Unreachable

Here is a memory that still haunts me.

I was living in NE Portland in the late 1980’s, and teaching psychic development classes several times a week. The majority of my students came from the naturopathic, chiropractic, massage and medical schools, needing to balance their academic studies with something more felt, intuitive and humane. A beautiful red headed nurse named Valerie enrolled. She did well in class for several quarters and then began behaving in confrontive and fearful ways. We talked after class and she confided that she had been diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic, and decided to go off her medication. She was dating a friend of mine who was a psychologist, so we joined forces, both of us talking to her about the importance of her medicine and the need to stay on it. I knew she loved our classes, so I used them as leverage.

I can not allow you to continue with your studies until you’ve gone back on your meds and stabilized.

She did not listen. Valerie dropped out but continued in my life by coming to my home at odd hours, and begging for predictions. She was sure others were plotting against her and insisted I go with her to Canada to help her start a new life.

My husband was a doctor and took me aside to warn me of her condition. She is becoming dangerous now, Karen. She could harm you, so be very careful. I held my ground about the medications, not knowing what else to do. She stopped visiting, but continued to make disturbing phone calls.

One evening I wrote a letter to my sister in New York describing the situation: if we should be murdered in our beds, I want you to ask about Valerie. I dropped the letter in a post box the next morning as I drove my son to school, then stopped at my usual coffee shop to reward myself with tea, a scone and the morning paper. I was thinking how hard it was to get him out of bed on school days, and wondering about a solution, when I saw the Oregonian. The front page displayed a color photo of three bodies being carried from a house in black bags, with insert pictures of Valerie and her little girls. I dropped my tea in horror; my breathing became labored and deep. My mind raced. Could this nightmare be real? I looked again at the photos, the house, the body bags, and the police. The article said that Valerie’s children had been playing on the beach at Rooster Rock State Park when she pulled them away, drove home, shot both of them, then shot herself. Her note said that she did not want them to grow up with the same hellish disease.

I drove home doubled over with grief and disbelief. I could not eat, sleep or think of anything else for weeks. My dreams were haunted. I blamed myself for not knowing how to help. Soon the police arrived, making accusations that I had somehow encouraged her to take such drastic actions through my ‘new age’ methods. They had found class materials and some of our recorded sessions in her home. I was angry, hurt and sarcastic.

Yes, that’s what I do. I charge clients $50, and then tell them to go home, shoot their children and themselves. I make a great living that way, wouldn’t you?

The policeman continued. What exactly are these groups you have? Are they like a séance where you talk to the dead?

I forced a normal tone in my voice. No, they are like a self-improvement class you would take at Portland Community College. I don’t teach there because I like being self-employed, but I used to teach there. I did for years.

The newspapers took up where the police left off.

WOMAN REACHES OUT TO THE NEW AGE AND THEY FAIL HER.

A columnist from the Oregonian took the opportunity to write at length about her hatred of ‘these ill-equipped new age people.’  Friends, students and professionals wrote letters in my defense, but they were not printed. Willamette Week did a feature article on the psychics Valerie employed. I was encouraged not to meet with the reporter, but I was eager for someone to see the credibility and truth of a situation that was being blown out of proportion, so I gave her a free session, and explained the healing and expansive aspects of the work. The reporter was young and receptive, but her story was written. She was only visiting to fill in the details. That’s when I learned the difference between promoting the truth, and a story that sells papers.

Valerie had been to a competing psychic and reported distorted information about our sessions. This man, whom I had known for years, was telling others to avoid my work based on her paranoid stories. When I called him to talk it out, I found him eager to slander, so I threatened to sue and we parted ways. 

I was being attacked on all fronts, not eating, sleeping, or working.  I closed my business to recover. Months later we found a farm house in the Columbia River Gorge and moved in. I spent months sitting on the front porch of that little white house, looking into miles of rolling hills, tree tops and the river below. I did not want to work again. My body lacked walls, boundaries, and the natural protection that enables people to easily function in the world. My ability to see and help is in direct relation to living filleted open, like a fish. I spent months in silence and introspection, being healed by my surroundings.

