Okay – Kat got first dibs in my little “please, please tell me what the heck you are interested in reading” exercise.  And it’s a convenient two-fer since it also answers part of Sheila’s question/s.

First, for you non-SCA folks, an explanation – in the SCA’s medieval organization, it is the common practice to register personal heraldic arms with our College of Heralds, like the nobles did during the time period we cover.  My arms look like this:

 

I have used lilies to represent me on other things – tokens, gifts, embroidery.  So, Kat’s question is “Why the lilies?”  Fitting question, as she is a heraldic-type person.

Well, there are a few reasons, but first, you need to keep in mind that I joined the SCA as a teenager.  This explains a LOT of my stranger residual SCA behaviors.  Although I didn’t register my device until much later, I was actively using and displaying it for years essentially unchanged.

In the early 80’s, when I was picking my device, calla lilies were cool in the popular teenage art world of the time.  Not only were they cool, they were VERY cool in Calontir (not surprising for a Kingdom founded by teenagers and ex-hippies), and still form a part of the Calontir symbolism.  Calontir at the time I joined was a region, and we went from region to Principality to Kingdom during a very formative time of my SCA participation.   I BLED Calontiri purple, even though I was forced by college to be living in Ansteorra (specifically, Tulsa, OK).  The choice of Lilies was rather a patriotic statement, letting the Ansteorrans know that I may have my feet in the land of the Sable Star, but we all knew where my heart was.  In fact, the original field of my device (that’s background to the heraldically impaired), was not black, but purple.  After some thought, that was a little too much immersion (even for me), and I changed the field to black.  Hey, I was going through a Goth phase at the time.

That’s the public answer, and it is MOSTLY accurate. 

There is another private answer, which sounds a bit uncharacteristically dramatic for me, but here we go, nonetheless. 

There was a guy (specifically, a Calontiri guy) that I never actually DATED, but we had a rather, well, complex relationship.  Not stormy really.  Just … complex.  One day he sent me a bunch of calla lilies (very expensive at the time) with a note.  I don’t have the note anymore (I said the relationship was complex, right?) but essentially it said that he thought of calla lilies when he thought of me – tall, fair and straight, beautifully elegant without being showy, cool, and just a tiny bit unattainable.  It was the first time anyone ever told me I was beautiful without trying to get in my pants.

So basically, they are an artifact of my drama-laden teenage years, but I kept them partially out of habit and partially out of nostalgia.  And partially, because, even this day, I was honestly flattered and touched.