From Darkness to Light: Part 4 - Hiding

This entry is a continuation of the sharing of my journey and should be read in sequence.  Part 1 can be found here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

Author's note: It's been months since I've carried on the continuation of recounting my journey.   It wears on me to think it through and I find it takes endurance to type out and relive it as the hardened 16 year old that struggled through it.  It is not without effort that I am trying to plug through it, but I am so very much looking forward to getting past the "darkness" and sharing the light of my experience with you.  Thank you for continued readership.  

Part 4 - Hiding

I startled awake at the sound of a car alarm and collected my surroundings.  At first I didn't recognize the bushes and brick, but seeing the church to my left I too quickly recalled where I was and why I was there.  Any fear I had turned into fury overnight and I woke up with exceptional anger.  The violation from the night before was a horrible cliche.  The very first night I found myself without refuge also brought the finding of every sacred place on me in a drunkard's calloused palm.  

Though the assault lasted only moments, it was a bitter reminder of the full violation that fragmented my very being the previous November.  I will never blog the details of that personal tragedy except in this moment and only to say that what happened the previous night truly enforced in me that there was no "one and done" and if it happened before it could happen again.  I now felt certain that if I couldn't find a friend to stay with on any particular night, me wandering dark streets made me as targetable as a lightening rod in a storm.  I surely understood that since it struck twice in my life, I would remain vulnerable for the rest of this summer unless I ensured my own protection.  

I walked into work that morning and for the first time that summer I let my boss know I couldn't work my shift.  He knew how vital the money was and that if I needed time off, it would be essential that I had it since few things took precedence over income.  I was on my own personal reconnaissance mission and the day's agenda was to scout every place within a walkable radius from my work and find each hidden spot which I could tuck myself into at night.

It was a unique way to view the surroundings I had grown accustomed to.  Covered playground slides became canopies of hidden shelter and if not for claustrophobia may have appealed more to me but remained an option in my mind.  I found many other possibilities in the local area and the pros and cons varied, but the one place in particular that I seemed to feel the most secure with was a vary large pine tree whose heavily laden branches hung all the way to the ground.  I remember pushing a green prickly limb to the side and feeling an actual joy in my heart when I saw the roominess around the trunk.  It would fit all of my things, and most importantly, it would fit me.

It was an odd sensation, being eager for nightfall.  I knew that with this make-do shelter, I could now happily avoid making desperate phone calls and arranging what became dreaded stays at houses that only once felt welcome when I dragged the burden of myself through the doors.  It is difficult to describe and I'm afraid it will come across as selfish, but even idle chatter with another teenager wore on my being.  It could not be all about what I was experiencing and little did I expect that, but I could not help feeling resentment in my heart listening to someone talk about problems with boys or how their parents were being unfair.  In my situation I felt certain that I cornered the market on unfair.  While I was thankful to the few left who continued to open their doors to me, there was a lot of strain on both ends of those remaining relationships and our lives were worlds apart.  I was so thankful to have found my tree and with it some self sufficiency.  

This past summer I went back and photographed it.  It was with love that I revisited the tree and I am not sure how you will view it from an outside perspective, but I still see it and am in awe at its perfection for what my needs were at the time.  This was home to me.  From the outside here, you will see that it is something you would pass by without second thought and how the branches hung right to the floor of the earth.  

This next photo shows the inside of the canopy - my own personal apartment.  It was tall enough to stand under and wide enough to stretch out under. 

 After finding this haven and feeling security that my day's mission was accomplished, I even went to Salvation army and bought a small blanket which I left under the tree and would use to lay over the needles at night.  This arrangement was much more comfortable for me both physically and mentally than continuing to force the burden of my situation upon others.

My first night there I was finally at ease and able to concentrate on how the rest of the summer needed to unfold so that my next "home" would be one with tangible walls.  The plan was not to remain drifting but to save enough money to cover a security deposit  and first month's rent and have some money left over to help pad my adjustment into a part time work schedule once school started.  I needed to find an apartment and finish my senior year of high school with a sense of stability.  I had over a thousand dollars in my purse and the outlook was optimistic.  I would start looking in August, and August was not far.

Time started to move more forgivingly and without dread.  Every day I was closer to where I needed to be, and for the next week every night I went back to my tree.  I realize how shortsighted I was when I think back on it now, but for whatever reason I had not considered the elements.  A downpour of rain proved a major chink in the armor of surrounding pine needles.  More than the wetness, I was alarmed at not being able to hear approaching sounds, as unlikely as they were considering the weather.  Myself and everything I owned, minimal as it was, were damp in the morning.  That was a very long night and one I was not quick to relive.