When clients managed to locate my phone number, I told them I was finished, out of business, with no desire to continue.

I had a client from India who worked at Tektronix. I had read for him for years.  He was always surprised when I knew who he was on the phone. That was our ongoing joke. Kaarin, how you know it is me? When he rang me and asked for a session, I told him what I told everyone else, but he reacted differently, he said, I can wait.

Well dear, you will have to wait a long time because I am finished.

He rang me the week after and asked again. Are you ready yet? Must I wait longer?

I am not ready, I told him, I will never be ready again.

No Kaarin. This is who you are. You can not walk away from yourself. I will wait. You are my psychic. There is no one else.

He called every week and we had the same conversation, until finally I relented and read for him. I am grateful, in retrospect, for his persistence because he helped me open my door and my heart one more time.

Other Dimensions

Dave had been a business client for years. He exemplified upper management, drove a Cadillac, and looked like a model for GQ magazine. It was 1992. I was living in an old farm house on the crest of a mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. My clients commented on the peaceful drive along the Sandy River, telling me what an important inner transition it was.  I imagined Dave motoring along the river, as I rummaged through my closet, wondering what to wear. Deep in the corner hung the Native American ceremonial dress I was married in, more costume than daily wear, more dust catcher than useful. I kept it for its power and beauty. To my surprise, I found myself grabbing it from the hanger and slipping it over my head. 

Dave arrived on time, as punctual as ever. I offered tea and conversation, while noticing his change in attire. He no longer looked like Mr. GQ. He’d let his hair grow, wore turquoise jewelry and a loose fitting shirt over cotton pants. When I closed my eyes to read for him, I was aware of two distinct spirits. It surprised me so much I could not go forward.

Dave, Are you aware of the Indian that lives in you? I asked.

Yes. I’m so glad you said something because everyone else thinks I’m crazy. It happened a few months ago. I suddenly felt this desire to change myself. It is unexplainable, but I know exactly what you are seeing.

I could not do anything for Dave with the Indian in the way, so I stopped the reading.

Do you mind if I speak to him directly, to see what he wants and why he has come?

Please do. I want to know as well.

I made a bed on the floor from a yoga mat and blanket, and watched Dave lower his broad-shouldered body on to the mat, his manicured fingers neatly folded by his side. I sat on the floor next to him with one hand above his heart, another above his belly, and led him through a relaxation exercise.

Feel the welcome weight of the blanket that covers you. Breathe deeper still. Now, let yourself be held in the welcome arms of the earth. When Dave was cocooned and protected, I opened the channel between dimensions and summoned the Indian. I was rooted, calm and centered. I waited and listened, staying neutral and receptive. Then, an unexpected burst of energy literally swept me into another time and place, very much like being in a dream where daily reality ceases, and dream reality becomes total and all that is.

 I was walking with my Indian husband along a barely visible trail. Wind blew against silence, the only sound – a distant cracking of ice. We moved raw and slow through a towering canyon, stone spires and red rock sitting broken and piled below snow coated cliffs, the sky, pale and grey. I felt ice melting against my hair, as I lowered my face into the warm comfort of my buffalo robe. He and I walked heavy with things unsaid, and no voice to say them. I felt pained and inconsolable. Our only child lay buried under mounds of rock, while we moved on in search of food and shelter, our resources depleted.  His love for me was total, as mine was for him. I made a home in that knowledge. I made a life in it. There was no questioning or doubt. The experience of our love was unlike anything I have ever known, or come close to knowing in this life. It filled me.

