Akashic Record:
Lorton, Virginia 1976
All through the winter of 1976 my mother had been singing sounds, stitching them together for months to make my middle name. When I was born in a snowstorm at the end of February, right before the thaw, she named me Amany and said it meant, all things beautiful. What she didn’t know was that the sound Amani already existed for centuries in Arabic and had a meaning all its own on the other side of the world. Wishes… aspirations. This is what I would come to be filled with, how I would learn to escape reality and then shape it.
On that day the nurses hovering in attendance like angels in white would say I looked like both my parents: ivory skin, blond hair with a tinge of strawberry and blue eyes. All this was recorded on the certificate of birth with one small exception only a mother would notice, something mysterious in my left eye. Segmental Heterochromia, a little brown patch in all that blue. She called it my little window. Native American cultures of our region called it ghost eyes and believe that people with that gift could see into heaven and earth. So, it should come as no surprise that I was swaddled and kissed; then carried home to a hard and haunted house where I would come to see things most people never see. It couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to be my destiny.
The house that my father bought because of my impending arrival just three months earlier made my mother sad. She missed the light and bright rental apartment in Arlington where she had raised my sister Melissa for the four previous years. She missed painting by the picture window, the quaint kitchen with all the amenities and the neat sidewalk where she strolled and greeted neighbors.
Now, because of me, she was out in the country, in Lorton, Virginia, near the notorious penitentiary. My father was drunk when he went to see the house after work one evening with a questionable friend. It had been dusk and perhaps that’s why he couldn’t see there wasn’t a toilet in the bathroom or that there were rust stains in the sink or mouse holes in the wall board. He believed his friend who said he was getting a good deal. And having lived a protected, happy childhood his whole life—“a storybook childhood,” in his words—he didn’t realize that badly built houses make unhappy homes, especially in winter.
Winter is what makes a drafty house hard. No water for bathing or washing laundry or dishes makes a house hard. Deceased spirits lurking around make a house hard. The only thing my father has to say for himself now is, “I must have been crazy to buy that house.” The thing that always gets me about this statement is the word “crazy”, it lights up neon red whenever I hear it. And after all these years, when I think of Lorton and that house, even though it has been bulldozed and leveled to the ground, “Crazy” still comes to mind.
My mother went crazy in that house while my father went to work. I had only seen three full moons. I was suckled on her breast by her sweet sadness and then came the acrid smell of adrenaline. I felt the shifting energies. I felt the depression and could smell the change in my mother’s scent as her chemistry shifted and the scales tipped towards mania. Until finally, when I was three months old, she disappeared with me …
“She ran away with the baby,” everyone whispered. No one really knew what happened. One day we were both gone. It was Spring after a hard winter, and she sprung. She needed to get away from that house. It felt like it was breathing on her. She ended up at a childhood friend’s place in the Midwest somewhere, inside the comforting kind of home that reminded her of her childhood. A traditional two-story clapboard house with dormer windows up top and a wide welcoming front porch. The kind of house where you could make a home, where something tasty was always simmering on the burner of a cast iron enameled stove, the promise of something good floating on the air…
Not like Lorton.
Eventually, the yearning for my sister, Melissa, brought her home from the illusion. She had a big mothering heart at her center, and I believe that’s why the house my father picked out was such a disappointment. It resisted her every attempt to civilize it and make it cozy. She would sew lace trimmed curtains for the windows. Replace the linoleum. Cut branches of forsythia for tall vases on the table. The house scoffed at her. Instead of the delicious aroma of roasting meals or baking cookies, the oven would confound her with irregular heat and offer burnt offerings instead. When it was time to do the dishes or wash clothes the faucet when turned on would provide a rusty sludge with a thud instead of water. When she tried to make breakfast in the morning a mouse would pop up with the toast. The hardest blow was the inability to get the land to perc for a septic tank. The dreaded outhouse remained. Imagine trying to march your toddler out to the bathroom in 6 inches of snow and freezing temperatures. This wasn’t the 1800’s. It was 1976 and plumbing existed, just not at Lorton.
