Leitmotif

Just beyond the welcoming, wide doorway it sits, shuffling its feet. Perhaps it listens, that I have always suspected, but it thinks certainly, blinking there in the hallway, bold enough for life. I am tired, too tired, maybe I open myself to it. If I open, I can close, and the dry, watchful thing need never be noticed. Yes, sit there, move your fabulous feet and see what it gets you, my old friend.

It always is just where I cannot catch the glimpse, or it leaves the room as a shadow on the floor as I enter. But lately I was just too weary. Oh, let it be there, let it. I hate the thought of it, the different thought, and I cannot take it anymore, this way I have of just being outside and hoping. It is in the dark as well, the shadows of the creeping, sly wretch with those deathless eyes following my heartbeat. Who in the world could simply stare like that, what is the marvelous thing in my breathing that fascinates?  It is a patient presence, and most of the time the feel of its awareness is slight, so I dream it is gone.

I had actually forgotten it. The first morning was like light on the water. All that disorientation, the dizziness of there being windows and doors in the wrong  places . Then the rush of wonder, I am free, and this is new. And I ran my eyes over the kitchen, plates and floors shining with promise. This is my dream. I swaggered through the door into the dining room and suddenly there it was, oh, God, what is there? A large, lace medallion under the whirlpool bowl, where I had seen myself floating pink, blown roses, was swirled up in a confection of linen, perfect as a vision. It rose in an impossible configuration, tall as a church candle when the incense crawls, and there it was, not breathing, but alive nonetheless.

I had never liked that stupid bowl. It was a hand-me-down, and I had seen it and thought, oh, my very lovely thing, why did someone give you away?  I had squirmed inside. It was too pretty, too heavy, and that whirlpool motif was strange, like walking a labyrinth. And I don’t care that there are labyrinths in cathedrals, they are evil, they lead you down paths and strand you in open spaces  in dark forests, surrounded by watchful eyes. But, true to my new way of thinking (pushing the feeling down)  I said, it is so beautiful, picture it with the sunlight hitting it on the table, Queen Elizabeth roses floating in it. I forgot the windows faced north, I forgot everything I swore I would remember. I heard the sudden voice of my older sister, “Not again, stop this, it’s so perfect.” So I spread the lace medallion and placed the bowl.

Now, look what had happened. I was in this brand-new place and it was starting again perhaps, and I was angry. St. Michael was standing there, but he was concentrating on satan, and  I had this thing facing me, white and defiant. But, it turned out there was nothing to it. The medallion unwound, the bowl in hand, both in a plastic bag and the Fatima water sprayed, the prayer said, I slammed it on the top of the trash barrel. When I heard the truck, I waited behind the lace curtain, even the cat came out for this, and we watched it being handled and smashed, thank you very much.     

But, now, the shuffling was here, and the creature had returned. Now it was the same again. It doesn’t happen consistently. If it did, one could make plans and say, well, Thursday, of course, it’s okay, it’s only for a few moments. No, you are pretending to be normal and so much so that you don’t hear it at first. Then suddenly you realize that it is as loud as thunder, and there you are, caught.

Dreaming free...

        I had a most beautiful dream, so unlike any other of my experience. Something so deeply lovely that I am still in awe of a God who gifted us with this type of imagination and reverie .

       I was trying to save a shy, gentle aquatic animal. I called it a dolphin in the dream, but it wasn’t gray, it was a shiny, lustrous dark tortoiseshell, but definitely shaped like a dolphin. I was cradling it in my arms and walking toward a body of water. It wasn’t tropical, but temperate. The water was crystalline and there were huge rounded stones on the bottom which were clearly visible because of the clarity of the water. There were no trees anywhere, but a wall of some kind separated the sheltered lagoon portion from the rest of what seemed an inland lake. I remember being very concerned that the animal should swim, live, survive, be joyous. I had feelings of caring and tenderness toward her. I knew that she would be safe in this water because there were no predators to threaten or harm her, this was assumed almost unconsciously, I obviously knew this place very well and had chosen it carefully.