That’s all there was, a glimpse, a moment, a lifetime. I was fully there, and than I was not. I was drawn back as rapidly as I’d left, my body jerking, small volts of electricity pulsing through my veins. My whole body felt burned, as if I’d stood too near the sun. I fell apart, and wept as if my heart had been cut. I could not console myself and was horrified that I was still in session. Poor Dave was working to bring himself out of trance to attend me. What happened? What happened, he repeated, again and again. What can I do for you?  I rocked back and forth, howling with grief for a dead child and a lost love, my knees pulled against my chest, arms wrapped around them like a teddy bear. 

I know that spirit. I know him, is all I could say. Please go now. I will finish your session another time.

Dave was reluctant to leave. I insisted. My world was falling apart. My boundaries were shattered. After he left, I paced like an animal. I shivered, felt feverish and sick. I went to the bathroom to find a homeopathic to calm myself, looked in the mirror and saw for the first time the irony of my attire. I had put on my Indian print wedding dress to meet my Native American husband from another dimension. I ripped off the dress, got a shovel and buried it deep in the yard. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a garment that could transport me instantly from one reality to another. I wanted to be in control. I went to bed and stayed there for several days. My body burned, my energy circuits fried.

Dave called often to see how I was, but I didn’t answer. I was afraid of him too, afraid that he could somehow pull me back into that place that made reality dissolve. I phoned him after a week, but didn’t put him back on the schedule for a full month. I needed to work up to it.

When I did see Dave, he looked more himself. Apparently the Indian had moved on, his visit complete. Dave brought a photograph with him of a man called, Black Eagle from the Nez Perce tribe. I knew what he looked like, he told me, so I went to the library to do some research, and there he was.

I held the photo in my hands. It was, without doubt, the face I had seen.

You can keep it, Dave said. And so I did.

Sometimes I place it on my altar and speak with him. Other times I put it away, because his presence feels too strong, yet he is always around. Black Eagle has appeared independently to friends, and once to a client doing a vision quest. He offers support and love to them, sometimes conveying messages to me.

Tides

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I feel brittle. My face is set, full of worry and the obligations of life. There is an edge I can not name that builds, and shows itself to me in a glance, or an unexpected reflection in a passing window.

My husband and I have lives that are too busy. We behave like separate ships on the sea, sending signals and flashes of light while moving in turbulent waters, our attention fully given to navigation.

But once in awhile all that turbulence stops. The sea calms and we drift slowly into shore, rediscovering each other like long lost friends, wondering how we ever drifted so far apart. Those times are precious to me, the coming back times. The sharp edges of our lives melt against candle light. Our faces soften. Our bodies reach toward the warmth of one another, and suddenly I no longer feel old, rigid or brittle.

We lived in this soft place when we met. We could not pull ourselves from it, but now it takes a snow storm and an act of love to remember the truth of who we are together.

The scent of ginkgo and vanilla blend in fragrant oils and infuse the space. A musical tapestry woven with harp and voice washes away the outside world. The phone is unplugged. I study the way my hair falls against my face in the shadows on the wall, as I tenderly stroke the white of his beard, and trace the lines of his lips with my finger. Our bodies find each other in celebration.

When did the mundane gain so much attention and power? When did the entrance to this soft place become veiled and difficult to find?

We have been in retreat, but I can feel the tide approaching. The sea is calling, and we will soon slip back, into the way it was. There will be day after day of appointments, business meetings and obligations. In the evening we will embrace, have dinner and fall dead tired into our beds, or stay up half the night to meet excessive demands.

During those times, I will remember and long for this retreat. I will imagine our shadows and tenderness played out against the bedroom wall and wish for it. I will notice, and wonder how we can slow down enough to find the veiled entrance into this softer, gentler place.

Understanding Predictions

My friend Kim comes by every two or three months to exchange readings. I look forward to our visit because it’s a time of holding light and encouragement for one another. We both read in a way that puts our present experience in perspective, pulls in a glimpse of the future, and points to weak places where we need to hold firm and persevere. Our style and visionary skills are about love, support, encouragement and friendship.

