Posted on Apr 24th, 2008
by 
Glynnda
It was Mother's Day and the phone rang. If I trace Addie Mae’s presence to her first guiding moment, I think this is where it all began. Not that I knew it then. All I knew that Sunday afternoon was that my father, whom I hadn't seen in seventeen years lay dying, a heart attack, his kidneys or the drinking—whatever we chose to believe. My Uncle just wanted to let us know. We didn't have to come. He understood, but the doctors were saying Dad only had days, maybe hours to live and if we wanted to say good-bye, this was our chance. I knew right away I had to go to Pennsylvania.
My brother decided the same later that evening so we got up early the next morning and drove down the cascading spring-soaked highways in anxious anticipation. We could hear each other's hearts pounding as we walked into the room, looked at his frail, unconscious body; shared hellos and hugs and warm remembrances with relatives we hadn't seen since we were young and living in our thorny childhood. We were all herded into some small, windowless room with the doctor and social worker and priest, asked to sign papers. No we didn't want dialysis. No resuscitate order, either. Let him go. Get this over with. Relieved to relinquish his care to us, his brother left and Bryan and I stayed with this sleeping drifter, among the many ghosts his presence stirred. I placed my hands on him and practiced the healing arts I had learned. Therapeutic Touch and Reiki. I willed God's forgiving energy into him, cleared his aura, soothed his brow. A few hours later he was still alive and it was time to leave.
The next day I drove the two and a half hours alone back to the hospital and put my hands on him once again and prayed. I don't remember what for but I know it wasn't to save his life. I think it was really more to save his soul. To offer peace. I didn't want him dying so sad. Didn't want him dying before I understood. So every day I returned to this inconsolable place, despite my family's objections that he deserved neither my help nor my consideration. They were right, of course. But he wasn't a bad man. Just a weak one. Afraid of life and its obligations. Trapped in the memories of his own scarred childhood and like so many others, left without the courage to overcome it. Then, one day almost three weeks later the seas of our blustery past parted and my father opened his eyes. It was as simple as that. For the time being, we had begged off death.
My other brother had come in from the coast and was visiting Dad for the first time that day. In many ways we were meeting a stranger. We no longer needed him to be a father. No longer expected anything from his arms. Daddy had died years before. We were now meeting the man he had been. The man my mother had married. After initial clumsiness, trying to touch each other's eyes without seething discomfort, we talked about our lives and the turns each had taken. I think we even laughed a bit. A couple weeks later, as I was checking him out of the hospital he turned to me and said, "I just want one year with you kids. To try and make it up somehow. That's all I ask." The doctors told me he could die at any moment.
He was back in the gaunt room he rented in a nice woman's house with a Vietnam vet who was also estranged from his family. Before my father arrived home I would sleep in his cramped hideout alone. I used to hear Jim standing outside the door at night, imagining. I wasn't afraid because like my father, he wasn't a bad man, only lonely and I was a light that had entered his dark world. He was happy when my father returned because not only did he have a friend back in the house, another hopeful life force but now a woman who didn't know his own truths was making him spaghetti.
That next year was a majestic journey. We shared our July birthdays and I helped him pick out a Tweety Bird doll for my mother's birthday in October. Everyone in the town he lived in got to know me as his "angel." He spent Thanksgiving at my brother's girlfriend's, dancing with her mother, which I think almost killed him right there. But he was determined to have fun. Determined to spend every moment he could with his kids like somehow he could change the past with it. Christmas he was back at Andrea's, wearing funny reindeer antlers, fiendishly unwrapping presents like the little boy he truly was. He gave Guy his old watch that he had inscribed With Love On Christmas From Dad. He did the same for Bryan, on the blade of a Swiss army knife for fisherman because he knew how Bryan loved to fish. He gave me a large brass hourglass to remind me of what he had forgotten.
It was tough, going back and forth between New York and Pennsylvania. He was demanding of my attention and time and it wore me to the bone. I cried a lot, even prayed for him to die so I could reclaim my eroding life. But as hard as it was, slowly, grizzled, raw wounds were healing. My brothers and I talked more often and more intimately. I could see the burden of their own childhood disappointments evaporate as they glimpsed their imperfect but loving father through more tolerant adult eyes. Even my mother, bitter from decades of broken promises could notice a light returning to our family and was proud of our compassion. Every day my father asked me to "give him the stuff," meaning touch him with the healing energy I told him passed from God through me. He was convinced it was keeping him alive.