The next day was part 2 of reconnaissance and I knew I needed an alternate location that I could settle into with the continued forecast of rain.  It didn't take long to find the place I was looking for, although I cringed when I did.  My criteria were specific: it had to be close to work, weatherproof, and fully concealed.  That night just before dark I looked over my shoulder, settled my resolve, and hoisted myself into  one of the donation bins behind the Salvation army.


It was a dark night for me in many ways.  Despite being on top of many clothes and padded things (with the occasional pointed object), I was in a state of discomfort that penetrated my psyche.  I recall questioning the point of it all and whether I had the wherewithal to grow up unaffected or if my spirit would be broken not long down the road.  I was scared of who I could become and wondered who the people once were that staggered out of Neverland and grew into adults that donated clothing without bothering to wash the urine out of it.  What were the landmines in their pasts that were so explosively corrosive, and would my own disrupt me in unthinkable ways?  Another very long night.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of a car door.  Someone was putting bags into the donation bin next to me.  I listened for their departure and then piled bags to the one side of the bin to give me the height needed to pull myself out. I remember the bin was easier to get into then out of and my clambering was very awkward.  Once out, I turned around to make a quick exit and there was an older man who had stopped on the sidewalk and was staring at me in apparent alarm and confusion.  This was not the suburbia he understood he lived in.


Shame and embarrassment were not enough for me to break that gaze and I stared back at him.  Of all the emotions I felt, the most powerful one was blame.  If he did something about this I would blame him, and if he did nothing I would blame humanity in itself.  We were motionless for a moment more and he shook his head and  continued his path.  Maybe he'd stop for an early lunch and tell another old man over coffee what this world was turning into.  The very same thought hung bitter in my mind as well.  

Killing November

Every year I struggle with this and weigh whether it is worth it to be the me I've been created to be.  If you follow my artwork you have seen darkness in it and know that it now predominates in light.  I thank God every day for flooding me with light.  But I still remember the girl I once was and mourn the loss of who I may have been.  November is a horrible month for me.  Its cold seeps into my bones and its memories cling to my skin.

So this is it then.  My once a year vigil to very angry and very broken version of my own reflection.  It is not who you know me as now and I am thankful for that.

To hear my spoken word reading of the poem below, click this *****LINK***** and the audio will play.  You can come back to the page here and read the poem along with the audio.


Killing November

I never know
if I am running from November
or chasing it
but every year I catch it, 
rub its gray face in
its own cold mud
and kill it.

And despite this
despite all this
it resurrects again and haunts me
for thirty dreary days
it stalks me 
senseless,
vicious.

I left my markings in
November's back,
deep ragged tracks.
I didn't know I was
claiming territory.
I didn't know I was
making it mine and that
November would epitomize
a stray bitch of a dog 
I tried to starve
so it comes back and eats me,
my most sacred parts 
it eats, and eats,
and eats.

I kick November in its 
freezing teeth
knock its wind out as I squeeze
and I wait
on edge
for that moment
for that last lingering look
into its asshole annual eyes
where the slate gray fades
to Christmas lights.


Slowly, slowly
my demise unwinds
as I wash November's red
off my hands
then contemplate dead branches
which every year
I mean to collect
so I can build 
a cage to contain
a me I
never chose to be.

From Darkness to Light: Part 3 - Darkening

This entry is a continuation of the sharing of my journey and should be read in sequence.  Part 1 can be found here and part 2 here. 

Part 3 - Darkening

My mother's decision to move on without me was taken as total heartbreak.  I realize that she may have interpreted this from the opposite angle and felt betrayed herself when I didn't come home after two weeks, and it was perhaps in that time that her heart fully hardened toward me and this new direction was taken.  Whatever her rationalization was, I was left with a true and utter sense of rejection and despair.  I considered my father, but he lived far away and deep in the countryside.  I couldn't see uprooting from everything that was familiar to me and finishing my last year in high school in a place full of foreign faces.  Most importantly, I couldn't leave my job.  