My father didn’t want to come home to that house either. My mother’s depression and the to-do list being long, the days he went for beers after work and didn’t come home until everyone was asleep increased. Crunching numbers all day as a statistician in a beige cubicle for a government agency, he wanted to feel like himself come five o’clock. The life of the party. Just for a little bit he wanted to take off his tie and make loud raucous jokes, congregate at the bowling alley or sports bar with coworkers. Drink pitchers of beer, sometimes out of a woman’s high heel shoe if he felt like it. Time would get away from him and then he would see my mother’s sour face when he got home. His daughters would be sleeping, the bed sagging and no matter how many times he lit the pilot light, it would go out. He would fiddle with the flu or adjust a window, but it didn’t matter, there was always that damn draft. He couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Was it coming from his wife?
After two hard winters, mother gave him an ultimatum: quit drinking or leave. He left us…the chill at his back.
The house conspired against me as well. A dark entity stole my sleep by lording over me at the edge of the bed. My beloved dog ran away, the hamster choked to death, the kittens were still born and deformed, our beloved innocent bunny was cornered by the cat and killed. I was the one who discovered the cat devouring bunny’s bloody carcass in the closet. Her precious face and eyes eaten down to the bone. I hurled the cat from the house. It clawed deep into my forearms as it went. Yet, it would stay. It was the predators feeding on the dark energy, who licked their chops and always stayed. The giant wolf spiders crept ever so slowly and stayed. The snakes slithered between the radiator holes and the mouse holes and stayed. Hornets invaded the back porch and harassed me as I passed to my only solace…the forest, the only place I wished to stay.
I’ve gotten ahead of myself. We must go back to after my father left, back to the Spring of 1978, Easter. That was when the high vibration showed up and the light changed. That was when the roof blew off the Lorton house. Or so my mother still insists. That was when the mystery at the center of my life began…formerly known as…the black hole that threatened my very existence on the planet. The unknown quantum event that changes the course of my life. Was it a mystical experience, malicious spiritual interventions, a manic episode? Please bear with me for a little while more. You can come to your own conclusions.
Akashic Record: Marco Island, Florida 1980
“…whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain.” Sandra Ingerman, Soul Retrieval
Dad drove like he was kidnapping us when we left Northern Virginia. He tore down I-95 south in his 73 Grand Prix for two days straight, windows down and a Winston cigarette in his left hand. Literally, everything was a blur until we pulled into a rest area to pee, and you could smell the air becoming warmer and more humid. We didn’t cross over to the west coast of Florida until we hit Alligator Alley outside Miami, which he announced with great fanfare since we were now only 100 miles from our destination. Several times already Dad had turned down the radio or stopped his Eagles cassette to explain to us that he couldn’t stay…that he needed to get back to work or he wouldn’t have a job anymore. It was just for a little while. We would have fun. He didn’t mention her at all…or when he’d be back.
Arriving at my grandparent’s home in Marco Island Florida was like stepping into the light from a dark theater, except for it taking moments to adjust it took months. My sister Melissa and I stepped out of our father’s car with atrophied legs, our eyes squinting, our pale thin arms and hands thrust up in the air in front of our foreheads, blocking the sunshine and the overly joyful faces of Grandma & Grandpa. There was a buzzing and a fussing and a love we were not yet ready to receive. Each of them took hold of one of us and we crumpled into their arms like bales of brittle hay. None of them, not even our father was aware of what we went through in the last terrifying days of our mother’s manic phase. (Even we have pressed most into the deep folds of gray matter, not able to reconcile it with reality.) We could not speak of it or much of anything, scared dumb by the wonder of its nightmarish complexity, afraid to ask what would happen next.
My eyes closed and when they opened again: my toes are in the pure white sugar sand of the beach with the clear green water of the Gulf of Mexico lapping at them. I go deeper into the healing water until I am fully submerged in its salinity.
My eyes closed and opened again: grandmother is telling me not to peel the large pieces of sunburn skin from my shoulders. She soothes them with aloe.