He got his year. And I recovered my father. He died two days shy of Mother's Day the following May. He had hung on with me as I fought to get him into a hospice to ease the pain the hospital would not, surround him with people who would let him die at peace, in dignity. The last conscious moment we shared was as we were arriving at the VA hospice and I was filling out forms, talking to workers, doing my job. In the swirl, as he lay on the stretcher, waiting to be taken up to his room, he squeezed my hand that was resting near his. He couldn't talk but his teary eyes said it all. Thank you, Glynn. I love you. Redeemed, he died the next day.
“He’s already gone,” the nurse explained. “His soul is off visiting the people he loves, getting ready to die.” I was thinking how empty the room felt even though he was still breathing. “Go have lunch, honey,” she offered, brushing her kind hand across my shoulder. I kissed by father on the forehead with big pink lips and walked out into the quiet sunshine. As I sat alone, clinging to a beer and turkey sandwich, I felt his spirit leave the earth, swallowed by the unknown. I raised my glass, toasted his life and cried. When I arrived back at the hospice, his door was closed and three nurses came running up on me like I might hurl myself onto a pyre to be with him. But as sad as I was, he was where he was supposed to be. And so was I. I went into that stillness that only death brings and said good-bye.
As I was leaving, lying on a bench next to my car was a small, worn book, The Call of the Canyon. I sat down and leafed through its weathered pages. The spine cracked when I opened it like it hadn’t been held for so long. I turned to the first sentence. “What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West?” I tossed it into the back seat. I cried the entire drive home from Pennsylvania, breaking into song when I Can See Clearly Now danced through the radio. I was free. He was free. And I had done what I knew was right. I don't think the sun ever looked brighter or more promising. The next morning I woke into the warm, fleeting voice of an old, Southern, African-American woman. It wasn’t what she said but the truth somehow locked within her simple words that shook me. For a brief moment, I understood everything. And then it was gone. As sleep escaped and the dream and its memories evaporated, she showed me a mountain I would climb. I never saw her face but there was something familiar in her presence. I woke abruptly to a pounding heart, the smoldering night flecked momentarily with gold. Only the fragrance of her words remained.
I immediately jumped into a consulting assignment. It was supposed to be an easy gig. A civilized three days a week quickly turned into a five to six day a week grind, hungrily devouring ten-twelve-fourteen hours a day. Laced with the gruesome occasional all nighter, offices filled with unhappy people and a growing dissatisfaction with advertising, I quit after six months, miserable. I assumed my good deed would result in good luck. Instead, my relationship with George was a mess. We barely knew each other anymore, let alone liked each other. I ate badly and drank too much and had come to the unfortunate realization that the road I had spent my life unconsciously stumbling down was not only at an end, it had been the wrong road. I ran away from home.
I didn’t know why I chose Sedona. I believe it chose me. Sedona's like that and only those who are called there will really understand its bewitching song. But two weeks later I was on a plane with no plan, nowhere to stay, no friends, no reason. Fifteen minutes outside Phoenix airport my rented car blew a flat and I limped onto an access road that thank God, hugged a small motel. I climbed over the fence with my bags, dragged my exhausted, disgusted body into the lobby and checked in for the night. Alamo told me they'd have another car by eight. I laid in bed and finally read the small book from the bench the day my father died. It was an old story about a woman from New York and her journey to sanguine canyons, to the same canyons I was being called to myself. And even though our reasons for following their call were different, we shared the same fearsome leap of faith. At morning's blush, I hit the road for the two-hour drive north. As I was swallowed into the beautiful red rocks of Sedona, Arizona I could almost hear them welcoming me home, inviting me into a secret. I bought the local paper and spent the day looking for a place to live. By day's end I was depressed at what I had seen, convinced I had made a terrible mistake. I crept into a lovely little B&B and cried. What the hell was I doing here!
The last ad circled in the paper just happened to be up the road from where I was staying so I called and met with a man named Wally who was everything you'd expect a man who works the land to look like. Wally was caretaker of the property and Mark, the guy who owned the pretty Spanish-style house, was renting out the main bedroom suite with French doors that overlooked a hummingbird, flower-filled garden. Wally also just happened to be into the nutritional arts and knew how to nurture just about everything. He was the one I called when I found a tarantula crawling across my floor. The name I screamed as a family of angry Javalinas chased me across the cultivated lawn. He brought me fresh juice in the morning and salads at night and taught me how to listen to whispering trees. A wonderful massage therapist lived in the apartment above the garage. I was in heaven. So in the vivid sunshine, the warmth, away from my father's death, designer suits and everyone's expectations of me, layers of old life began to peel away.