My friend Susan was ten years old, when she went to a ‘Fun Fair’ in a friend’s basement. A fortune teller was hired to do readings for the kids. When it was Susan’s turn, the woman turned over three cards, studied them, and announced that Susan would die when she was twenty-six years old. End of reading.

Can you imagine saying this to an impressionable ten year old, or to anyone for that matter? This woman took child abuse to a new level. I am happy to announce that dear Susan is now sixty-six years of age, but she lived for sixteen years in secret terror. What kind of person tells another such a wicked thing?

The purpose of intuition, psychic abilities, or any level of extraordinary knowing is to shed light on our lives so we can heal, attain freedom, and elevate our consciousness to a perspective that allows an expanded understanding of reality. The mind is in charge of resistance and control. It is fear-based and wants to keep us safe. To move beyond the mind, into the realm of spirit, takes us deep inside an inherent wisdom, where we experience first hand the place in us that is timeless, the place that does not die, the place that is wise, the place that is just visiting this reality, the place that recognizes truth. When we understand the sacredness of our lives, our days take on a different perspective. We may get bogged down in the personality and the mundane, but knowing, feeling and experiencing the place where our soul resides, allows an essential freedom that can bring us back to center by simply closing our eyes, and engaging. Being brought back to center, and being reminded of the truth about our selves when we lose our way, is the purpose of a good reading. 

So be careful when you decide to ask for help. Think twice before you open yourself to someone you do not know. Ask people you trust for referrals, and don’t ever walk into a storefront with a ‘Psychic Readings’ sign posted in the window.

Past Lives

A past life explains the unexplainable in this life. It is a strong thread that runs through the personality and is unaccounted for by circumstance or environment. A past life is a kind of unremembered soul memory that pushes for expression in this time and place. I can best explain by pulling examples from the lives of my children.

My daughter, Kristen, walked next to me as a child of six and pointed at other women with children. Mama, I don’t want white babies when I grow up. My children should have darker skin. Those babies are not right.

She came to me in junior high school asking to go to Greece, with an urgency that got my attention. Her request seemed so important that I went to school to inquire about an exchange program, and found a possibility for her to visit in high school. When I told her, she threw herself across the bed and wept big bitter tears. I thought you would be pleased, I said. No, Mom, I can’t wait that long to ‘go back.’

Kristen is good at manifestation. She attracted a Greek family within the year, who invited her to travel with them to Athens for the summer. She came back more determined than ever. I need to live where people gather outside around long tables, drink wine and have in-your-face discussions. She saved the money she made as a waitress and went back again after high school. She learned the language, married a Greek man and lived there for three years. She wrote letters from the island of Paros that said, I have never felt so alive, or healthy. It is like coming home. 

One of my favorite memories of my son, Clayton, is from Seattle. He and I were shopping near Pike Place Market when break-dancing was all the rage. We saw a group of young black boys performing near the waterfront and went over to check it out. A crowd gathered to watch as the young men formed a line, waiting to do their athletic spins, flips and Michael Jackson’s moonwalk. When I turned to comment, my son was missing. At ten years old, I was worried, until I saw him smiling back at me from the performer’s line. The dancers were as surprised as I was, to see him holding his own on their cardboard stage. That is where his past life spirit believed he belonged, street dancing with his black brothers.

As a little boy, he drew pictures of himself with dark skin. In high school, his African friend, Brian, made a bedroom in his walk-in closet, sharing secrets and stories like brothers. As a man of 38, he makes his Los Angeles home in the earthy grit of the hood.

How else can you explain this white mans perception of himself, if it is not a door from another lifetime that did not fully close?

We all have these mysterious threads that manifest in our lives as gifts we carry, desires to be realized or the curse that keeps us bound beyond reason. Looking at these threads, whatever you choose to call them, can bring insight and liberation.