I'd have thanked God for my job except that I wasn't raised with God and hadn't given Him consideration in all this.  More on that later.  Having my job at Taco Bell was a staple in my very existence.  It offered almost every meal, a place of structure for me to exist in, and a flow of income.  When I got the job, I never imagined that at16 years old it would become absolutely vital to me.  I had a sympathetic boss who kept me on a full time schedule, allowed me to eat for free, and took home my clothes for me and brought them back the next day smelling like Downy.  I wanted to appreciate my clothes carrying the scent of fabric softener but the irony in it jested at me.  Without pretense, I understood I was not that girl.  

I learned many things.  I learned that I could walk into the locker rooms at the public pool and take a shower, and that if I went as soon as it opened in the morning I could be the first one there and clean everything on me without being seen.  I learned that I did not have to wear the same two outfits and that I could budget $5 a day if I wanted, and get something new from Salvation Army.  That made me feel more normal.  I learned that I hated having days off from work.  I spent a lot of time in the library in those days.  It was free.  It had stimulation.  It had air conditioning.  

My plan became strategic.  Although without a home, I didn't consider myself homeless.  I understood "homelessness" to be a certain thing and I was not this statistic.  The truth was that I couldn't see myself fitting the stereotype.  In my mind, homeless had a paper bag with a bottle in it and slept on park benches.  Homeless sold her body for drugs.  It was something desperate, but it was not me and I wasn't going to allow it to become me.  I became goal minded.  Summer could be as unrelenting as it wanted but I would continue to exist within it, save all the money I could, and by the end of it I would have enough for a security deposit and first month rent and get my own apartment.

Nights were still the bane of me.  I went into summer with a long list of volunteers who didn't mind me spending a night.  Many were crossed off because they never returned my calls, some said their parents wouldn't allow it, and some were just too far for me to walk to and then walk to the other edge of town the next day to get to work in time.  It whittled to maybe 5 people I was rotating through.  I saw the trepidation growing in each and understood the hesitancy.  I was calling too often, needing too much.  I think each worried that it would get to the point where they would be the only option I had left and that I wouldn't leave.  It was a commitment they were not prepared to make, and a guilt they didn't want to harbor once they could no longer help me.  


One July night I was situated at a friend's house who's mother was semi-absent, semi-present in his life.  He had not anticipated she would come home that night and we bargained on it being safe for me to stay there.  She came home unexpectedly and I hid in his laundry pile for hours until he could sneak me out the door.  I ran the first block, feeling relief that I was out of the laundry pile and remained undetected by his mother.  When I stopped running the true realization sank in.  It was the middle of the night, and there was no one I could call at this hour.  There was no place for me in this darkness, except within the darkness.  I wished it would just swallow me.


I walked and walked.  Sleep was far from my thoughts.  I was hyper-alert and every sound seemed to stalk me.  I had heard footsteps behind me and had the inclination not to look, but I looked anyway.  Amazingly, it was a girl I worked with briefly at my first job.  She and I never connected back then but never had a reason not to.  We were clearly both relieved at the appearance of each other and to have someone to walk with, and neither of us asked why we were out at this hour or where we were going.  We weren't going anywhere. 


We were on a brighter stretch of road and that was the last moment I felt safe just because of street lights.  As if out of the air, we heard footsteps jogging up behind us, and even as I turned around he was right upon us.  A man reached out to me as he went passed us and yanked my breast hard, palming it in its entirety and shaking it like a boy with a snow globe before letting go of me.  The force of him pulling my breast with the motion of him running past jolted me forward and I almost fell.  He called "Pretty nice" over his shoulder as he went passed us, then stopped in the parking lot of a gas station just 30 feet away.  I could still smell his alcohol in the air.  


Hayra's mouth hung.  I saw shock and terror on her face and knew she was my mirror.  The man turned to us and slurred out "I'm sorry.  I don't know what got into me.  You see a nice round titty like that and you just have to grab it".  I didn't believe his sorry, but I believed the smile he had on his face as he walked back toward us.  I have no grand testimony of bravery.  These moments are times of necessary action and foresight, but more so they are times of paralysis and I don't care what you say you would have done because instincts have a tendency to seize before springing into action.  I heard myself say "You should leave" but when I spoke he quickened his pace and was upon us again.  I am very ashamed to say this, but in truth I admit that I hoped to my very core that he would reach for her.  I didn't want it to be me.  I understood too clearly the violation and did not want to live through it again.


With one hand he again grabbed and jostled my breast and with the other hand he reached up under the dress I was wearing and clutched everything I had all at once and shook hard.  I felt my whole body was moving but in separate motions.  As he let go he laughed and said "Still nice" and ran off.  I heard yelling behind me.  An attendant from the gas station had come outside and was calling to us in alarm and shouting that he called the cops.  I ran toward him and realized that the girl I was with had run the opposite direction.  Maybe I knew why she ran.