At dawn I'd throw on a white cotton dress and follow a cup a coffee to the patio. Unless you've seen the sun rise over the high desert you can't know the cleansing vow of that miraculous sight. For the first three weeks, faces smiled at me from everywhere. In the leaves, the trunks of trees, rock walls, everywhere nature welcomed. The earth spirits were happy to see me I was later told. I should have been alarmed but somehow I was comforted, intrigued and didn't tell anyone in New York of my new friends. Unfortunately, these smiling faces eventually retreated back into their own world or maybe I just stopped being able to see them but by then my body was stronger, my spirit rejuvenated, my mind ready.
I barely watched television. Life held so much more. Wally came by quite often to talk, bring me mangoes, share his path, quiet my spirit. There was a peace to this man, a knowing calm that promised that nothing I could be was wrong. We took long hikes in tender canyons. He taught me about the creatures and plants and energies that possessed the land. I knew he owned something I needed. The people I met talked about alien portals and spirit guides. Indian shamans walked barefoot through town and I heard of mountain men who still lived up in caves hidden away within the ancient canyon walls. It was a place, a state of grace unlike anything I had every known. When I talked to friends and family back home, I barely recognized their distant voices. I felt sorry for their unknowing. I had passed through some slight crease in reality and was now living between worlds.
I woke in the dark to an uneasy weight at the edge my bed. I turned on a lamp and huddled somewhat fearfully, covers drawn tight to my chin. Through the curtained window I could see it was black outside. The birds were still silent, but something in the air promised dawn was approaching. I could almost feel the sun advance in the wind like a god on a golden chariot. Then I thought about her. It wasn’t much of a thought. Just the memory of that dream, of how much she had revealed, then stolen away. Of the familiar warmth I felt towards her—of that startling voice. For the first time, I realized I was sitting within the mountain she had shown. Her warm presence was comforting. She stayed with me in silence for a few minutes, until the first bird broke the day with its hopeful call and light charmed the night away from itself.
Wally and I became closer. He'd knock on my door at midnight and ask me to follow him into the dark for a starlight trek. It was the first time anyone had ever composed that appealing melody. The first time decision proved so easy. Life had become a newly appreciated series of first times. I always said yes. The night was black but I felt safe with Wally, his flashlight, the long, confident gate, which shepherded me into the woods towards all the magical things he knew. Stars bristled against the deep eggplant sky, spinning in fierce little circles demanding attention. During the day there was so much competition for my eyes: the cactus, peculiar little birds and animals, swaggering mountains, whimsical clouds. But at night there were only those stars and a wistful moon, which took long, yawning monthly breaths.
The desert exudes an amazing scent once the sun has retired. Even the slight fear you feel from the untested darkness becomes part of its mysterious fragrance. And as morning brushes the land, mixes with this fragrance, every atom shivers with anticipation, knowing that something that has never happened before will be happening that day. He gave me books to read on raw foods, solar energy, visualization. I gobbled them up. Soon I was taking herbs to cleanse years of accumulated toxins from my contaminated being, drinking ginger tea and imagining a different life. Every false thing about me was being stripped away. I was happier than I had ever been. Happier than I ever thought I could be that first doubtful day I arrived, battered by what seemed like a lifetime of misguided choices. I was finally ripening into who God intended me to be.
New York was just a dream. The towering canyons made sure of that. Though fall had arrived, it was still sultry. And always bright. As my restored, nourished body emerged from its cocoon, the sun, heat and unrelenting intoxication of nature were stoking a muffled, sleeping sexuality. Every dawn and dusk wild things howled, the sky flamed. I started having fantasies, sometimes of strangers, of George but also of Wally. He was tall and tan, strong and decent with a rugged but kind face and soft green eyes. Wally was everything every man I had ever known wasn't. He moved slowly and deliberately, sensually with no ego or thought of gain. He held no bank account or material ambitions. I used to envy the land. The way his callused hands touched a tree or tended the soil around a young plant. I'd watch him from a distance, the adoring sun reflecting off his moist back while he knelt, admiring, seemingly communicating with a small, struggling shrub, coaxing out its best with a seductive brew of love and respect.
He never once betrayed our friendship. Never once reached for me. I told him of George and he kept his distance even though more and more, people believed George to be merely an imagination, a lie to simplify my anonymous visit there. I didn't know if Wally was attracted to me. He was quiet and solitary with a complicated past and an enigmatic present. But months of constant companionship had created a powerful intimacy. Yearning sprouted dangerously from the ground. It didn't matter. Nothing could happen or should and anyway it would just pollute this blessed gift we shared. I loved George. He had been my best friend and even if we were now separated by not only distance but desire, I had no intentions of breaking our vow in that way. I was better than that. I was monogamous. I buried my rising fever in this uncompromising word.
