Down the Rabbit Hole

Feb 10th "Supernatural - Sara Evans"

Just as some songs take us to dark corners, some pack the power to transport us to time of light and promise.

Throughout the pandemic, my daughter has been accompanying me to work where she can sign on to her remote learning platform from my office. On a recent morning, Sara Evan’s “Supernatural” came on the radio. I was instantly transported, through a haze of glossy memory, to a time when I was a newly minted mother. I used to love the rolling, Celtic melody of that song. I played it often back then, it made me feel happy and hopeful. As the tune spilled from the speakers, I was suddenly once again that young woman, slowly dancing across the sun-warmed wood floors in my bare feet, my infant daughter cradled against my chest. I could feel her full head of dark silk tucked under my chin, her tiny, clutching hands at my chest and the side of her perfect face pressed in close to where my heart beat fiercer than it had ever before. It had felt like magical moment suspended in time.

It was that kind of tactile memory that floods your every sense. The kind you experience as a flash of time when you can feel it all again, with every cell of your being. I believe those type of memories are gifts, bestowed on us by the benevolent beings when we need them the most.

With my throat thick with emotion, I flicked my eyes to the rear view, trying to reconcile that tiny baby with the growing girl in the back seat. I can still see her in those soot dark lashes and sloping brow. The soft curls are gone and so it the round, cherub face. My daughter, at age 11, is morphing into a strong and graceful beauty. She has an athleticism that inspires me, a quick wit that delights me and a kind heart that melts my own. Those tiny clutching fingers have grown into lovely slender digits that flit effortlessly over piano keys and nimbly type out text messages to her friends. She is reaching that age where she begins to move farther from me as she meets more and more of the world head-on.

There are times though when the child reveals itself, more so during the time of this quarantine. It seems that the swift and uncertain turn of her world has regressed her in some small ways. For example, she has insisted on falling asleep between us again, as if it gives her a measure of extra comfort at the end of these strange days. She seems to want the physical contact with us more, bestowing random kisses and full armed hugs, when she had taken to shying away from them before. In other ways, she’s dropped her guard. At times her growing maturity has suddenly slipped to reveal the child again. Just the other day on a hike with her Dad, she was startled by a snake crossing the trail in front of her and it was as if the shock of it turned her into a panicked child again. She ran screaming and crying up the trail. She would only be calmed by a piggyback ride from her father, well past the part of the trail where the offending creature had disappeared into the brush.

If there are positives to take away from a pandemic like this, it is the time we have been given to spend with our daughter, to focus on and enjoy the moments of quiet and chaos that come with her growing up. It has made me pay more attention to the precious balance of life and the amazing gift of lucid memories. There might even be something almost something supernatural about it all….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtN9GB08AsQ