§ ...a beckoning candle

T he gentle rains came.  Darkness fell.  With vision, I inspected the surroundings outside the window and listened to the drops of much needed moisture as they hit the window pane.  The soft, gilded glow from the street lamp created a saffron-colored mist in the air.   The bright prisms of the drizzle against the glass slowly slithered down, down and melded into its neighboring stream.  I felt peace within me.  I seemed to search for the beckoning candle from afar; wanting to hold on to the tranquility and serenity I wished to caress within my being.  My reverie remained as I then observed a likeness of my younger self in the mirrored reflection.  I was youthful.....  

M y sister and I were in our room.  We were giggling as only two girls who shared secrets with each other could.  Sitting on our bed, rumpled and messy, we rolled with laughter at some unknown situation from the distant past.  I enjoyed the short time from long ago; long lost 'til this very moment.  I smiled at the memory; silently sniggering at that instant moment.   As the image faded from view, all too soon, my muse was interrupted:  the youthful me was now a young, new mother of an infant daughter.  I held the bundle in my arms and marveled at the perfect form I had created.    Her tiny hands, how they were flailing from the fleece blanket as I grabbed to feel the warmth of my prize for being a good person here on earth.  A young gentlemen came to my side.  Dark,  handsome, and smiling largely as he stood by me and placed his strong hand on my shoulder, in silence.  He smiled down at the two of us.  He was my husband of one year.   I closed my eyes and remembered.

*D rifting scents from the open door brought me back to real time.   As I perked up and realized where I actually was, the reflections of myself in the window, all too quickly, had disappeared.  In the distance the sound of thunder calmed me and I once again viewed the outdoor storm from within.   The soft, delicate fragrance of pine hit me as a recurrent image of myself flashed on the gridded glass panel;  the rain-spotted window.  As before, I was a young mother.  This time there were two children.  A strawberry blond girl and a young, toe-headed, boy.  Both were pre-teens and it was summertime in the Colorado Rockies.  The family was on a weekend camping trip.  With a pitched tent and a camper trailer, two elders were with us....my parents.   My silver haired mother was stepping from the trailer with a tray of food to be prepared while my father, nearly bald and dressed in hunter's garb, was tending the pre-dawn embers.  The smoke from the campfire was filtering through the whispering pines and a low lying early, sunrise, misty, haze lingered... the strong odor of coffee brewing on the now glowing fire awakened us.  Soon a whiff of sizzling bacon in the cast iron skillet surrounded our little covey in the woods as we all chipped in to prepare the hardy meal to satiate our over-night fasting.  The lake, just feet away from our encampment, was sparkling like jewels under the morning daybreak.  The cotton like clouds lazily made their path across the cerulean sky.  The songs of birds could be heard, the dew was gently falling from the evergreen needles.  Chipmunks danced and scurried around us in anticipation of a tossed treat from one of our plates.  Family and the closeness to nature was pacifying.  Behind me, a snap of a fallen tree branch alerted me.  As I turned around, into view came a seven point bull elk.  His majestic stance was awe inspiring.  The light of day gave way to his lustrous, brown, gentle, cautionary eyes sparkling with a gleam of a single solitary chocolate diamond.

I turned back from the distraction and like a dreamscape, everything was gone.  My parents, in reality, have passed on from this life.  Our two children are now adults.  The slow moving trickles of the rain on the window turned to tears streaming down my cheeks as I looked into my reflection.  It's only my husband and myself, together growing old.  My hair is now silver as my mother's.  There is a slight baldness on my man's head.  Life has been full.  It's come a full circle.  The trance was broken when our dinner was ready.  The rain continued into the late hours of the evening.  With a full belly, and a cozy, dry home, I can say I slept in a joyous reverie of slumber after a relaxing evening.  And I woke up the next morning to live again.  A new dawn, a new day.

*photo shared is of Trapper's Lake in Northwest Colorado [a favorite camping area when I was younger and living in Colorado]

§ I dreamed a dream of days gone by....

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HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL THE MEN IN YOUR LIFE!!!



SHADOW SHOT SUNDAY
[there ARE leg shadows in the photo]



[my dad...top row, to the right of the 'coach']


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SUNDAY'S SUMMARY

For my summary this week, it's all about my dad [IT CONTINUES TO HAUNT ME]---

It was two in the morning, the room was stuffy and humid. As the ceiling fan whirled above my head, giving me little relief, I was awakened by a dream. A dream still so vivid in my mind as I tossed and turned trying to compose myself and relax, trying desperately to return to my dream. A realism that it would be nearly impossible to go back and pick up where the dream left me wide awake and wondering what it all meant to me and how and why I had dreamed such a dream…

A faint knocking came from the living room. I was in the kitchen, cleaning, after our nighttime meal, and I was wiping off my hands of foamy soap residue, to dry them, and get to the door. The evening light was fading in the west. Darkness was coming over the landscape. I peered out the lightly draped, framed window from the room and could see only silhouetted tree branches as the sky was slowly turning a dusty, indigo blue. The stars danced between the black toothpick-like arms of the tree’s shadow. Erik was in his own room, playing his invented games. Irene was whispering in a deep, hushed, conversation on her phone that we gave her for the holidays just days ago. The television was on; no one was watching. The room itself was lighted in an incandescent golden glow from the table lamp on the sofa’s side arm. I made my way; closer to the slated overlay of the foyer now. I reached for the brass knob to open the door and it turned on its own. Startled, I took a step backward, nearly stumbling over the carpeting and beveled woodwork separating the floor tiles, unknowing who or what made it turn. I waited in silence; my heart racing now. The outer door frame became visible as someone or something maneuvered the works. The heavy, imported, mahogany, door was now ajar.

From out of nowhere my father appeared. He smiled hugely, showing his tobacco stained teeth and reached out and wrapped his virile, heavily haired arms around me. Though somewhat startled at the sudden appearance of him, my heart slowly calmed down with the comfort of his hug. As my eyes opened from over my father’s shoulder. another came through the door. His sister, my favorite aunt, entered through the doorway, hugely smiling her greeting. She walked past the two of us. Dad and I were still in a very mysterious and atypical embrace. You see, my father, as I grew to adult, hardly ever showed emotional and familial gestures of such kind. The lingering clinch was comforting and confusing me at the same time.

While Aunt Mary made her way behind us and setting down on the sofa, still smiling broadly, another person showed up. But the body was partially hidden from me. I couldn’t see just who it was. Was it my mother? Was it a cousin? I can’t tell you. I woke up just as my father and I said our hellos and he released himself to turn and make his way near his sister.

I think I would have really enjoyed the ensuing conversation that lay in store after we all settled down and began catching up on lost time. My father passed away just over seventeen years ago. My mother, if it was her that was coming in through the doorway, left us behind twenty one years ago now and my aunt, well she recently passed from the earth; some seven years since her death.


The meaning of this dream? Since I finally did return to a state of relaxation and continued sleep, I never did come to terms of the situation from that that awakened me…nor did I dream again before I woke for the day hours later. But the picture of it all remained in my mind so vividly, it was like it was the real thing. Was I trying to say goodbye to them all? Do I still sorely miss them? Am I now trying to rekindle what we had before they left me and my family? Was the dream a way of coping with the loss; though so very long ago? I really cannot say one way or the other. All I know is that I felt compelled to write it down and make note of what I saw; what I remembered.