I found it increasingly difficult to be near him. Physically disturbing. Achingly so. I prayed he couldn't tell, found myself scurrying away from his occasional touch. It’s not that I didn’t see it coming. But like an uncertain fate that must be confronted, a darkened room that must be entered, I knew there was only one way through to my future. So, with the same blind faith that brought me to Sedona, I opened the perilous door. That day I wore a dress I expected would demand the attention I didn't have the courage to. Somehow Wally and I ended up at an old cowboy bar, the Rainbow’s End, for beer and pool instead of the anticipated vegetarian Hindu Feast we had planned to attend several miles away in Cottonwood. A few hours later, marinated and electrified with bequeathed victory, I brushed into Wally and he ran his hand around my waist. It was time to go home.
We sat on separate couches for a long time and talked as we always did, looking through joyful, twinkling kaleidoscopes, listening to each others’ hearts. Soon the sun began to drop and we were still confessing to the dying day. The last shards of flaxen sun split the room, crawling down the wall and across the floor before bleeding out the picture window that revealed a determined stone fountain struggling to collect the weary, retreating light. The haunting words that conjured the remains of that eloquent evening don’t matter nor does the time I spent anguishing alone in my room before joining Wally, before realizing that for better or worse, at that moment, in this place, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Out of the immortal residue of that shattering night came a brand new life. Mine.
For the next two months magic filled each day. I could now slip into another world at will and bathe in its veiled, sparkling universe. Every boundary I had been raised to respect disappeared out there in the mighty teaching canyons. I no longer felt surprise at unexpected voices coloring the wind or prying eyes peering at me from the watchful shadows of an ageless rock or embraced fear at night when Wally’s familiar features dissolved into another being’s extraordinary face as we made love. I now knew how to open a moment into eternity so another truth could generously reveal itself. But as Christmas approached and the promise of warmth retreated, I understood it was time to leave. God had bestowed a great gift on me, this sacred time in this place with Wally but the rest of life was calling and as much I hated to leave, I knew I couldn’t live it among mountains alone. There was more for me to do in the world. I had no choice but to go forward, fuse my newfound self to an abandoned past and see what magical elixir emerged.
For the next couple of years Sedona peppered my life, never allowing me to stay for more than a few weeks before spitting me back into New York and life among the skyscrapers. My relationship with George ebbed and flowed like the summer tides, always held together by a great sea of love. It wasn’t fair, I’m sure, that I never had the strength to leave because how could I live without this wonderful man in my life. After so many years together, GeorgeandGlynnda had become one word. So, I loved George and Wally in quite different ways in startlingly different places and with unbearably distinct certainties. These were not easy times. As a diver surfacing from a watery expanse too fast I had to spend weeks decompressing from each truth I left, allowing my befuddled identity to ease slowly into the conflicting world to which I was returning. I no longer had roots, a home, which forced me to search for them deeper within myself. Every trip became a leap into faith, that somehow the distance between these two awkward realities, this ying and yang, would finally merge into one clear, singular path.
I went back to advertising because it was an easy, respectable frequency but more and more I hungered to support businesses that strove to make the world a better, happier, more educated, conscious place. You can’t sit in the high desert after living on raw foods for several months without it transforming your connection to the planet and how you want to spend your time here. Then, one afternoon God laughed and every foolish contemplation I ever considered evaporated. “It’s not what happened to me that matters,” were her first provoking words to me. I stopped, my heart pounding and placed these words on the tips of my trembling fingers. I was afraid to look around, afraid I’d see her, standing, smiling. She was that close. It was the challenging voice of that old, Southern, African-American woman, bold and completely proud of her disturbing affect on me as if to say, “Wake up, child. It’s time. We’re about to take a long journey together.” I stared at the keyboard of my computer. I could sense her amusement at my fear. I listened to the rest of her words; let them splash into my computer, whatever she had to say. By the time she was finished an ambitious, transformational covenant was born. I agreed to write her story and once again faith guided my life.
There was a comforting promise to her voice even though I never knew where it was taking me. Like an endless, beautiful, tapestried carpet being rolled onto a barren floor, each day I unfurled the sonorous colors of her words a little bit more. I asked for her name and she told me Aubrey was given by her daddy but her first name, her God-given name I had to discover myself. For near a year I struggled, changing it like I changed clothes while she accepted increasingly meager fragments of my disintegrating time. Bertie, Sarah, Betsy, Luanne became questioning, hopeful chants. With great pride she told me the names of every other character she introduced. Jenny was my favorite. Then one evening while watching television came news of the anniversary of the Birmingham church bombing which killed four little girls. Staring at me from the screen was the picture of a smiling, beautiful spirit with braids and glasses. Her name was Addie Mae Collins. Like a bolt of lightening suddenly illuminating the slumbering night sky, I finally understood. It was her name that would grace my story, honor those four exquisite lost lights. Addie Mae would be given a life, a voice she was denied. And even though it wasn’t the one she would have enjoyed if evil hadn’t touched her, it was at least a life, the glorious life of a remarkable woman.
