This Mysterious Gift

a soft gold glimmer in the lamplight, night

from July 21, 2021

I’ve revised this this morning 🙂 Tuesday, Oct. 11th, and I got so into this when I was done, I accidentally set two teaspoons of tea in the teapot (Now, heaven may not physically drink a cup of tea from earth :)…Set it back, and I will have a meditative day, share with you other things next time 🙂 :

A great burst of excitement and history. And these are ideas, not answers, as there’s really no question now…These thoughts don’t all need to align in number or reason.

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I found this gold cross lying on the rug in my bedroom in the morning today, and I’ve not seen it before. All floors regularly vacuumed, it was easy to see near the foot of the bed. This is a close up photo of it on my zabuton cushion. It brought a loving feeling with it as I’d picked it up and also very odd, the mystery. No one has left it behind that I know or was here.

I’ve had a few cherished things like these I’d known on my table, a dove pin, an angel with an amethyst halo, and a crucifix pendant with the body of Jesus. I also received a few things from my grandma when she’d passed away but not this one and my family doesn’t recall it…—even though I wonder if it was found in her house and given to me, but maybe not hers.

I see a flower in the center, glittering, maybe a rose. I think of my Great Grandma Rose I didn’t know well as she died when I was three and was also a pretty shy great grandma, my grandma (her daughter) who passed away last year and I’ve found near at times and well.

—I showed this piece to a jeweler who helped me free with some info on it. He looked, weighed it and checked that it’s 14k gold and the center he’d seen closely under magnifier he found not to be a rose or flower, but a single cut diamond. When I asked, he said he’d not seen this exact type of piece before but that the single diamond was most popular in the 1800s and also early 1900s, up til around 1950 as well. It is a pendant, I placed it on a necklace; it fell against my heart with a feeling of safety and love…I want to wear it and also display it to look at and cherish.

I must have recalled my Grandma Rose to think it was shaped as a rose, by the dates, it likely was hers, as she’d passed away before my Grandma and lived in the attached apartment which was empty. Since I’d not realize the way pockets were forming in my jewelry display, it might have appeared on its own that way, and I am also sure nothing was lost. It could also have been my Grandma’s.

My Great Grandma Rose b. —February 22, 1904 

DEATH May 19, 1989 

SUMMARY Rose Sodano was born on February 22, 1904. She died on May 19, 1989 at 85 years old. We know that Rose Sodano had been residing in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York 11234.

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And there’s layers of my story, I cherish it as it came…Because of the poetry and the presence, it felt like the cross fell from heaven, but so did the poetry and my heart that way…

More of what came to mind through heart when I found it

…I think of the pink roses in the gardens in Lebanon May Ziadeh writes of with tenderness in her poetry book, Fleurs de Reve I’d been reading and began reading one poem on the night of May 18, 2021, felt like a pleasant look and a freshness, a deep relief of understanding to read her writing, and I felt a loving presence in the night around Midnight, May 19th, yet the touch felt more of a slightly bolder, romantic touch with a feminine feeling that was like an appreciation of the physical too and so less like a family touch or someone more of an elder family like a grandmother, and had continued with that dynamic.

I wonder if my Grandma or relatives knew the Ripperger family, read on…

May Ziadeh was from a Maronite Catholic family, I thought of the rose syrup she would’ve served with coffee on Tuesdays at her literary salon in Cairo, and the pink rosebuds I’ve bought just recently for tea, and then in May’s book, especially the ‘friendship flower’ she’d offer to a special friend, Sidonie Ripperger, written of by May in a prose-poem in the book after she’d given it to another friend who hadn’t appreciated her first, sadly. From the letters, the friendship seemed to have the tone of a touch of romance and teasing too, but biographers never mention Sidonie Ripperger, as most of them focus on May’s Arabic heritage and language and her later feminist, humanitarian work and speeches and intellectual connections with mainly male colleagues in the Middle East.

—Yesterday, the Italian Indigenous celebration event was held in Rhode Island by a historical group who serves the community specializing in mainly a union of ancient Roman and Egyptian, and other cultures from the 1st century. And I placed the necklace on today which felt like someone had infused it with a prayer or calm.

—There is a Sidonie Ripperger listed online as having died in Manhattan, New York City, in 1921. And this Sidonie Ripperger was born in 1871 (15 yrs older than May, probably not by the letters), no birthplace listed.

There is another—Sidonie Reine Ripperger listed as born 1893 in Munich, Bavaria Germany, and I’d found her Ellis Island record that showed that she immigrated, traveling on a ship in France to New York City sometime in the late 1800s or 1900s, she was married to a man named Walter, and they had a daughter and a son it looked like from the record.

