Week 12

This week, I was focused on doing a lot of catch up.  I am between floral jobs, the semester is coming to an end, and I had a lot of work to catch up on.  While reading at a steady pace would have been much more beneficial to my thought process and would have allowed me time to digest what I was reading and given me time to apply it to my life, I learned this week that there can also be times of intensive learning and that also has it's place.  It has allowed me to look at the "bigger picture", to glean facts and information that really stood out to me.  By looking at things with a broad lens, so to speak, I felt that certain things really stood out to me.

One thing that really stood out to me with this week's work on the Randy Haykin exercise was his choosing of mentors and business partners.  Fifteen years is a long time to know someone and definitely gives one the opportunity to really know what strengths and weaknesses they will be faced with.  It made me reflect on some of the mentors I have had in my life.  I have a couple of very dear friends who are great mentors to me.  They are a little bit older and wiser than me and I appreciate their wisdom and opinions about many things.  It also made me think of a woman who was a mentor to me, and I lament that I was not able to spend more time with her when she was around.  Mary Jane Russell owned a floral design shop in my town for many, many years.  I got to know her when my children were very young, so it was about 20-22 years ago.  My husband, knowing my love of flowers, gave me a gift of receiving monthly flowers from her.  She had her shop attached to her home, complete with greenhouse and work room.  Going over there was heavenly.  Because I had small children, I was not always able to spend a lot of time with her, and she was busy.  I learned over time that she was an icon in the floral design world, she was in her late sixties to early seventies when I met her.  She was featured in Martha Stewart's Wedding Book and was legendary at the market in New York City for her 4:30 a.m. arrivals, everyone knew Mary Jane.  To me, just being around her for a little while was an education.  I wish I was able to learn more from her, to be able to intern for her, when she was still alive, as she passed away about 10 years ago after retiring to North Carolina.  A few years ago, I met a woman who liked my work, we really got along and she recommended me to do flowers for her friend's wedding, which was one of my first.  Ironically, she turned out to be Mary Jane's daughter in law.  We shared some sweet memories of her together, it was one of those tender mercies and a reminder to me how mentors can live on in our memories and live through our work.  The most important take away for me was a reminder to focus on opportunities to mentor others.  One of the most valuable parts of education and experience is the opportunity to share what we have learned with others.