Forget-Me-Nots

Birch and Pine Whisper His Name - A Tribute to Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Chapter 63

RETURN TO MUSKOKA

Looking out the window of my front parlour I see tall trees tossing in sunlight, and verdant grass. Many of the houses in our part of Gravenhurst are simple white clapboard, like ours, set back from the street, without a fence to separate one lawn from another. After many rootless years I appreciate this parklike setting, mid-way between the Equator and the North Pole.

Sometime in the 1880s this house began its existence as a rough cabin on the Sand Barrens at the edge of The Common, once a thick forest. A few towering trees remain to line our streets and preside over our gardens. Five minutes’ walk west along Winewood Avenue will take us to Lookout Park and its playground for grandchildren.

Just up an incline, granite cliffs overlook Lake Muskoka and its harbour for the steamship RMS “Segwun”. From any vantage point along the shoreline we can wave at her as she puffs past. Chances are she’ll see us and hoot gruffly back.

On a bright autumn evening last October, the roles were reversed. As the “Segwun”  steamed into port after a four-hour cruise, she saluted a family group waving wildly from the cliffs near the former prison camp. From the deck of the Royal Mail Ship, I waved back at my daughter, standing with friends and family on the rocky shore.

Once a year, early in August, we follow the road around the harbour, and turn in to the North Muldrew Lake Road. The annual Singsong on Pine Island is just a short boat ride away. Cousins and old friends meet over the same song collection in use for more than seventy-five years, adding new favourites, song by song, year by year. Uncle Jack’s memory lives in the voices of his descendants, as every summer the young families ask eagerly, “When’s the Sing Song this year?”

Muskoka has not lifted the spell it wove over me half a century ago. That spell I trace back to my nearest and dearest Friend. I believe it is thanks to him that I was born into a family where we appreciated the beauty of nature, music, poetry and painting. By his grace we were able to retreat to our cabins on pine-crowned islands in summers.

I am convinced that if it were not for Sathya Sai Baba, of India, I would not be here now, in this land of  “blue lake and rocky shore”. I firmly believe that this Friend has always been watching over me as director and stage-manager of my life’s play, then as prompter, counselor and coach - a loving presence that I have come to call upon at any time or place.

Except in certain Muskoka circles I tend to keep my belief in Sathya Sai Baba’s divinity confined to a self-made spiritual closet, as if his existence were supposed to be a secret. His portrait watches over our tiny entrance hall and can be seen by anyone. Few enquire who he is. 

Writing this book has reminded me of nearly forgotten blessings - like the incredible picture of my daughter that Sai Baba projected in a “innerview” of early 1982. At a period when Mary was a young, rebellious teenager in scowling “punk” array, it was all too hard to believe what Swami was showing me on His inner “television”, although the picture was clear enough - a smiling Mary with long, rich brown hair, her long white gown patterned with colourful sprays of meadow flowers. 

In October, 2002, I saw this picture unfold with my own eyes in woods near our home. In case I did not believe that evidence, a photograph reminds me daily, with my own witnessing face in the background.

Under a canopy of golden maple foliage, arm in arm with her beaming father, a radiant Mary in cream silk and white organdie walks along a woodland path toward her bridegroom, waiting on the knoll where they first met. Flowers like those in Swami’s vision are gathered into her bridal bouquet, and crown her long chestnut locks.

When I was in doubt about writing these memoirs, Sai Baba intervened, showing me in meditation a woodland path. We strolled along until he stopped to point out clusters of tiny blue flowers, low to the ground.  Looking closer, I recognized them as forget-me-nots.