My eyes closed and opened again: my grandfather carries me inside from sleeping on the lawn under a palm tree as a warm rain falls.
My eyes closed and opened again: I slurp chicken noodle soup on a tv tray while watching a cartoon Disney movie.
My eyes closed and opened again: a gray and yellow cockatiel named Joey is placed on my forefinger.
The aperture of my vision began to expand with the aperture of my heart. I would feel myself returning to an openness and an ability to hug and be hugged, slowly I began to smile again, a shy little smile.
“Maybe it was just a dream, a nightmare…and we are only now waking up,” My 9-year-old sister Melissa said to me that night in the bed we shared.
I was inclined to believe this being only 4 years old…I grabbed onto this thought as truth. Laying there in our grandfather’s bed listening to the hum of the air conditioning and the frogs’ songs outside, it seemed my soul had detached…it was floating above me like a pearlescent balloon. Now, that everything was still, a sensation arose…that I am not fully in my body. Melissa speaks of mother, only for a moment before sobbing into her pillow. I stared wide eyed at my apparition on the ceiling and sucked hard on my left thumb…unable to sleep and unable to cry, the amnesia settling over my consciousness like a fog.
“It was only a dream…it was only a dream.” “But then where is mother?” two voices arise in my head, just as there are two me’s—the one whose body lay on the bed pinned down by the comforter and the other one bumping against the ceiling. This continued for weeks even if I was out of doors…that part of me floating just above the palm fronds swaying in the breeze…that place again where the treetops tickle the belly of the sky…and yet it followed me on its invisible silver string and while it was there, my voice was a whisper and there was a rushing in my ears as if I were listening to the inside of a seashell. Afraid to let it go over the horizon, I always keep it in my gaze.
It was obvious that my far-off staring worries my grandmother whose furrowed brow showed her concern. She followed my line of sight to nowhere. She was speaking to me about the instructions for the “ming tree” we are to make together on her round glass kitchen table.
“Amany….?” She said as she jiggled a little glass vile of the worlds tiniest clam shells with pale violet centers in front of me. “First, we will make the little flowers out of shells.”
She opened the container and spilled some out for my sister and I. The craft glue and a box of toothpicks is next. She places a cleaned plastic sour cream container lid in front of us. The toxic smell of the glue has intrigued me, and I am able to focus as she puts a clear dab on the lid. She moves four shells unto the glue to form a flower and then with a pair of tweezers takes a mustard seed and places it in the center. She smiles warmly, seeing that she has gotten our attention. “Now we let that one dry and make a bunch more for the flowers on the tree. See like this one here…” She motions to her example she has made at her local art league. “I will work on bending the wire for the tree trunk and branches for both of you and if you want, next time you can help me. Doesn’t this sound like fun?”
We both nodded and I studied the one she had already finished. I was in awe of its intricate details, the way the copper wire has been wound in such a way that it really does resemble a shimmering miniature metal bonsai, but with cherry blossoms. I was eager to set out working to have one of my very own. We worked until grandma sets up lunch on the lanai where they keep their gay little cockatiels and zebra finches. On the table she places little tea sandwiches: white bread with the crust cut off with cream cheese and black olives. Fruit cups with cottage cheese and lemonade. She calls Jake in from watering the hibiscus in the back yard. In front of him, she places a large ham sandwich. He groans with exaggerated satisfaction as he settles in his chair trying to elicit some response from his stoic granddaughters. We barely eat, only nibbling at the edges of our food as to not draw attention to that fact.
“Well, it seems us old folks weren’t prepared well enough for you young folks. But the good news is our friends, the Diannas, opened a toy store in Old Marco. Call it the Game Room. They said for us to come on over and get a few things to keep you two busy. How does that sound? Want to head on over after lunch?”
“Really?” Melissa’s eyes widened.
“That sounds great!” I said.
“They own the toy store?” My sister continued, becoming more excited. “So we can have whatever we want?”
