strength – echoesofmyshadows

Have you ever walked past the entryway to a dark alley, the open door to a room with no lights on or underneath an old rambling tree and think or feel like you’ve seen or felt something or somebody close by? Did you get the notion that someone or something was hiding there, watching you? Maybe you wondered if you were to reach out, reach into that darkness, take that little step out of the warmth of the sun or the safety of the light that you’d find it, touch it, feel it?

Have you ever walked past a mirror and not recognize the person looking back at you? Maybe you felt like you knew that person’s eyes, could see inside them and felt like you knew them but that the outside, the exterior was foreign, did you ever feel like you were wearing a suit just a little too big for you, like when you put on your fathers shirt as a boy? Have you ever felt like when someone touched you, you could feel their hands but not their touch? Or maybe at some point if someone touched you it seemed as though you had no skin and their touch hurt even though they hadn’t mean to hurt you, but like you were a solid grouping of raw, unprotected nerve endings, out there, susceptible to everyone, everything, every strange look, every unwelcome glance.

We all have haunts, impressions that have followed us throughout our lives, not all of them are bad, but some are, and they live in the shadows and those dark rooms and behind the trees in the forests and the damp corners of the alleys near our homes. I have learned to live and accept mine, sometimes we get so used to them that they become part of us and established element within our worlds. And sometimes we can convince them to leave, that there is no purpose here for them any longer, even the bad ones can protect us, but eventually if we take ownership we can learn to protect ourselves and even allow ourselves to just be vulnerable, to accept what lies ahead, what lurks where we fear to go. And maybe even find ourselves there, hiding out up in the thick canopy of that tree at the edge of the wood.

When we walk past those empty rooms, we feel the echoes of our shadows, within them are held our greatest fears, our haunts, our innocence and even our greatest desires. Challenge yourself to wander in there and poke around, see what you can find, accept it and welcome it and then celebrate it.

There is an image I can’t seem to get out of my mind; I am standing in the snow at the edge of a wood, the trees are as thick as the shadows and the only sound heard, carried on the bitter cold wind swirling around the back of my neck and off and over the tops of the tall, green pines is that of heavy footsteps in the icy snow.

I can see in the distance not too far off a girl, young and pretty, she stands in the open in a blue and white flowered dress. She doesn’t see me, she doesn’t appear to be cold but I can see her sweet breath crystallize and fade away on the breeze. I recognize her, but not as a young girl, instead I have seen her, known her as a woman, one whose lived a life of struggle, of pain and loss and sickness. But in spite of it she always seemed to be surrounded by light that shown in her eyes, it danced wildly there and in a deeper place too that she held safely, gently, as if it were a small tender puppy.

I want to offer her my coat but she doesn’t seem to be cold, she looks back over her shoulder at me as if knowing I want to help her, but with a look as if to say that she was fine, she smiles and her eyes all but disappear behind her cheeks, it’s a huge and bright smile and it made me feel swell.

Then she suddenly turned back towards the woods and from somewhere in the darkness the hefty, crunchy footsteps came louder, closer. I am afraid but she is not, instead she stands firm, tall and proud. In a moment of sudden quiet, an unkindness of ravens rushed from the trees and flew straight for her, turning at the last instant, she, unfazed and smiling raises her arms in support and celebration of them. She seemed to see the beauty in them as they flock and swarm overhead.

Just then from behind a thickly barked Evergreen the shadow appears in the form of a wolf, its face stern and black, it’s eyes deep and mysterious, its breathe weighty and wafting, it echoes over the field in which the girl stands firmly. My heart skips as the wolf steps out in the direction of her, slowly, methodically. The deep brown, sweaty hair on its shoulders rising and falling as it makes its way to her.

I fear for her, I cry for her, and as the wolf approaches I am confused as she opens her arms in a gesture to suggest her willingness to accept it. The wolf steadily approaches her until it halts just within arm’s reach of her breast. The wolf stands facing her, it’s raspy breath, seems and cold, but she extends her arm and in a slow, gentle manner slides the palm of her small, soft hand along the wolf’s jawline to its chin. Then drops her hand to her side, and something changes, I look at her, she is aged, her skin less soft, her hair thinned and her posture hunched. She glances back at me again over her shoulder and smiles, and her eyes all but disappear behind her cheeks now wrinkled but no less vibrant.

In her eyes I am pulled in and lost, watching a history of her fending off the wolf, she battles whole-heartedly with each attack, sustaining injuries she fights on as she ages all the while smiling as if to say that no matter the wounds, the damage, she wins because she continues to fight and because she appreciates the fight, respects it and trusts it. It becomes her struggle, and though never does she control it she conquers it daily, surviving and living in spite of it, smiling always.

But today seems different; she appears tired, but not beaten. Instead she smiles at the wolf and the wolf lowers its head to her, it seems to respect her. Suddenly she steps to it and together they begin to walk towards the wood, I try and follow them but cannot move, I am not welcome there, not yet.

The two of them walk side by side, companions at rest, reverential partners in the echoes of battle they slowly disappear into the shadows. I fall to my knees and cry, I weep for her and for my loss. When I open my eyes again the moon has risen, and it is quiet but then in the distance, the triumphant call of an owl reverberates among the trees and I know it is her, it is Pennie, she is free from the pain, and she has earned her place away from the fight, she is in the presence of magic, of mystery and ancient knowledge.

Now at night, when I hear the hoot of an owl, I will know it is her, among the animals she loved so much, watching over her puppies, and I imagine her, smiling somewhere beneath the light of the moon, her eyes shining brightly from behind her swollen cheeks.

in remembrance,

Pennie Harrington 1950-2019