The Secret Garden.....

is, of course, the name of a wonderful children's book for literary-minded children and their parents who never read it as a kid. During my frenzy of writing book reviews on Amazon.com equaled only by my frenzy of blogging, which is somewhat abating, I titled the book An Abiding Classic.

My sister Donna and I who share extreme aesthetic sensibilities about nature, trees, tulips, calling birds, croaking frogs, croaking friends, blue skies dancing with clouds, rainbow banners sailing on porches, bushels of bleeding heart flowers floating in cascades in my backyard by leaf-covered deck, and more bleeding hearts I transplanted anywhere I could dig a deep enough hole, the two of us went to Pennypack Trust's Annual Native Plant Sale.

After we came home with a modest amount of purchases, I showed Donna a printout of an email sent to me by Bob Gordon, a psychoanalyst who will be featured in this issue of the Compass.

Psychotherapy, he wrote me, increases one's mental capacity.

I'd never heard of this concept before. He listed specific traits that are enhanced by therapy including:

Capacity for Learning from Experience
Capacity for Healthy Relationships
Quality of Confidence and Self-Regard
Capacity to Experience, Regulate and Communicate Emotions
Capacity to Use More Healthy Defense Mechanisms (such as anticipation and humor instead of denial)
Self-Observing Capacities
Capacity for Internal Standards and Ideals

I waved the printout at Donna. Indeed, I said, I was helped myself during six months of psychoanalysis by a woman named Beth Lindsey (o where art thou, Beth?) so that now, at last, I fancy myself a totally independent woman. My feeling of freedom is immense. At this very moment, I can do whatever I choose. I can turn on my music - look, I have just risen from my desk chair, and put on some Bad Plus - and prior to that I chose to go with Scott on a breathtakingly beautiful nature walk on the high hill overlooking the horse farm only five minutes away from home.

This is freedom: to freely choose your destiny, your weekend destiny of the great outdoors from whence we came when we crawled from the water onto dry land shaking off our reptilian bodies and evolving into men and women and hobbits over a million years ago.

Donna and I drove down the narrow drive of The Lord's New Church in Huntingdon Valley. How I love being a tour guide. I explained to her that the Swedenborgians have about three sects and this is one of them. This land has a European feel to it, vast green meadows, ancient-looking buildings, and brick walkways or cobblestones leading into the chapels and church offices and homes of the apostles. Not a soul but ourselves were there.

When I drove up to one of the buildings I said:

A friend of mine took me to an NA meeting here.

What? said Donna.

Yeah, a wealthy woman with bipolar disorder who used cocaine a couple times a week. She told me she could go off anytime she wanted.

They all say that, said Donna.

Yeah, I said. I told her that. I said to her, So, if you can go off how come you haven't deleted the phone no. of your drug dealer from your cell phone?

The woman was married, has a swimming pool in her backyard, and a six year old son. She's a great mom and goes up into the bathroom to snort. It was a secret from her husband.

I went over her house once or twice and she showed me her drug paraphernalia. She lived a secret life. Maybe it wasn't right of me but I confronted her a couple of times, taunting her with the words I can stop any time I want, until she began going to NA meetings.

When last I heard she's been off the stuff a year. But, baby, it was real real hard. But she worked the 12 Steps. Sure, she lapsed a little bit, but finally she caught on. "Okay, I wanna use, lemme call someone."

So Donna sees a sign "Chapel." We park the car, leave the keys in, and ascend the stone steps to see what the chapel looks like. Foliage covers everything. Mostly purple wisteria and lots of pine trees. We climb the stone steps until a magnificent aged building comes into view. It has pillars and balustrades and windows and we can't believe how beautiful it is.

We circle around it, try the doors, but everything is locked. No one is about. We're on vast acres of bright green lawns sprinkled with dandelions coming into bloom or releasing their puffs into the air.

"Somebody's in the garden," Donna said.

From where we were we could only see a pair of pants moving along. A groundskeeper perhaps?

"Hello!" I called. "Beautiful day today."

"Yes," said a cheerful voice. "You can let yourself in at the gate."

Sure enough, a green gate hung nearby and we let ourselves in. A small and magnificent garden lay before us, every spot filled with living green verdure, bordered by fragrant purple wisteria, white dogwood, dark pine trees.

Donna sat on a bench, and I, who never sit, cause that's all I do when I work at home, sit at my computer, stood nearby and we all introduced ourselves. Like us, Ilene lives near by and is a supreme nature lover. In fact she's an educator at a local nature center.

I never carry a watch preferring to be in blissful denial about the inevitable passing of time, preferring to trust my instincts about when it's time to leave.

After we'd said goodbye to Ilene (I memorized her unusual last name and told her I'd give her a call), I plucked some sweet-smelling wisteria from the vine and some pink dogwood off a tree and carried them home. They sit now on my kitchen windowsill arcing gently in a small Chinese vase filled to the brim with water. The wisteria will be dead in two days just like the lilac I picked from a friend's sideyard has lost its luster on my living room windowsill.

When we got back to my house, Donna saw one of my Oklahoma remembrances I brought back from Mike's funeral, a vivid picture of colorful aerial balloons floating in the Oklahoma skies.

"Okla-homa where the wind comes whispering down the plains," she sang.

"Oh," I said. "I forgot. I wanted to do a blog about that."

After "Daddy" died, Donna had a dream. She and Daddy were reunited in a grassy field along with the rest of our huge family - Ruth Donna Ellen Lynn Amy David and Mommy.

We were all singing at the top of our lungs Oklahoma where the wind comes whistling down the plains.

Our Daddy was with us once again. O how we loved that man.