Addie Mae came with me to visit Wally in Taos, New Mexico. He was born a migratory animal who roamed with the emotional seasons tangled within his soul. This one had called him to Taos. It was late summer. I hadn’t seen Wally for a while so more than usual, my adjustment to his extraordinary presence was uneasy. Two days passed before I let him touch me but once he ushered me towards the forest, out among the primitive, wizard pines, fairy fern and impetuous, teasing waters, my wavering spirit calmed and once again Wally’s soothing essence became familiar. Once again I was home. It was impossible to separate my love of nature from Wally. Not only because he had initiated me into its secrets, but because he was so much a part of it. I expected one day to walk out into a snowy winter morning in search of him, only to follow his deliberate footsteps until they dissolved between some narrow, bouldered passage into the tracks of a wolf or a bear or even some wandering, mystical raven and he’d simply disappear into legend.
Unfortunately, Wally saw no value in anything outside his own perceptions while I savored surfing through life’s many alternating currents. I had begun to appreciate contradiction and the truths it revealed. Maybe it was simply my disinterest in accepting a singular identity or my pleasure in experimenting with it’s limitless choices but I found as much joy in walking through a shadowy, desolate canyon in shorts and sandals, whispering to invisible spirits as attending a Park Avenue party in black silk and heels. I didn’t want Wally and I to drift apart, he had brought me so much happiness and I was so much more because of him, his wondrous, devoted teachings. Regardless, I could feel our paths sloping towards different horizons. So could he. By the time I left Taos, I knew it would be a long while before I saw Wally again but I was also sure our stars would again collide, that somewhere, when my journey was compete, my transformation over, we would find each other on some warm, buttercup-draped, summer hill. I didn’t want to leave. Either did Addie Mae but she was the stronger and her guiding wisdom promised it would be all right. “Let go, fool child. Can’t hold to anythin’ too tight.”
I jumped back into the social whirlwind of Christmas in New York, an experience near as magical as sunrise in the high desert. By now soul seeds was about half done although I didn’t know it then because all I knew were the words Addie Mae offered on any particular day, words I had to believe had a reason to exist. I wasn’t even sure if there was a story to be told or if Addie Mae was just offering pearls, a string of pearls to decorate my naked soul. Didn’t matter. I was grateful for her touch, her wisdom, the things she was teaching me about myself. I finished another routine consulting assignment realizing the life soul seeds was revealing was swallowing my old one with each advancing page. It was at the first light of this realization that Addie Mae decided we were going back to Sedona. For now, I had squeezed all I could out of New York.
Once back in Sedona’s intoxicating embrace, soul seeds’ frequency ascended to an exhilarating, rhythmic, trotting cadence. All I had to do was let go, step aside, pull my oars into the boat and allow the prescient current to take me. I was now being towed towards a conclusion rather than striving for one. Words flew from my fingers at a furious pace. But now, instead of patiently obeying as Addie Mae carefully fished her story from the swirling, indigo abyss, I was being drawn into experiences that reincarnated onto the pages of soul seeds. Each day's adventures, incubated by sleep, became the following morning’s literary purge. A bottle of Mickey’s rose wine consumed at a Saturday night party mutated into a warm, spirited encounter between Addie Mae, her mother and Jenny. My own horrifying dream of an angry fireball tumbling from the sky had by morning transformed into Addie Mae's fearsome quarrel with change. On an unusually blistering afternoon, a young dragonfly flew towards me while I relaxed on a steamy rock cradled within the giddy, bantering creek. Eye to eye it lingered. I asked what it wanted although I already knew it was there to give me something. By now I digested guidance from the most improbable sources. I offered my finger and it floated gently onto sun-kissed skin. Drawing it closer to my face, I stroked its soft, iridescent body. We stayed together for several minutes until it finally rose into a sultry gust, thrashed its angelic wings and disappeared into the clouds. The following morning as dawn flooded my room, right where the previous day's story had concluded, a dragonfly entered Addie Mae’s world, transformed her budding life and became the totem symbol of her inspiring tale. It seems I had graduated from simply telling Addie Mae’s story to living within it.