     I placed the “dolphin” into the water and she immediately started to swim quickly and vigorously through the waves with others like her. At this point some other very curious, incredible animals appeared and joined in. They were bright apple green, like a praying mantis, sinuous like an eel, but they had the most unusual looking flippers which also functioned as feet. The flippers were shaped like squares, except they were attached to the body of the animal with short legs and the opposite side had a point. They were set on the animals’ bodies in opposing pairs, maybe as many as three or four sets on one creature. For some reason I feel now as though these sweet beasts were a cross between a plant and an animal! Despite the fact that they were quite large, they were not predatory, but skimmed through and upon the waters of the lagoon, their bodies rippling and their tails coiling to and fro as they both swam through and walked on the water. The gamboling of the dolphins and these other creatures seemed like play and I thought “how wondrous they are” as I watched them.

     The end of the dream came when someone else behind me said, “Oh, you will never see her again, she won’t come back, you set her free!”  I was momentarily concerned, but then my “dolphin” swam back toward me showing her flippers and dorsal fin in a salute or wave to me, skimming through the soft billows, and I somehow knew inwardly that we were so intimately connected that nothing could ever break that bond of love and friendship,  that she would always return.

   

Life of Mine

I should have expected my life to turn out this way, full of import. There were always the odds and ends that came to me from friends of my father, books, maps and old diaries of strangers. And he himself gave me such odd artifacts of his life, trusting me to examine them slowly and keep silent. I never remember long discussions with him. He would make simple statements, or ask which way to turn the car. We could end up in a swamp or a museum, it didn’t matter, it was what needed to happen, and we would get out, look around, and make of it what we could. I never felt failure or censure, it was our way, he told me about the fish, he told me how to read the sky, he told me what it was like here forty years ago. My mother never asked me, where did you go, what did you do? It was a quiet place, the place my father took me, and we never told and never would.

In later years there was the amazement of discovering that my father and I were unusual. I had of course assumed that all fathers and daughters shared these intimate, miraculous secrets, until the one time I asked a friend about such things and was met with suspicious stares. And I wondered why my oldest sister resented me. Imagine the horror: the eldest princess of the fairy tale, the beauty, the golden one, being supplanted by a tiny gnome in pigtails. No wonder she hated me. I would hide from shyness, people would beg me to talk while I sat sullen, eyes down, and remained mute while she shone and glittered, smile radiating. Yet, the handsome prince, the prize, the valiant knight, preferred the goose girl in overalls. How maddening.

Even my brother was smitten with me, God knows why. I was terrified of strangers, quiet and trembling. I spent most of my early childhood in closets and behind books I could not yet read. Yet, I was the diminutive mascot of his life, he watched me with interest but did not interfere in what made me so different, accepting it quietly. Here had settled this rara avis in the midst of his prosaic family, and he was content to appreciate me.

    Once I learned to read it was all I ever did, and the fantasies trailed from those glorious pages into my life and started moving through the house.

   I was blessed to live in a family teeming with gigantic personalities, addictions and drama. I was very boring by comparison. The incredible battles of wills I witnessed drew silent, passionate responses from within me. I was a voyeur and a critic, weighing the respective merits of the combatants, dismissing drunkenness and fistfights as passing dreams. The mornings would bring a fresh, washed day; life swirled about me.

 I was the collector of stories, the one who listened and absorbed the family secrets and tales. Uncles, aunts, grandparents, the cousins who were so shuttered, not open and clean like those of my friends, all the myriad of characters who made up my world were the archetypal shadow puppets of my fantasies. I created the worlds they had inhabited in the old country, I imagined them as mythic metaphors, icons of vast proportions. They were grand and simple but they had corners and mists. Their lives were epic. And now, I am becoming the creature of legend for the young ones swimming in the shallows of warm seas.