Grandpa chuckled. “That doesn’t make it free. It is a business, but I’m sure they will give us a deal so you girls can pick out a few things, OK, within reason. But I have to approve.” He smiled, giving my ponytail a quick tug.
“Now, eat!” He slammed his large German hand down on the table making the silverware rattle and our sandwiches miraculously pop into our mouths.
That night we had new stuffed animals to watch over us. They were almost as big as we were. My sister got a beautiful tiger with green glass eyes and mine was a black velvet panther that purred when you squeezed it, which I did a lot. Our moods were improving with the sun and sea, art and retail therapy. But the evenings were still the worst. That is when the memories and fears crept back in. When the two halves of me fought for the truth about my mother. By now, Grandma and Grandpa had explained that mom was in the hospital and the doctors were helping to make her better. But it was my own mixed emotions that felt like a strait jacket. I would be at the beach, standing with my toes in the sand watching a beautiful pink Koquina shell try to rebury itself before the next wave hit and be overcome with missing her because I could not call her to come see–see what I see and be amazed by what amazes me. Then, suddenly, I could see her in the hospital. She was painting by a large window. It was if I could see her stop and acknowledge me and d send a ray of love back. Maybe she was painting the very shell I was admiring so much because we were connected like that. I knew she could feel me tugging on her heartstrings. “Get better Mommy,” I whispered. “I want my beautiful, sweet Mommy back.”
But there is also the other part of me that is terrified of mother, hurt and angry…and she is still floating above me in the belly of the sky. Even at this young age I am aware that if I can just cut that silver cord, maybe I can forget what happened and feel better.
Grandma knows we are not sleeping well. Especially me because I keep falling asleep in odd places all day. Even with scheduled naps there is no youthful vibrancy. Besides the usual car trips, my grandfather collects me from under trees, at the lunch table in a restaurant, a dark corner at the teddy bear museum. During the boat trip at Jungle Larry’s Zoo when all the other young children are practically climbing the ledges, shouting and pointing to monkeys on an island. I am leaning against Grandpa’s big, padded chest faking being awake.
That night, while putting us to bed, Grandma made a joke about me being a little princess and perhaps we should have grandfather check under the mattress for a pea. My sister not being one to allow such a wild myth of me as princess to take root, finally revealed the truth of the matter.
“At home…she always slept with mom. Even if that meant on the sofa between the cushions if that’s where she fell asleep watching tv, Amany would squeeze in there. Mom always complained about it.”
“Oh, I see. You miss sleeping with your Mother. I understand. What do you think we can do?” she asked kindly, as I shook my head. Unable to fathom a solution. If sucking my thumb and twiddling my own ear wasn’t helping; if lying next to Melissa did nothing to soothe the insomnia. I had tried hanging my leg over a pillow and the side of the bed like it was my mother’s body. I had just been conditioned to that feeling of being entwined. I was used to her warmth, her comforting smell. I even thought of the shameful moment on our first evening there, when I had tried to suckle Melissa’s non-existent breast. Even regressive behaviors brought no replacements. Grandma searched my eyes tenderly for an answer as she pushed my hair behind my ears. Then her baby blue eyes sparkled with an idea.
“A ha! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before! I do have a very special blanket, so special in fact, I keep it locked in a trunk. It did belong to royalty at one time. It would be like sleeping in a cloud. But you have to promise me you’ll take good care of it and share with your big sister here. Would you like me to go and get it?”
“Oh yes!”
She left to the other side of the house and Melissa and I looked at each other with anticipation and curiosity. Grandmother painted many paintings of her ancestors’ castle in Belgium, and we knew her father had been named Royal. Whether it was just a fun children’s story or not, we were inclined to believe her.
Grandpa came in and nuzzled us both with his beard to give us rosy cheeks.
“Goodnight. Get some rest. Tomorrow we’re taking you to swim lessons at the YMCA.”
“What’s the YMCA?” my sister asked.
“It means, the Young Men’s Christian Association. But it is really just a community center with tennis and a pool and activities to keep young people busy and out of trouble.
“But we’re not men!”