An Introvert’s Christmas

Snow is falling quietly and softly outside my window. It is light and undecided, on the border between snow and rain. My husband rose early, eager to make the long drive to his daughter’s house, where his children and their children will gather to celebrate. The house will be full of loud people with big voices, competing with an immense television blaring football and commercials. Children will scream for attention, squeal with delight, and play with noise-driven toys.

I have baked sugar cookies, cardamon-orange sweet rolls, and sent raspberry jam from last summer’s crop. I placed a hat on my husband’s head, stuffed gloves in his pocket, and watched him pull from the driveway, his tires chained and crunching ice. 

Now it is my time. I go immediately to the stereo and put on Louie Armstrong. His voice fills the space, like a kiss from the past:

I see trees of green,

 red roses too.

 I see them bloom, for me and you,

and I think to myself,

what a wonderful world .

I see skies of blue,

And clouds of white,

 the bright blessed day,

 dark sacred night,

and I think to myself,

 what a wonderful world.

 As I listen, I sponge the coffee table clean, open windows for a blast of fresh air, clang a Tibetan bell to clear the space, and place a match against the wick of a candle, watching its light move into a tall steady flame. Finally, I fold a warm brown shawl across my shoulders, sit on the couch and silence the stereo. I breathe in the quiet, wrapping it around me like a welcome friend. I am old enough now not to feel guilty about who I am and what I need, or to put myself in situations that feel wrong or abrasive. 

It is a great pressure being different in a society that has traditions and rules about what holidays mean, and how they are to be celebrated. Thanksgiving makes sense to me, because it’s a time to be thankful. But Christmas follows too close on its heels, and escalates into a kind of material carnage and shopping frenzy full of pressure and disappointments. It seems a day set aside to magnify family issues, and the difference between how our lives are, and the ideals we hold. Add to that my sincere dislike for material accumulation and the incompatibility grows.

 I did have a moment yesterday, when I slipped into parental guilt, knowing how much my daughter, Kristen, has always loved holidays.

I’m sorry I live so far in the country, I told her. I should have a big house in town, where we can more easily gather as a family, and do a traditional Christmas.

Her answer was kind and real. Mom, don’t do that to yourself. That is not who you are, or what you really need or want. Just be you on Christmas day and enjoy it.

Kristen is busy cooking for the nearly one hundred residents who live at the ashram, fulfilling her dream of living with a large spiritual family. 

And so, I sit in this peace-filled room, alone, watching snow and birds, and allowing my writing to surface with abundant time and space.

I’m sure many would judge my holiday sad and deprived of humanity, but I have a deep calm and a welcome communion with myself in not wishing to be any where else, or doing any thing else. Perhaps next year, I will be surrounded by quiet loving friends, but this year I am content, and delighted beyond measure to find that I can allow the richness of what I need, without pretending to be other than I am.

Making Sense of it

I never thought much about my ability to see into the lives of other people until I entered graduate school. I always had a sense of the layered qualities and patterns others carried, and was routinely advised and guided by dreams, but it was not until I did a practicum at Clackamas County Mental Health Center that my abilities were brought fully home.

Rich was the psychiatrist in residence, as well as my teacher and supervisor. He and I were running an evening therapy group when the subject of dreams came up. After group ended, he took me aside, Karen, write down a dream of your own, and bring it to our next supervision session. That will be an excellent way to explore.

I went to our session expecting to understand dream symbols, projection and relationship. What happened instead surprised me. The dream I brought was long, detailed and all about Rich. When I read it, he withdrew. His color blanched.  Nobody should know those things about me, he said, there is no way for anyone to know what you  just told me.  He became quiet, going deep inside his private world. His puzzled silence letting me know our meeting was finished.

My session with Rich made me aware that whatever was happening in my world was different than those around me. It made me question my career. I enjoyed learning to help and heal, but the methods seemed inadequate. I sat in a tiny consulting room and saw one person after the next. There was no magic answer for their pain, just a learned ability to listen, and to empower by providing feedback. But what empowerment could there be, when the person’s consciousness and view of reality stayed as small as the room we sat in? They needed a larger, more holistic vision.