I sat in the gas station in total fear of the cops coming, and in more panic of them leaving.  I didn't want to face the night again, but I was very afraid of the cops learning that I had no place to belong.  I told the officer I lived at my old address and that I didn't have a curfew.  He assured me that as far as my parents and I should be concerned, my curfew in the city was 11pm and I shouldn't be out anywhere walking after that.  He was fatherly in his own way.  Stern but compassionate.  He took down the police report and I thought he would leave me there but he had me get in the cruiser and he took me back to the old apartment.  I told him my parents were sleeping and my heart cried out in silent relief when he did not walk me to the door but watched for me to go in.  I went into the apartment hall and waited for him to drive away before I stepped out quietly again.  

There would be no more wandering at night.  I could only think of hiding.  I walked to the nearby church and although I didn't believe or not believe in God, I believed in other's belief and fear of God and I felt if there was any place where I could be safe, it would be at the church.  It had a small brick wall with lined hedges and a tall monument, which I photographed today for reference.  I went behind here and sat stiff and alert, crying for daylight.  In the morning I would find every possible safe haven where I could be unseen, and I'd memorize its location.  I didn't wear another dress for the rest of that summer.  

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Part 4 is now written and can be found here.

From Darkness to Light: Part 2 - Drifting

This entry is a continuation of the sharing of my journey and should be read in sequence.  Part 1 can be found here.  

Part 2 - Drifting

I didn't make the decision to leave my mother until after I'd already left.  If you'd asked me the day before, I had no plans of uprooting, no cagey eyes.  Living in the apartment was akin to being on a roller coaster where you just want to puke or get off.  Preferably both, but at my age I thought I was harnessed in and along for the ride whether I chose it or not.

The morning I left, I had full intentions of staying gone.  For a couple weeks, at least.  Gone for good was a dreamer's notion and although in theory it sounded like the exact rebellion I aimed toward, I understood that it was not within possibility for me as a 16 year old to extract myself fully from an adult's care.  I would stay away long enough for us to both realize each other's absence, become our ages again, and grow to need each other.

As soon as I got to school that morning I went to the locker room and hit up the lost and found.  I left the pajamas I was wearing there in place of two pairs of clothes.  I was just an afterthought away from almost not taking the hoodie I grabbed from the bin.  I figured I wouldn't need something heavy in the summer weather and that carrying it would be a burden, later to realize how the sweatshirt would become so very essential to me and that hindsight was truly my friend that day.

I had plans.  It was right at the final days of the school year and I tried connecting with as many people as I could and took names, numbers, addresses, and written directions.  I kept a small journal with all of this information so that I could make calls and arrangements for different places to stay each night as I navigated my way through what I anticipated would be the next couple weeks as a transient teenager.  This is an image from that exact journal, names blurred.  As you read on you will see why I blurred them, and also why I stopped keeping track of where I stayed.  In the end it didn't matter, as long as I stayed somewhere.

The first week it was easy.  I had no trouble bunking in with friends and felt very free.  I tried to stay with someone new each night, because I didn't want to be a burden on anyone and I wanted it to be as simple as a sleepover without dragging a weighted concern into their homes.  The matter of hygiene was a challenge which I really had not given proper consideration.  When it is simple all your life to shower, you realize quickly that it becomes much less a normal thing to be showering at other people's houses, and especially houses of families that are not familiar with who you are.  Friends didn't mind but parents had questions.

One day in particular I was still in the bathroom and I could hear the girl's mom asking her about me.  My friend disclosed that I left my mother and didn't have a place to stay.  I heard the clear sense of alarm in the woman's voice, expressing fear that she was harboring a run-away and strongly felt I needed to go back home.  It was startling, to be considered a run-away.  I hadn't run away, I was pushed out the door in what felt like a very mutual agreement between my mother and I.  When I left my friend's house that day, I crossed her name out of my journal and understood clearly that this person no longer fell into the category of "Places I Can Stay".  The list had already thinned.