“They allow girls now too. It’s for everybody. You’re gonna like it. And even if you don’t, I won’t have you drowning on my watch.”
Grandma appeared behind him, and he allowed her to pass with another Goodnight to us.
“Wow…girls…Grandma must really love you.”
We sat up in our beds with glee. It was really a cloud! It was so fluffy and big and grandmother being a woman of only 5 feet it nearly enveloped her but as she laid it on the foot of the bed. My sister and I shrieked with joy and pounced on it!
“Real Satin! It’s so soft!”
I was so pleased by its soothing light blue color and it soft silky texture which I immediately ran along my cheek.
“Can we keep it? Can we keep it?”
“Yes, here, let’s get this other cover off the bed first.”
“I don’t even want the sheet!” Melissa said, kicking at it with her leg.
“Me either!”
We were beaming and our joy was infectious. Grandmother was laughing as she stripped the sheets and blankets and Melissa and I bounced up and down allowing her to do so.
She threw the luxurious queen-sized satin quilt in the air and had it float down on us. Melissa and I straightened out and waited for its gentle touch.
“Aaahhh!”
“It’s even cool.”
“I love it!” I sighed as I gathered it up in my arms and cuddled it close. I did love it. It was the most magnificent blanket in the world. I knew why she had kept it locked in a trunk and surely, truly, it must have belonged to royalty as I couldn’t imagine any ordinary person having a blanket so extravagant as this. My sister and I continued to giggle and wiggle as Grandmother turned out the light and kissed us both.
“Ok, my little princesses if there is a pea under there, you won’t feel it with this magic blanket.”
“Thank you, Grandma. I love you.” I felt a lump in my throat and a tear fall as my heart began to thaw.
The blanket did allow sleep to come to me that night with all its healing properties, although its shimmering weave was no match for our fitful nightmares. My sister and I turned ourselves sideways and into twisted knots, we ground our teeth and even hissed like poisoned snakes.
Sink or Swim
“In life you either sink or swim!” Grandpa expounded the following morning as he drove us to our swim lessons in his red ford van. He told us that our lessons would be private lessons because the group ones wouldn’t start until school let out over the summer. Private lessons were a pretty penny, but he hadn’t slept a wink since we arrived because all he could think about was one of us falling over the sea wall and him having to fish us out with one of his large nets…cause he wasn’t going in after us…but he’d also be damned if one of us turned up blue on his watch. He was going on about it so much grandma pointed out he missed his turn.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!”
Once he got us corrected at the next light, he turned around to say, “I’m not taking anyone out on the boat who can’t tread water for at least ten minutes.”
I liked the YMCA immediately. It was a big wooden sided building with a Hawaiian style roof with hot pink bougainvillea growing all over its awnings. The lobby had a friendly greeter, ice-cold air conditioning with soda and snack machines. There was an indoor gym, racquetball courts, and a smaller room with ping pong tables. In the community room a group was doing Tai Chi. We were shown the outdoor pool through some glass doors but were directed to go through the locker room first to change and shower. Dotty was going to be our instructor.
Grandpa said he would wait for us by the pool, newspaper in hand. We changed into our brand-new bathing suits.
“We haven’t ever had this much new stuff!” Melissa exclaimed as she listed off all the things Grandma and Grandpa had to buy us. She changed in a flash into a red one piece with big white racing strips down the side. Leaving a pile of clothes for us to pick up. She tried to dart out into the light but Grandma had to remind her to shower first. Melissa protested…but Grandma just pointed to a black and white sign over the door, so she reluctantly turned on a shower for 2 minutes and then ran out the door saying. “See ya!”
I was at a much slower speed. Even though I could change my clothes on my own, I allowed Grandma to do it for me. She undid the ribbons she had tied in my hair earlier that morning and placed them in the bag with everything else. My one-piece bathing suit was navy with pretty little yellow ties at the legs and shoulders. She turned on the shower for me and checked the temperature and then waited next to me with a dry towel.
“Is Dotty nice?” I was a little concerned she would be like a drill sergeant since Grandpa had made it sound like such serious business on the way over.