I was too confused in those early years to follow my wisdom. I only knew the limits of what I was learning, and that it was wrong for me. I already had stomach ulcers from stress, so I dropped the program. Instead, I joined a theater company to travel, sing, dance and wash the sorrow from my bones. There was a woman in the company who read tarot cards. When she read mine, I was both amazed and hooked. Here was a language of symbols and images which spoke volumes without the written word. Looking at the cards gave me an ancient sense of homecoming.  Here, at last was a way for the voices that spoke through my dreams to be direct, immediate and available. I closed myself from the outside world, and spent days being pulled into their complex framework, a framework that beautifully described the human condition. 

I lived in a converted mansion with a sweeping central staircase, occupied solely by artists. The tenants were poets, musicians, painters, sculptors, designers and theater people. When I announced what I was doing, nearly everyone in the building came for a reading. I gave generously, eager to test my wings.

I was surprised to learn that some people were afraid of the cards, because they had been hurt by words from unloving hearts. They had been told cruel and unjust things by fortune tellers and gypsies, who placed cards on the table between them, as they delivered fear-based messages. I was also surprised that people came back wanting more and more. But I just gave you a reading. I just told you that.

It took a long time to make the soup that became my healing practice. I drew on many varied ingredients, but always used the first session to gain trust. I’d quiet myself and merge with my clients to understand the blueprint of their lives; what gifts they had, what troubles, patterns and hurts. I gave this knowing back with a spiritual perspective, so they had a new understanding and foundation to stand on. We did whatever healing was needed to shine light into the shadows that kept them trapped and unfulfilled.

People ask how I developed my skills and inquire about my teachers, but developing my sensitivity has never been the focus. The focus has been learning to live with and manage it. I do not seek books, classes or teachers. I  seek to escape them. For years I could not go into crowds, ride a train, or go to a department store, because my body became overloaded. Feeling and seeing so much overwhelmed me and made me ill. I have learned to focus down and make boundaries, but it does not happen easily. My husband goes to parties alone.

One of my students left an intuitive training class saying, When I came to class, I thought I would give anything to have the skills you have, to see what you see, and be able to do what you do, but now that I understand what it takes, I am very grateful that I am not you!  

Nancy’s Story

Nancy had lots of psychiatric labels when she came to see me; bi-polar and borderline personality to name a few. She was thirty years old, severely overweight and had an attachment disorder that compelled her to phone her father several times every hour. Nancy came for healing at her father’s request.

When she sat down the generator outside the window burst into life, roaring with deafening noise. The button on the tape player refused to stay in the record position, the microwave engaged, the dog began barking and a neighbor knocked on the door. It is not unusual for children with psychic abilities to cause such disruption, but this was a different energy. When I closed my eyes to read for her, I saw the spirit of a large unbalanced man who was sharing her body.

Nancy had been so labeled, treated, medicated and repressed by the medical system that she’d lost all sense of health. We excavated her healthy-self and brought it full blown into consciousness, so she had a frame of reference to begin our work. I spoke about the spirit possession, and asked if she was aware of it.

I have always felt there was an uncontrollably violent part of me, she said, that is living my life. I do things that frighten other people. When it’s happening, it feels like I get pushed aside, as if someone else is doing it. Then I wake up, look around and wonder what happened.

Nancy went away with a new understanding and spiritual perspective which gave her strength and encouragement, but I knew I could not make progress until the spirit was removed.