I started to realize that despite the long list of people who offered their help, turning this into a reality was much more of an inconvenience than anticipated.  I worked at Taco Bell and would make calls from work each day trying to secure a place to go each night.  It was before everyone had cell phones, and many friends were out all day or hard to reach.  The second week was much more difficult and I could sense that I was an imposition.  People were realizing that when they said "Sure, here's my number" that they were signing up for more than they actually wanted to commit to.  It was coming time for me to go back home and I could see that clearly.  I knew my mother must be getting to that turning point as well.  I missed the smell of her perfume that lingered when she would brush by me.  I missed the sound of her high heals clicking on our kitchen tiles.  And I missed knowing that even if we weren't as close as we used to be, that she was still sleeping in the bedroom below me.  I was ready to go back to her.

Two things happened the next day.  I was walking to Taco Bell and while considering how I would handle my return home, I heard my mother's muffler.  Looking up, I could see her little red Honda driving toward me and   for just more than a moment I imagined she had been out searching for me.  I pictured her combing up and down the neighborhood for signs of me and that we were on edge of a remorseful reunion. She pulled along the side of the road and slowed down.  While she passed me she had the same look in her eyes that she did just before she slapped me the day I left, and she shoved her hand out the window with her middle finger thrust up in the air at me, an angry red finger nail topping it off.  She hit the gas again and drove away, her muffler screaming.

In that moment my entire being just cringed.  I was so tired.  I was tired of the two outfits I had worn interchangeably the last two weeks.  Tired of summer and its unrelenting heat.  Tired of breakfast, lunch, and dinner all chosen from the Taco Bell menu.  I was tired of needing and tired of others being tired of me needing.  In my mind I soothed myself  with "one more week".  One more week and she would be ready for me to come home.  I could drift another week, despite the exhaustion in my heart.  Perhaps even two weeks if it came to it.

I could not hang onto that notion for long because the second thing that happened that day was my sister coming into Taco Bell.  Lauren was 18 and had joined the army and would be leaving.  She told me my mother was moving into a studio apartment, and that I should go to the apartment and take whatever I wanted to keep since mom wouldn't be home that night.  She said to take my mouse.  My mouse.  Corey had been the very last thing on my mind.  In that moment I could not think about the mouse any more than I could think of this pill the size of my past that I would choke on before getting the chance to digest.  My mother was moving without me.  She turned the page on my chapter and was over it.

That night I went back to the apartment for the last time and stood at my bedroom door.  The room smelled heady, my incense still retaining a musky thickness in the air.  My bedroom was in an attic and the heat along with my heart throbbing in my ears were two combined sensations that literally made me nauseous.  I looked at all my things.  Toys I had since I was little.  The framed picture of me coaching my cheerleading squad.  Ceramics I had made, sketches I had drawn.  Up until that time I had felt that every fiber I was woven from was marked by these possessions I had accumulated and they defined who I had grown to be.  They were physical proof of the girl who once existed and my link to believing I could be that person again, and now they were being taken from me.  I was unraveling.  I tried not to consider whether she would donate them or just throw them out because I knew the answer already.  She threw me out and I expected no further consideration for my things.  I thought of my mother's message, that I was to take what I wanted.  What could I possibly not want of these childhood comforts and tangible memories I had collected all my life?  And take where?  Fingering as many of my things as I could, I imagined the word "mine" just bleeding from them.  Draining out.  I dropped tears on everything as a final mark of territory, shoved my bear in my back pack and hoped my mouse would be dead already.

Corey's cage was down the hall.  He was alive.  Someone had filled his water but I could see that at some point the food ran out and there was no effort to buy more.  I wished he had died so that I could blame my mother for it, rather than my final action deciding his fate.  I took him out in the backyard, pulling his mouse hut out of his cage and setting it on the grass with him inside.  I waited for him to realize he was free but he just stayed frozen inside the hut.  I wished I had a hut.

The next morning I walked past the apartment on the way to work and since my mother's car was gone I went in the back yard to Corey.  He was still in the same place.  I pulled the hut right off from on top of him and threw it out.  Tough world for a domestic mouse and I resented his fear because I shared it with him.  I hoped we could both trust our own instincts.  I hoped we weren't as small as we felt.  

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Part 3 can be read here: http://themidnightorange.blogspot.com/2011/08/from-darkness-to-light-part-3-darkening.html 

From Darkness to Light: Part 1 - Leaving

The night of my fifteenth birthday I lay in bed the same as always.  Unable to fall asleep.  Waiting for my mom and step dad to come in.  With total lack of haste they eventually came to my room, their heads just above the edge of my bunk and both smiling at me but serious.  I hated serious.  My mom told me that I was 15 and too old to be tucked in, and that meant tonight and every night after.  She laughed and so I did too, trying to untie the joke.  They walked away and left the light on.  I think back on that now and believe my mind has lied to me - that it could not have been my reality to be tucked in up to that age.  I think of my life.  How once my mother cried when I wouldn't eat my vegetables, then later when I would not leave her.  A canyon parted my fifteen year old self from the sixteen year old one that emerged in the aftermath of the separation.

