(This is obviously a story born of a childhood interuptation of a young man's reading of a story and how it effected him...me. The final message that the boy finds are words that came to me today. For them I am blessed. And I give all the credit to the one who inspires me. IYOK)
Applying the shaving cream, rubbing into this well worn face, I saw the spark without really looking for it. This little speck of light coming from my eyes. As the remnants of the graying beard spun down the drain, I thought of where I may have seen that in myself before. I was thinking I had. It seemed to be a memory so buried. I tried my trick of pulling the memory from my heart, but I couldn’t locate it. It seemed to be blocked.
Getting dressed, the feeling that I needed to remember wouldn’t escape me. I decided to sit in the corner of my room, lights down, and just let this kernel of thought drill it’s way into my brain for what it was that I was missing. After a few moments of solitude, the images were coming. I saw a path. Not a physical path. One in my mind. A place of safety, a place of thought, and a place of courage to believe.
And then it struck me. Could it be? No! There just wasn’t a way. It was gone. I know it was. I had been there and saw that it had gone the way of so many things in my life. To a place out of reach. To the outer reaches of my imagination. There just was no way.
I paced the room in deep concentration. I was so out of practice. It had been so long since the trip had been made. I wasn’t sure I knew the way anymore. What if I got lost? What if I dared to venture there again only to find that my hope had been for nothing. That it was still a place I could not go to anymore. It was the place of hiding for me as a child. The safe place created from the reading of a story that showed me a way to escape my pain. A place where all thoughts were turned into possibilities. A place where the concept of impossible did not exist as long as you allowed yourself to believe in what your mind could see.
I remember the beauty of seeing it for the first time. I am not sure the age I was at the time. I only know that I had read the story and thought, if it were possible, I would surely love to go there. Reality had stolen my heart. Real life had taken my childhood from me and ripped huge parts of trust from my soul. I had lost faith in those that should have loved me more than anything, because that was what I felt for them. Their idea that the selfish pursuit of their own happiness was more important than the hearts and emotional well being of their children had taken more from all of us than I could begin to understand at such a young age. I wanted peace. I wanted a place where I always felt welcomed. And I found it in my creation of the idea stolen from a children’s story.
I would go there often. When things were too loud. When things were too ugly to see. I went there. In my mind’s eye, I traveled that path to the one place where I felt secure. Happy. Alive. And it saved me. It kept me whole. It kept the child inside of me alive and loved. It gave me back a feeling of being an innocent in a desperate sea of those swimming in guilty pleasures with no thought for others. And, I loved it there.
I am not sure why it happened. I am not sure what caused it. But, I do remember the day that I sat down in the middle of my room and couldn’t find the place. I remember mentally walking the path, through the field of flowers…colors of nature all around me. Up over the bridge that ran over and provide safe passage over a creek that fed the growth around. The water tossing below creating a smell like no other. It could fill your nostrils, clean the mind and the senses. Preparing me for the place I would spend so much time being just what I was. A child.
But, on that day, as I crossed the top of the hill, I realized no shadow had fallen on me. Nothing to block the low hanging sun that warmed my heart while I would sit and conjure up my fantasies. A cloud blocked the sun. As if the very heavens I had created in my mind were to afraid to look at what I was about to see.
It was gone.
I went to the spot. I could see the worn place in the grass where my backside had rubbed away the growth. My safe haven was gone. On the ground in it’s place, a small note, written in a shaky hand that looked so much like my own:
“Time to put away those childish things.”
My father’s words. In my hand. A reciting of what I had been taught outside of my safe haven. He was trying to teach me. He wanted me to face my life and understand that only open eyes can deal with what the world will present each of us. To be lost in it was not an option. To be aware was to be prepared. And being aware did not live in your fantasies. It did not live in my writings. It only lived in the places that he could understand.
I remember, that morning, preparing for school and seeing in the mirror. Something was missing.
I saw it again today. I saw the sparkle. And my searching of my soul showed me what had brought it to me so long ago. Was it telling me something? Am I supposed to try again? Search that field?
Cross that bridge to wonders and climb the hill?
I sat long, eyes open and thought about all the outcomes. Thought of the disappointment of finding nothing. But, the thought occurred to me that without the effort, the risk…nothing comes to us. So, I closed my eyes. And I traveled once again. A child’s adventure, in the heart of a man.
I came around the corner of the outer fence, the paint was chipping, but it was still there. I walked the path my mind had provided again. Although it had been so many years, I easily found my way. I came to the expanse of flowers, all new blooms as if they sprang from the ground only to welcome me home. It was if, like searching for the warming sun, they turned to me and opened their blooms. The wondrous perfume filling my nostrils, my head spinning, my imagination turning full force.
I came to the bridge. The creek below, current weaker, showed amazing signs of rebuilding what my absence had destroyed. Feeding the nature, feeding the hill, feeding my soul. Like wine from the table of the final meal, it spilled out and re-energized what had long been in limbo. And I felt a sense of self that I can’t describe.
I cautiously started up the hill. Not looking up. Afraid that I would find out too soon that this trip would only prove to me that it was all done. That it was gone for good. The more I had ventured in, the less I could believe that I would handle that ending well.
Halfway up, a shadow fell on me. I sensed the cloud again. Is it possible? The heavens, the stars, the very sun that my imagination had created still could not face a loss? Tears began to well. Throat stuck closed as I started to raise my head. To look. To see.
Shadows of leaves patterned my shirt. Ghosts of branches stretched around me on the ground.
My heart rose.
As did my eyes.
To explain the vision in words would be impossible. There standing before me was the one thing in my life, as a child, that I always counted on. Never to abandon me. Never to leave me without it’s safety. Never to deny me the place of imagination. Of wonder. Of hope.
The Dreaming Tree.
I slowly crested the hill and walked up to the trunk. I touched the bark as if to see that my mental image was real. My creation was solid and reborn. I stood in amazement and looked up into it’s branches, reaching high and outwards, like a giant hug from the Creator Himself. I had found my place.
I stood there for a long moment. Soaking in all that this meant. But, trying to figure out, why…why now had it returned to me. I saw my place, the worn place on the ground a half turn around the tree. And I started for it. As I arrived at the spot. And looked up.
There, carved into the bark of this miracle tree was the words that brought it all home for me. That made me realize just what had brought this blessing back to me. Just what I had done in my life to allow my heart and mind to open up again…to remember…to allow myself the childish things stole from me so very long ago.
“The Dreaming Tree lives.
Not for her, but because of her”
And finally, all in my life…for the very first time…made sense.
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