I have always seen spirits. For some reason, I vibrate with a higher energy frequency, an openness and sensitivity that allows sight into realms that don’t exist for most people. I have been called to remove disruptive spirits from houses and from clients like Nancy in the past. I do it by quieting, closing my eyes, and allowing them to come into vision. I witness their story, all of which plays like a movie inside my head. I am not always successful in this work, but when there is success, the spirit moves on and the experience changes the person’s life for the better. The spirit I saw in Nancy felt large, male and violent. I did not feel that I was strong enough or capable enough to move him out, so I began to research someone who might do it for me. 

I heard about a medical intuitive from a friend, and asked Nancy if she would be interested in going.  After Nancy’s visit, the healer informed me that there was no problem at all. If there were, I would have seen it, she said. Her casual approach and ungrounded confidence led me to believe that she had no skill in that area at all. 

I asked for help from a man who was a healer from the Lakota tradition, but he was full of ego and wanted Nancy to show up for weeks of training before starting the work. That would never happen. I passed on him as well. 

I was walking in downtown Portland with my friend, Cora, when we happened upon Nancy. After she and I exchanged pleasantries, Cora looked troubled. Who was that woman, she asked? She has such a dark energy in her. It feels male and angry, like it’s been with her a long time.  Cora’s words were helpful to me, because it’s easy to doubt myself when I am the only person who sees what I see. I have learned to trust, but there is still the loneliness of a work that is not easy for others to comprehend or share. 

I continued to search for the right person for a full year. I asked a local clairvoyant who is excellent with predictions, but found her uncomfortable with thoughts of possession. I asked a Catholic friend if she knew a priest who was capable, but got no reply. In my frustration, I encouraged myself to do the work, but a wiser part knew that I was out of my depth. This spirit would take a strong masterful personality, not a gentle feminine one.

 My daughter and granddaughter live in an ashram, and mentioned that the Abbot, Swami Chetanananda was returning from a year in Tibet. The term Swami, means teacher and bringer of light in Tibetan Buddhism. I had not met him before, but encouraged Nancy’s father to seek an audience with him and explain the situation. He and Nancy went together and I came later. The Swami is a large bodied man, over six feet tall, who has devoted his life to spiritual practice, and achieved mastery. We talked about spirits and spirituality. He confirmed my vision and agreed to meet with Nancy for three puja’s, or healing rituals, where he would release the spirit. I was extremely grateful, since it is rare for the Swami to attend the healing of an individual.

It is not uncommon in healing for things to get worse before they get better, which is what Nancy reported after the first session. She exploded in anger and was crippled by migraine headaches. During the second puja, the spirit was released and the third brought her back to normal.

Nancy is a different person now. She no longer lives in cloaked avoidance of light, but seeks it. She can function, react normally, is no longer violent, and no longer calls her father for constant assurance.  She is in school, doing well and working two jobs. When the spirit entered, at about age twelve, her own development was arrested. She and I work periodically to enhance her sense of self, and to make sense of many troubled and forgotten years. There is more work for her to do, but that is in the future. For now, she is happy to have joined the world and I am happy for her.

Getting High

Friends and neighbors could not resist the swing we attached to the rafters of our porch. They pulled against sturdy chains, pumping themselves as near the ceiling as possible, back and forth, laughing, sharing stories and working to get higher still. The rest of us sat on porch railings or in the loveseat to cheer them on. That was when we lived in southeast Portland. The swing was one of the great pleasures of the house.  I could tell what kind of day the mail carrier was having, by peeking to see if she stole a moment from her rounds to swing, or if she ignored its waiting invitation and continued on. When winter came the front porch was abandoned, so we put a second swing inside the house. 

My last kitchen was like a hallway, with a playroom for my granddaughter at one end, and a dining room on the other. Many-paned windows saved it from feeling confined. Large connecting bolts screwed through the casing in the kitchen doorway, secured the swing for all weights and sizes. It arched deep inside the kitchen, with views above the refrigerator and high-dwelling shelves. The kids in the neighborhood loved it, while I would orchestrate cooking in dodges and darts to avoid their feet. Sometimes I’d pretend to be slow, so they’d tag me, and giggle with delight. If they were not in the kitchen, I’d use it myself. There is nothing quite like being airborne to break the monotony of chopping potatoes or peeling carrots. A few high kicks in the air and life has a different perspective. Suddenly it’s more important to see how high your feet can soar, than tend the pots and pans that sputter and steam below. 