For thousands of years ancient Indians used Sedona as a place of worship but refused to live on the sacred land. They believed it belonged to God alone. It’s a temporal town. A place to go in contemplation and creation but one, that unless you’ve completed a life’s work, you must eventually release so not to get stuck in a spiritual lie. Rain had awakened the usually languid waters that were rejoicing. Everything was stained with wet, red dust. I decided to look for house-sitting as a way to stem my hemorrhaging assets. Faith had a price. Everyone said it was impossible but doors opened and other lives entered mine. The first house I stayed came fully equipped with an 80-year old physicist. I was there close to two months while his wife traveled to Europe. They were happy to be rid of each other. Jerry was supposed to go too but at the last minute decided Europe was ugly and his leg hurt so he and I and their two little dogs, Winston and Katie became a provisional family. I had a beautiful room with a sauna and Jacuzzi that overlooked the wooded creek. Herons and coyotes shared our dinner scraps. Jerry told stories about the development of nuclear fission. We spent many evenings talking about his sons, their annual camping jaunts, his early, complicated life in Hungary and the first wife who died thirty years before and for whom he still grieved.
By the time I left Jerry, Winston and Katie, August was groping Sedona. Edith hesitantly returned to reclaim her family. We had dinner; I handed over the keys, kissed the dogs goodbye and sailed down the uncertain, twisting roads to Jan, a kind, widowed woman with a large family living in the Northwest. Her beloved husband had died a few years before so she spent her life traveling between her gaggle of kids in Washington State and the Sedona home her husband had cherished. Large bronzes of eagles and cowboys, proud Indians, paintings of bear and elk possessed the meager home. I could see why she stayed. He was everywhere. But summer belonged to her children so she packed up the Winnebago, a small, crazy dog named Cinnamon and once again I inherited someone else’s life. By now loneliness was seeping through the cracks of my heart, having spent the better part of three months attending Addie Mae, barely speaking to anyone. Wally’s plans to visit kept drifting further into tomorrow. It was time to open the door to others and when I did, solitude was eclipsed by friendship.
Sparks flew from New York. First one friend, then another, then George came to visit. It was the first time my New York self and this fledgling Sedona incarnation converged. It meant a lot to me that George finally came to share this magical place. He had fought against it believing somehow it was the cause of our problems and if he denied its existence long enough, avoided Sedona’s corrupting influence, maybe life would just dissolve into old, familiar patterns and he wouldn’t have to change, too. I brought him first to Bell Rock, then Oak Creek Canyon to meet with fairy kings and inhale the sweet vanilla scent of its imperial Ponderosa pine. I introduced him to the new friends which had gushed through the open door that a simple smile revealed and dragged his skeptical mind into places that hummed with talk of chakras, spirit guides and crystal visions. Although he still couldn't see into the spaces where my eyes wandered, by the time George quit Sedona, he had at least begun to appreciate the beguiling decor of its sumptuous terrain.
All through summer, scorpions prowled the house. I took to tiptoeing around in well-inspected shoes, even upon waking, shaking out clothes and stripping my bed daily. I became terrified of getting stung. One evening, unable to sleep, I rolled over and turned on the light to discover one of these ancient desert lobsters perched ominously on the next pillow, watching me. That afternoon I met a young Indian shaman who told me that scorpions represent transformation, life and death, reincarnation. He urged that I not be afraid because they were only messengers and if I would surrender my fear, listen, trust my way through to their gift, I would hear what they have to tell me. It wasn't until the voluptuous Thunder Moon appeared that I understood his hopeful words.
Anointed the Thunder Moon by past generations of Hopi Indians, it ushers in Sedona's most hauntingly beautiful presence—the summer monsoons. Blistering, tempestuous cloud gods spit fierce, javelin light towards unimpressed mountains. Rainbow-sparked waterfalls appear like ghosts from the parched desert rock as blood-red sunsets shutter each boisterous day. All that could be life re-awakens. The full moon rose through ink clouds bleaching the charged earth with healing quicksilver. I stood outside for several minutes allowing its radiant alchemy to saturate every one of my ready cells. As I returned to the house, a small, furtive shadow pierced my toe and quickly scurried through the hallway, escaping outside to the conspirator moon. My foot stung as if it had been caught in an angry bramble bush and I felt the warm, lazy glow of prehistoric toxins ooze up my ankle. Soon my leg was paralyzed. I called the hospital and after receiving assurance of my survival, all fear dissolved and I immersed myself in this painful yet somehow emancipating experience. Once again, I felt myself exactly where life had mind for me.
