Born in a Windmill ~ The Original Pinwheel Girl

I recently found out that my mother was born in a windmill.

She’ll be 87 years old soon. She was born in England in 1922 and I have to say that I was quite stunned to find out her literal birthplace. She casually mentioned this little known piece of family history over Thanksgiving dinner. It was pretty momentous because, of course, not only had I just written, illustrated and published a book about pinwheels, which are derivatives of windmills, but I had also just finished photographing windmills of the American West and started assembling some photography books of these mythic icons, likening them to “giant pinwheels in the sky…”

It struck me as a truly wonderful and magical synchronicity…87 years ago my mother was actually born in a windmill, the kind that had a large, round red brick base several stories high, with windows and doors in it, and four large wings, or “sails,” at the top of it that turned to the wind and then started to…Spin….

My mother, her older sister, and her parents, lived in the windmill on the upper floors. My grandfather was the windmill’s caretaker. How interesting. 87 years ago my mother was born in a time-honored structure that I was now curiously exploring -- and doing so without the knowledge that it was a critical part of my own heritage, story and legacy. And then 40 years later my mother would have me, far away from the Hales Towermill on a completely different continent, 16 years after the birth of her youngest child….and then 47 years after that I would write my first book… And call myself the Pinwheel Girl….

I wonder sometimes why I never knew that my mother was born in a windmill until now. She never mentioned it before despite recounting hundreds of stories from her long and interesting life. I guess there are certain things that we don’t need to know until we need to know them. Certain morsels and tidbits and nuggets that, when revealed at just the right moment, offer a richness so deep that it makes your heart soar, that you feel like you are sitting in the palm of God’s hand, that you feel the intense interconnectedness of every single thing in the Universe at that precise moment in Time and will remember it forevermore…Discovering my mother’s unique birthplace was one of those morsels...

Since then, I have contemplated the meaning and significance of her name…Iris Violet…and its connection to my beloved Pinwheel Girl…Iris means “rainbow” and the Pinwheel Girl offers seven colors of healing, a “rainbow” of therapeutic stages of color to stimulate various forms of transformational energies.

Violet…my mother’s middle name….is the color of the final stage of the Pinwheel Girl’s transformation…the stage of enlightenment, serenity, and redemption. It’s the end of the seven stage journey, your reward…the jewel of the process.

I wasn’t aware of all of this when I was creating the Pinwheel Girls. I didn’t think about my mother’s name. I just created what I felt needed to come out and be “born” or “birthed” in the wind…And then there is her sister, Grace….who also lived at the Mill House as a preschooler. “Grace” is what you give and get when you practice, over and over, the seven stages that the Pinwheel Girl emotes.

And then finally there was my grandmother, Olive, who lived in the Windmill. I never met her because she died of Tuberculosis (and so did all of Olive’s sisters) when my mother was 8 years old. Her namesake, the olive branch, is an international symbol of peace, and everyone knows I am Pro-Peace/Anti-War, my Pinwheel Girl Holiday Cards are all about Inner Peace and World Peace, and that Peace is the ultimate gift you receive when you complete the Pinwheel Girl’s seven stages…

All these connections…synchronicities…symbolisms….discovering all of this during my own journey to transformation has truly been magical, enlightening, redemptive, gracious, and colorful, and rewarding in ways I never ever would have imagined.

I have always said that the Pinwheel Girl is Every Woman. Indeed she is. But of course she is me and I am her. And she is you, your sister, your mother, your daughter, your friend, cousin, and niece. And she is also every woman who has ever pretended to be less than she is, who has ever weathered a windy storm that seemed endless and dark, who has ever lost herself at the expense of other people’s needs and wants, who has ever abandoned her dreams and forgotten how to retrieve them because the dull ache of life fogged up her view.

She is also every woman who has ever triumphed, who has ever regained what was once lost, who has ever healed herself, rebounded, and found the strength of her human spirit, who has ever fought back and not only survived but thrived. She is every woman who ever made an original contribution, bucked authority, and showed up. She is most certainly every woman who was ever born with the wind in her face. Like my mother. Born in a windmill. The original pinwheel girl.

“I made it…you will too…you come from the wind…and the wind is strong…” Stage 4, The Pinwheel Girl Expands, from The Pinwheel Girl Takes Flight ~ Every Woman’s Journey Through Seven Stages of Transformation

Photo: My Mother's Birthplace ~ Hales Towermill, Suffolf, England