Our country house has 16 foot ceilings, but oddly, no place for a swing. So, I cut, shoveled and graveled a path over the hill, and into the forest below. Gib climbed to the top of an extension ladder and higher still, into the broad arms of a Douglas Fir, in a heroic effort to provide my swing. He cut away branches, tied ropes around a husky limb, and got himself safely down, all the time looking like a crazed environmental terrorist.

When the light returns and spring invites us out of doors, it is not unusual to trail down in my nightgown, place my tea cup on a near-by stump, wrap eager fingers around the ropes, pull back strong against the hill and become airborne. The release from the earth and the wind in my hair is a perfect way to start the day. It gives me perspective and relieves the pressures of adult life.

Snowbound

Wind howled through the breezeway last night, pelting cedar boughs against the windows of the house, waking me from a sound sleep. The snow started the night before, a few flakes at first in a dull afternoon sky, and then wind-driven eddies around the edges of the house. I watched sharp gusts of snow billow, then swirl and drift to the ground. The naked branches of the trees turned white. The forest beyond, covered with soft white caps as it quietly fell into a darkened night.

Portland does not get many snowstorms, but when she does, they are forecast with a sense of awe and drama one would reserve for the second coming of Christ, or the end of the world. The forecasters call them, ’storm events,’ as if weather needed to be labeled and made bigger than itself. Our east coast and Canadian friends would laugh at this storm in its meager accumulation, but the ice that melts and freezes underneath makes it dangerous and noteworthy.

On a personal level, it marks days of retreat, since our driveway is steep, long and formidable. We read, work on the computer, and gaze from the window. A large island of ice has formed on the pond below. Ducks swim to the ice, stop abruptly, and change direction, seemingly confused by their new confinement. They test the boundary one at a time, and in groups. A few push on top of the ice, stand on one leg and preen, while the geese stay on the bank, search a wind-exposed patch of grass and watch the ducks from a distance. They waddle, honk and survey, as the ducks lift off in unison darkening the sky in great noisy bursts of life.

I mother my husband, Gib, in winter, because he has no understanding of weather. While I was making ice sculptures in Vermont, skiing on Burke Mountain, and thawing the pump to bring water to horses in upstate, New York, he was playing baseball and driving sports cars in Southern California, his wardrobe nothing but sandals, bermuda shorts and tee-shirts. His childhood was spent in sun, so weather is a delight for him, the more severe the better.

The first time we drove to the mountains I put ski pants, flannels, gloves and boots near his suitcase. When we arrived, he had none of them. Where are your winter clothes? I asked in disbelief. He stood before me in a spring jacket, loafers and blue jeans. Oh, those things? I didn’t think I’d need them.  The man will go out in a blizzard with no thought to hat or gloves. The cashmere scarf I bought last year gathers dust in his closet. Last winter he had frostbite and pneumonia, but makes no connection between under-dressing and illness. I have become a militant wife in self-defense, because I’d rather be that, than nurse his enduring respiratory aliments. No matter, Gib loves weather, while I sit with a cup of steaming tea, having fantasies of swimsuits and warm exotic places. I get emails from friends who winter in Hawaii and the Caribbean, and try not to hate them when they send images of suntanned faces holding fruity cocktails near the sea.

The sun is fading now. Another short December day. The radio says a new storm should arrive by Thursday. Gib will be delighted as he bursts through the door with is Rudolph nose and ears to match, his hair swept straight up by savage wind. I’ll put hot soup on the stove and a crisp in the oven, then put a movie in the player like a needle in my arm, in the hope of numbing myself until the welcome herald of spring.