“Oh yes, I’ve heard she’s taught almost every child on the island to swim. You’re going to love her. Don’t you worry.”
She put her arm around me and escorted me out to the large lap pool that had many divided lanes. A plump woman with a perm and very tan freckled skin waved us down to the far end where there were no lanes, but there were two diving boards, a low one and a very high one.
Grandpa had taken up a position with his paper at a table under an umbrella in the corner a few feet away from Dotty and Melissa. Melissa was already in the pool showing her what swimming skills she had when I walked up.
“Very good, very good. Can you do the breaststroke?” Dotty shouted towards Melissa who was dog paddling away.
“Okay, Come on back sweetheart!” Dotty called out. She turned to greet us.
“Hello, Evie.”
“Hello. Dolly, thank you so much for making the time. We are very grateful.”
“My pleasure, my pleasure.” Dotty lowered her gaze towards me and reached out her hand.
“Hi. I’m Dotty. You must be Emily.”
I blinked and stared at my toes on the concrete. Grandma corrected her by saying my name slower and more clearly. A-M-A-N-Y.”
I moved my feet around and inspected my wet footprints.
“Amity”
“No, no, it’s very unique. It’s Amany.” then my grandmother acquiesced. “You can just call her Lisa, that’s her first name and easier.”
“Alright…Lisa, do you know how to swim?” I shyly shook my head no. The truth was I thought I did. I thought if I jumped in I wouldn’t sink. I knew how to hold my breath and swim under water to get to the side of a pool or the raft out at the pond in Pennsylvania or at least make it to my mother’s arms. But I knew I did not know how to swim like an Olympian or swim to save my life if I fell overboard, or tread water for 10 minutes so I could go for a boat ride. So, I decided No was the more truthful answer.
“Well, we’re gonna fix that. Looks like your sister has a little head start on you since she’s older, right? I’m going to swim with you today first. Let me see your flippers.” she jokingly inspected my arms and hands.
But I wasn’t looking at her I had that feeling of floating again since I had thought of mom half submerged in the Braddock Rd pool, her arms outstretched towards me, laughing and calling me her little mermaid.
I felt the mystical balloon above me tug a bit and as I searched for it my eyes fell upon a teenage girl as she climbed the ladder to the high dive up…up… into the sky the sun behind her…my eyes began to water from the brightness just as I saw her figure fall into the blue of the deep end.
“That’s Tess. She wants to be an Olympic Diver.” Dotty took my hand over to where the ladder entered the pool and handed my sister and I both white foam kick boards. “Let’s start with kicking with good strong legs…”
I did everything that Dotty said that day, but I became obsessed with watching Tess dive. I was amazed that she could fall from so high and not hurt herself. I just had to have that feeling…no fear! I wanted it right then. Like when the ice cream truck shows up and starts ringing its bell you wanna run to it. However, I spent the rest of the 30 minutes dutifully kick boarding, treading water and doggie paddling.
When it was time to leave, Grandma wrapped us in big towels that had been warming in the sun and Dotty said she was going to get some cookies from the front office. Everybody followed except me. Tess had finished diving and my impulsivity took over. I ran to the high dive before anyone could stop me. Dropped my towel at my feet and grabbed each metal handrail while placing one foot on the sandpaper surface of the first step. I could see through the rungs of the ladder on the other side of the pool, I had been discovered. They were waving their arms and Grandma started in a fast pace to intercept me. I took a deep breath, let it out and started climbing. I rose high and fast and with determination, just like you would a slide at a park, but I had climbed the length of two jumbo slides already and I could hear Grandma at the bottom telling me to “come down this minute!” but she already sounded underwater. Everybody did. I could hear the rushing of the seashell sound in my ears now accompanied with the heavy thumping of my heart. My adrenaline was pumping and when I reached the top and stepped on to the plank of the long warm board, I was almost level with the second story of the YMCA.