When my family was still tact, we lived within a balance of dysfunction and it worked for us.  We were poor but not needy.  We at times heated our home with a kerosene heater and our own breath but there was love.  We weren't the Cratchit family by any measure.  I'd seen vases thrown and smash into diamonds just inches from my step dad's head.  And I'd seen worse.  In the end the pieces were always put back together, until our always ran out and then they weren't.  Not long into being 16, the divorce was final.  My mom, sister and I moved out and my step dad and baby brother remained at the home, along with my youth.

It was the middle of my junior year in high school.  In our new apartment with Pepto-Bismal pink walls there were many inconsistencies, a few addictions, and rare boundaries.  All three of us were the same age in that apartment.  Tuck-me-in-Dana was gone.  I had no new label, I was too inconstant in this state of rapid change.  Mother Uncensored was all the rage for the first week until it stopped being cool and started to be startling.    Life was very real and very raw then, and while my sister emerged into a strong-minded and fending young women, I tried my very best to be defiant.  I was vulnerable to many bad choices with the freedom that I had, and because I felt very angry at my mother I used that freedom to try to hurt her with my choices.  Each followed the next but never reached her notice.

Regarding my mother, it cannot be left unsaid that this period in our lives was a very bad time for all of us.  I do not wish to paint my mother in a darkened hue, and can only say that this is a woman who has crawled out of her own past with battle wounds far deeper than many would experience over multiple lifetimes.  The end result is that she carries emotional and psychological scars that cripple her judgement at times.  While I feel we are all accountable for our own actions, I am looking forward to the day that those responsible for harming my mother face our God and realize their own accountability and judgment.

By the end of my school year we were all figments of our former selves.  The morning before finals there was a fight between my mom and I.  In all that time I never learned to stop defending my step father.  I don't know why I did, he was gone.  There were words that burned more than her hand print on my cheek.  To be very clear, me being slapped in the face is not a bleeding heart story.  Worse has happened in the world, and in my world also.  It was the offense of the gesture and the face she made before and after she did it that carried the real impact.  I left that morning, pulling my wet pajamas off the bathroom floor and dressing myself in them while being bossed down the apartment stairs.  I walked to school that morning wearing tangled hair, my mother's hand print on my face, and my backpack.  I recall vividly considering the sun.  How it shone oblivious to circumstance, or perhaps in spite of it.  I stared into it until all my eyes saw where white, and I swore in my heart that I would never go back to her.

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Updated:
The continuation of my journey can be found here: http://themidnightorange.blogspot.com/2011/08/from-darkness-to-light-part-2-drifting.html

Wanderlust

     When I was a little girl, my parents took us to a private beach.  I remember walking the edge of the shoreline very aware of the beauty just below the surface.  I was as easily distracted then as I am now, and with my family's site just behind me I followed the tide's edge along the unending beach ahead of me.  It was a Siren, and within its song I felt safe.  I could hear everyone's voices, until with distance the ocean got louder and my family got quieter.  Eventually the waves were the only sound.  I felt safe still.  I could look over my shoulder and see our site on the beach.  I wandered further, eventually realizing I was really alone.  I had an understanding that I was undetected and in a pocket of freedom that I may not experience again for a long while, and I continued on and away.  

I don't know how far I went, but I was small and it felt far.  There was no view of our site, no sound of my family.  Over my shoulder was the long line of beach that I left behind me.  And we know how this story ends, do we not?  I heard his voice before I saw him, and so I stopped and waited for my father to reach me.  It is odd, but I recall feeling elation during his long approach.  He was running toward me and I felt it was like one of those reunions where people run reaching into each other's arms.  But when he reached me I saw his fear and anger and any peace or sense of freedom that I accomplished in the time I wandered was quickly diminished.  