Also: some sources say Sidonie had a daughter named Sidonie 😅😂, two Sidonie Rippergers, maybe. It is okay—this mystery is closed sweetly as I turn off my phone, read the rest I wrote…

Sidonie Ripperger married Walter Wettengel: Walter Born in Manhattan, New York, New York, USA on 19 Jan 1877 to Emil August Wettengel and Anna Paulina Richter. Walter Wettengel married Sidonie Reine Rippergerand had 3 children. He passed away on 6 June 1962 in Bergen County, New Jersey, USA.

May published this book in 1911, and the letters probably took place somewhere between 1900 – 1908, likely in 1908, when May was in a French Catholic school in Lebanon and graduating, and about to leave Lebanon.

May moved to Egypt in 1908 with her family, which the book includes, and it appears from the text that Sidonie was not in Lebanon or nearby.

Since May was writing to her in the letters in Flowers of a Dream which she’d stated Sidonie’s full name in dedication in the Intimate Pages section, Sidonie was probably not yet married at the time.

The two were writing letters in French, both as a second language. Sidonie knew Greek as well and where she was they had the ‘Greek calendar,’ which she mentioned started on July 19th (also date my Grandma died.)

Sidonie died in 1980 at 87 yrs and that was 9 years before my Great Grandma Rose died same place at 85 yrs.

And Kahlil Gibran is not even mentioned. 😅But he was also in NYC, from Lebanon, May’s love, writing letters hoping to marry him, met him through Ameen Rihani who was also in NYC at one time, a role model author and intellectual to Gibran, but Rihani ended up returning to Lebanon and that felt better for him. They don’t really relate here…☺️

— I find this out a month later that I’d updated this post on the birthday of my first meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hanh whom I had a dream of him in heaven, a memorable dream of deep spiritual and overall peace, the night he’d died; in my dream, he was about to give a speech in Italian.

There are other Rippergers from the period who died in the exact same county in Brooklyn where I was born and where my Grandma’s house is and lived who passed away July 19, 2020 (b. in 1924, 96 yrs), a year before I found this cross and 2 days after the anniversary. The zip code only covers 7 miles.

And this second prose part of May’s book, ‘Intimate Pages’ had touched me most before finding this. All this info are just ideas, not specific theory. 🙂 I am content not knowing any secret mysteries, the love of Miss May has been great, with heart understanding, fun, and expanding love:

—Here is another little passage from the letter May wrote to Sidonie, besides the most poetic one linked above. These seem to be candid statements, not deep truths about men or women; as a poet of romantic poetry, May would later on separate this first poetry book from her more direct comments to support women in their freedom and empowerment as a feminist writer and speaker, as these lines could be misunderstood…They’re really her humorous honesty with her friend:

—You end your letter by complaining that you are a young girl, not a young man. You are a little right; women have been called “the fair sex” and that is wrong; women make up the pretty sex, the fair sex is reserved for men. It amazes you, but it’s the truth: many men are handsome, while few women are beautiful, and many are pretty.

I understand your pain if you live with people who are not what you love, I understand your disgust, I understand this melancholy that comes with a life you don’t want. I understand that you desire the solitude that is made for elite souls and souls who have nobility of intelligence or that of heart.

It seems that when you are young you cannot judge real life; the imagination is struck by certain images which appear bright, it is as if dazzled by them and then when reason takes its main place, there is a necessary relaxation which tires you through.

We keep repeating it theoretically; then, prove that youth are stupid or incapable: In everything and always, there needs to be an ideal which lifts the soul, an ideal superior to the common one but nevertheless achievable…

—May Ziadeh

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another excerpt

[Poet] Shelley was reduced to ashes after [his wife’s] her death; except his heart was kept cold and intact. Oh! the sad and delicate idea!

A person who is able to charm is called charming and the charmer, one whose charm has already been exercised. It does not mean anything.

I believe that fear serves only to make vile slaves and that those who have a character have been able to acquire it by a higher and nobler motive. And as I seek above all to form a character, I have no connection with this low feeling that cowards worship under the name of fear.

—May Ziadeh

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From July 21, 2021

So, that is a lot to hold and yet it can all be whatever it is. Just these days, I’d found a better desire to meditate and pray like before sleep and a good habit, a view of Jesus that feels more personally relatable and like a friend, which came from all of this.

Well, I am grateful for the gift and these other things even in last night for me, as life isn’t always so fair or easy. I will rest now, listen to the pouring rain and thunder slowing down and share this kindness in words and the feeling too.

Jade

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Nothing’s Truly Lost