That night I dreamed of sitting at a small wooden desk centered in a large, dimly lit barren room. Over my shoulder stood a seemingly benevolent, cloaked figure pointing towards a seventeen-digit number I held in my hands. Without speaking, he communicated that the secret of life, the answer to all questions was held within that one number. The truth, he cautioned, was not to be found within the digits or by their particular arrangement but within the spaces between. And although we only perceive one space between each digit there were actually three distinct layers of space, each embracing different information. He told me most would analyze the number but I was to explore the space instead.
As days passed I began to wonder why Addie Mae's luminous voice had come to me. I felt guilty, like I had stolen her from someone more deserving than I. soul seeds was unfolding as a potent tale of hope, a search for one’s place in life and the courage to trust in it’s extraordinary journey. A tremendous, comfortable empathy flourished between me and Addie Mae, testifying to what two women from quite different worlds can accomplish when possessed of a singular, compassionate spirit. But being a white woman from New York, what right did I have to tell a black, Southern woman’s story? I worried, desperately wanting readers to understand the love from which this story was conceived. Addie Mae calmed my pestered mind with faith, assured me that I was chosen for just that reason. soul seeds, she pledged, would reach readers’ untarnished original spirit, its power rooted in the nobility of our differences and the spiritual truths that transcend them. As usual, Addie Mae considered my fear to be a foolish, worthless anchor. I decided maybe we require fear’s oppressive weight to keep us planted here so our struggling souls can grow some before escaping back to the undemanding sanctuary of eternity. Maybe without fear, there’d be no flower.
We spent the morning together over coffee. It always took Addie Mae a while to arrive after I had quieted and settled into that deep indigo abyss from where she came. I think she waited for me to be comfortable in this unfamiliar place. I watched out the bedroom window, waiting for signs, symbols of her past. The defiant way the early wind kicked at the leaves, a bright blue bird crying for its mate, or a lost, lonely cloud trapped in an boundless sky were all residues of Addie Mae’s restless end days. By now I had learned to translate these sparks from the other side. She taught me how much we are shown in a flickering moment, how many secrets are hidden in the ordinary if we only take occasion to notice. The phone rang but I ignored its temptation. I could feel her urgency for completion.
She most always visited in the morning, upon waking, when my mind still swam in the space composed by dreams. But soon it was nearly noon and morning cracked off the day. After she retreated, George called, then Wally….then a flood of other voices beckoning me home. Late afternoon I drove up Oak Creek Canyon to West Fork, where its name-sake waters hissed over bouldered earth, nourishing the shades of green and brown and yellow, red and purple which adorned the land. I imagined a breathless Carly from Call of the Canyon visiting here for the first time. I imagined all those who would ever enter this place and be transformed by its beauty. To my surprise, I felt Addie Mae walking with me in the burnished heat. A field of fern giggled as I entered, faries hidden under the emerald lace. Towering above, old stone eyes of the cathedral canyon tended my passage.
A flurry of dragonflies circled and I realized how important these little flying dolphins had been to Addie Mae and me. Seems both dragonflies and dolphins are guardians of the same forgotten high knowledge, existing to help us remember these truths, and bring those together who do. I sat among our knowing friends, against a scented pine. The setting sun flooded the path ahead. “You no different than me, child. Don’t you know that yet,” she asked, answering my worries. “How blessed we be to experience such riches as are differences. Glory, we all just the same pure white light of God comin' onto this pearl of a planet. Birth merely a divine prism, scattering this One perfect light into all the colors of the soul. Why such a fuss over things that make folks different, when that’s the very gift our souls begged for as invisibles?”
The canyon swallowed the sun and I was suddenly left alone in a shadow that quickly grew cold. By the time I stumbled my way out, it was already twilight. No moon rose to guide me but the enduring stars never failed and I stayed outside listening to coyotes and night birds just beginning their day. I thought about going out, joining the raucous monthly dance party, a social staple of Sedona’s restless inhabitants. But New York’s inevitability was stirring in me and I decided to spend as much time as I had left here alone, selfishly clutching Sedona.
Several days later I finished soul seeds, wrote the final words that concluded my commitment to Addie Mae and my internment in Sedona. It ended as unexpectantly as it all began. First I cried, although I don’t know why because I was happy, relieved to finally be released from the merciless burden of this covenant. But I guess, also sad to be losing a family I loved as much as my own and mournful about what my fingers had sometimes done to them. Addie Mae generously stayed with me for a while, through a rouge thunder squall that scorched the sky and shook the house as I contemplated this new birth. As it charged towards the West, she disappeared within it, taking her wise voice, leaving me to begin again.