I have recollected on this experience a lot over this past week.  I believe that those who know me, or have a sense of me through my work can see that I am a woman of faith.  Faith does not always have harps playing quietly in the background, and those who walk with God know that we can also walk away from Him.  I don't know how it happened or when or why, but I am sad that it happened.  Somehow I am that child again, fully aware of where my Father is and in the pretense of comfort and amidst life's distractions, I have wandered without meaning to.  I thought I knew how to get back but am so sorry and embarrassed that I have spent so much time forfeiting the privilege of communing with my holy God.  Within that humiliation I have truly lost my way.   I feel my life has become a shell and in quiet moments when I put my ear to it I cannot hear God any longer.  Only the rise and fall of the tide.  I need Him to find me and carry me home.  

I was led to write this is because I have to journey backward and rewalk the shoreline so that I can meet my Father there.  I now realize that I have never shared my testimony with you.  On my site, it reads "From Darkness to Light: An artist's journey through sculpture and healing" but I have only illustrated those things to you via sculpture and not taken the time to share my own journey with you.  I hope that in sharing it I can come to a point of catharsis, rediscovery, and reunion with God.  I don't know what journey you all think I have been on or what darkness you feel I have come from, but it is laid on my heart to share that story with you and I am almost ready to do so.  The journey backward is one that I sense will be both extensive and exhaustive for me, but I realize that it is the beginning of my journey forward as well.  I am asking God for both courage and fortitude to share that story, and am thankful to know that my God answers prayer, and I believe that despite the distance I am feeling from Him, he will answer this prayer.   For those who want to take that walk with me...  I thank you, I feel you, and I have love for you.   

"Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, O, take and seal it,

Seal it for thy courts above."

 -  taken from the Hymn, "Come Thou Fount  of Every Blessing"

Marking the Quiet Passing of a Day - In Memory of Christopher

Those who are familiar with my work are familiar with a very bright and brilliant little boy who left our earth much, much too soon at the dawning age of 8 years old.  Christopher died unexpectedly on the first day of summer in 1990 and both his life and death left an immeasurable impact on my own life and how I would later deal with learning to grieve my childhood friend and creating artwork which could honor his legacy.  To learn more about our story, go here.

While I've shared with Chris's family what has unfolded in my artistry and how through Chris I've been able to connect with thousands of grieving families and offer a message of comfort and healing, I have not yet made them a sculpture as it seemed it would be somewhat of a magnum opus for me.  I came up against artist's block when trying to conceptualize a design, and for that reason up until this last week I had not committed to sitting and creating this important legacy piece for them.  I felt in my heart that when the time was right I would be led to create.

With Christopher's angelversary up and coming, I knew the timing had come upon me to present his family with this gift but I still could not climb over my own artists block to create the "right" sculpture.  Finally it came to me that I needed a closeness to him where I could sit in his quiet and feel his inspiration, so on Friday I journeyed to his graveside with my journal, blanket, clay, and camera.

Christopher's grave site is under the canopy of  a large conifer.  While sitting with him it brought a very profound and favorite memory to the forefront of my mind, and it is truly my most cherished memory of us.  Chris and I had the most chemistry when we bickered usually, but reflecting on this memory I know that it is one that God set aside for me to later relive and reflect on.  Our class went on a field trip to go apple picking at the orchards.  That day Christopher sat with me on the bus and he did something unexpected and tender.  He put his head on my shoulder, right on my shoulder cap and so it was bony and very uncomfortable for both of us to sit like that but he left it there and I sat as still as possible so not to discourage him.  It was a moment that solidified to me how close we were and I hoped we'd never reach the farm so we could stay like that all afternoon. On that bus ride I felt that we loved each other in the purest way that two children could, gender disregarded.

Later Chris stayed near me in the orchards.  Christopher was so very small, and I pulled the branches downward and he reached up for his apples to pick them.  When I close my eyes, I can still see the memory of his hands splayed with the sun behind them.  The moment I learned of his death, that was the exact image that I thought of.  Christopher, in his smallness, reaching for his apples with sunlight glowing in his fingers.  Despite the bittersweetness of the memory, when I think of that day I refer to it in my mind as the Harvest because I think it redirected and redefined what had grown between us.

When I went to Chris's gravesite for inspiration, I genuinely had thought I would be sculpting a family sculpture for him.  Being there with him, underneath his tree, and thinking of our defining memory together, a much different piece came to unfold in front of me.  Above are some photographs of my quiet time with Chris.  Below is the actual sculpture that I created and shipped to his family today, along with an album containing 30 letters from friends that Christopher has made all across the world.  His family will be floored to read them and see how far reaching Chris' legacy is.

Harvest

Today we remember Christopher.