lisp and German accent layered over it.  One of the knitters had gotten up and brought over cups of tea.  It smelled nasty and I was to learn over the decades very few of the teas tasted any better than they smelled.  Each one had it's very own virtue, one gave health, another wisdom, and one they made for me often over the years carried patience in it's herbal blend.  That first day they gave me a tea for amour and laughed like young girls.

The shop had bundles of herbs hanging from the wooden ceiling racks.  The fragile ones hung upside down with cheesecloth bags tied to the stems around the flower heads.  Bottles of ground herbs lined shelves shaded from the meager light coming through windows crammed with little statues of the Virgin next to Santeria regalia and Voodoo pieces.  The walls were covered with black velvet pictures of Every Saint in the Catholic Calendar.  The floors were crowded with wooden and statuary representations of the Santos.  Sols were on the wall next to bundles of snakeskin.  Damiana and YlingYling sat on shelves with bottles and bags of every known or alleged aphrodisiac in the natural/unnatural world.  

Shelves in the darkest corners held black candles made of God only knows what materials.   Lucky Money Oil in tiny bottles stood next to Gypsy Love Oil and St. John's Wort.  Holy Water and Holy Oil were next to the Gypsy Neighbor Curse.  Every time I ever found the shop it was different.  The inventory changed rapidly.  I saw white carved witch knives and sacrifice knives carves in lacy details.  Lockets and rings that held herbs, curses and blessings made of stone that glowed strange colors were replaced by tiny dolls made in Jamaica and Top Hatted Men made on small islands in the Caribbean.  

For years I would have no need for the shop, the knowledge of the wise women, the strength involved in knowing they approved of me, of my path, my choices.  Then one day my herbal stores would be low in goods that could only be replaced by them I must find the store again. My life forces would be so low, so dim only one of their heinous teas could help me make it through yet another test of strength.  When my husband left us a week before my son's first skull surgery I went looking for them.  I took my son and gave him a sip of the bitter tea.  He made it through both operations with so much stacked against him.  I know the teas helped both of us.

When I gave love up in my life and dedicated myself back to the goddess I found the store again, miles from the last location.  One of the old women came out of an alley and pulled me into a doorway that hardly showed.  When I began the crone stage of my life I realized that I was close to the age of the women who had been in the shop for forty years of my life.  I wondered if they were even the same women, all the Marias, Rosas and Delphinas over the years, were their faces different?  Where did these women come from and why did they come into my life?  Why was I blessed to have their help, their herbs and their knowledge all these years?  I may never know and every time I look for them I'm not sure they'll be there.  I know each time I try to soak in all the smells, sounds, textures and feelings I can.