I still feel her, even as I write this. She comes to me now as love, opening my heart, helping me to have faith in the pebbled, unconventional path I have followed since swallowing her first breadcrumbs. By allowing Addie Mae into my life, I have witnessed magic, stumbled over my own feet, cut myself and others as I fecklessly crawled through prickly thickets of the unknown and misunderstood. But these wounds have healed and made me stronger. The unknown yielded to the known. Addie Mae’s life inspired my own, became my own, as I feel somehow mine has become hers. I never heard her voice again, except through the filter of my own wisdom and her occasional laughter when I’m most afraid. But I know she is there, watching, wondering, waiting, always loving.
Like most lives, Addie Mae’s story is small and imperfect, but meaningful. I don’t know what happened to her after she left me, except that the woman she became had the power to guide a frightened, searching soul to a place of strength and faith and transformation. That night Margaret and I went out for martinis to celebrate. She had become a close friend, another reckless pilgrim kidnapped by this startling land. Wally called to tell me he was migrating again, this time to Colorado and could I come to stay. I knew I couldn't follow his vanishing footsteps into even more distant mountains so I said no. It was time for me to go home, pick up the pieces and face what had become of my life. Time to see if soul seeds was meant for anyone but me.
Bell Rock is the first and last place I visit each time Sedona calls me. It's a proud, lyrical mountain in the shape of a bell, one of Sedona's mysterious vortexes, rumored to be an alien portal to another world. To me, it’s merely a nourishing embrace of a place, harboring an unparalleled, softly windswept view of Sedona and the implausible miles and miles of rippled, layered space beyond. As usual, I hiked up its stuttered side and perched on a high ledge. I was alone. None of the occasional tourists seeking ET or the reputed vortex buzz of easy enlightenment. The breeze was inviting. I knew I belonged here. I sat for a long while taking in the last of the land, its beguiling creatures and cantankerous vegetation. The flood of passing traffic below almost sounded like water pulsing through the arid canyon. As I rested, trying to breathe in as much of the moment as my memory would hold, off in the distance, in a small tree something was glistening in the sun, caught between gnarled branches and thirsty leaves. Barefoot, I walked carefully over earth’s baked crust to where a stubborn young cottonwood was growing from the impossibility of a weathered rock. Someone had hung a small crystal angel with gold wings that was twirling eagerly in the wind, toying affectionately with the prismatic light. I picked it up and held it between my hands in a prayer, made a wish then placed it back where some other questioning heart would discover it. Sedona was saying good-bye.
I realize how out of place in the world I’ve always felt—waiting for my real life to begin, unaware it was always there when I was ready to let go. Guidance appears unexpectedly. And like a miracle, we are only allowed a brief glimpse of recognition before it moves on to someone else. Life is full of magic we don’t recognize in the moment. I wish I could have stayed longer with Addie Mae, in the kindness she revealed. But each of us must eventually go out and seek our own life, to become who God intended. If you made it this far with Addie Mae and I, you have arrived at a destination, both in life and within yourself. Truth is beckoning. Could this be your moment? Time is a wonderful ally if we allow ourselves its generosity. Throughout my journey, Addie Mae has been a map, a light, assurance that someone had gone before me. No matter how lonely and scary it seemed at times, she let me know I was not its first traveler. I was never alone. Neither are you.
The next day it was still dark when I woke, made coffee and wandered outside, enticed by the melodic plea of stirring quail. Waiting for the shuttle that would launch me back towards New York, I felt anxious but resigned, ready. As we drove through the slumbering, opaque town, strawberry light frosted the horizon. I reflected on my time here, whether I had made the right decisions, whether Addie Mae was real or just a hopeful imagination like the ones that used to visit my room as a child. I wondered about soul seeds, what it meant to have written it, if anything. And what would become of my seasons with George, with Wally? Could I restore my charred career or spark another from the ashes? Writing soul seeds had changed me in ways that were still simmering.
As we slipped through the last of Sedona’s endowing, mountainous arms, I felt her releasing me to my own authority. The long journey back had begun once more. People who loved me were waiting. But right now it was sunrise in the desert, the air smoldered, the new day crystallized with boundless potential as a warrior sun devoured the night. We passed over a hill, rounded a turn and exploded into the blinding eternity of Arizona’s Verde Valley where there are no limitations, no questions, only truth, certainty. Just rising off the quiet, awakening land into a confidently cerulean sky, surrounding us, was a lush, colorful bouquet of hot air balloons. I rolled down the window and took a deep breath of the desert air, all my lungs could bear and watched these billowing beauties, these promises rise silently above the golden landscape. How could I not believe?
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