“I am not afraid…I am not afraid” I chanted to myself, but I had become almost as rigid as the board I was standing on. My spine was straight, and my arms were plastered at my side. I did not look down or over to the side, just toward my goal at the end of the plank. When I reached it, I still did not look down but out to the other side of the pool where my sister stood calmly eating her cookies while others around her seemed to be panicking…she had seen enough craziness lately…our eyes locked…she smiled.
I inched my toes to the edge and when I looked down to make sure they were there, the fear gripped me as I calculated the distance. Clearly, I did not feel in my body at this moment, and yet somehow even at that young age, I knew that jumping was the medicine I needed. I plugged my nose with one hand, took one last deep breath and launched myself off. I heard gasps as I fell like an arrow, feet first into the deep healing waters.
Gravity took hold of me and then the deep plunge, the pressure and power of water to slow down it’s force and keep me from entering the black hole of all my fears. They had been conquered with one giant leap—a supersonic baptism of sorts. I opened my eyes to a different type of silence, the beauty of the sunlight above me distorted by a whirlpool. I began treading water as hard as I could and traveling up with the very bubbles I had created. I was popping up like a cork, my grandfather’s words ringing in my ears, “Sink or swim!” When I breached the surface, I inhaled a deep breath. (reborn as Lisa) Revived, I doggie paddled like hell towards the ladder. Dotty was in the water to save and scold me. My grandmother helped me up and out with exasperated tones but as they guided me to the front office and towards my grandfather who was chuckling while shaking his head, said “I’ll be damned,” clearly amused.
I knew the ladies were trying to shame me but I was too busy looking up into the sky and over their shoulders to see if it was still there. By the time, I was escorted into the locker room doors I could feel clearly that it was gone, the balloon was gone. I had severed the cord. Where it went, I didn’t know. The rushing in my ears had stopped…and I felt more grounded. Finally, that fearful piece of my soul had floated away and with it some of my insecurities. As I walked, my weight and gravity had their proper place again.
Inside the locker room, Melissa unimpressed said, “I can do that. That high dive isn’t even that high.” Then she brushed the dark cookie crumbs from the corners of her mouth.
Grandmother grimaced and tried to keep her composure while peeling off my wet bathing suit. “No, no…no more high dive. Absolutely not!” she said, clearly exasperated by the drama.
“Did you hear that Liiiiissssa?” Mocking the use of my first name.
“Where’s my cookie?” I asked her.
She responded with a sly smile, and said as a matter of fact, “I ate it,” clearly proud of her greedy self.
Despite that, I smiled back for the same reason. I felt proud, too…very proud of Lisa.
A New Dream
“Why in the world with all that money, would you buy this?” My mother Nancy asked, incredulous, standing in front of the new unfinished house for which I had just paid $650,000.
“Are you kidding me! This is my dream home! Look at the potential! I’ve been manifesting this for years. It’s even territorial style. I think the three acres is amazing…just what I wanted for the kids to be able to run and play.”
“Couldn’t you manifest a property that was done. I have to say I was a little envious of the gorgeous house you were going to be able to buy…but this…”
“Mom, you can’t get land like this downtown. Seriously, unheard of.”
“Okay…if anyone could make it beautiful, I’m sure it’s you dear.” She tried to soften her tone, but I was already reading her thoughts as she turned away to tour more of the property.
“I know what you’re thinking…it’s like Lorton.” Mother chuckled and turned back towards me.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but I do find it odd, Amany. It’s like you’re attempting to recreate the past. There’s not even a working well.
“Come on, Mom! No way.” I laughed back at her. “There’s one big difference…money. There’s not a problem we can’t fix here.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’m not naïve.” She raised one eyebrow, “Are you sure about that?”
“Seriously? I’m not a child. I know what I’m doing. I’ve taken care of that gigantic house in La Jolla for nine years and the renovations on the Manhattan condo taught me a lot. I can do this!”
She started walking again towards the back of the house. We passed a pile of melting adobe bricks; the plastic tarp had blown off, leaving them exposed to the elements. We rounded a lovely grove of old Elms before she saw the back porch I knew she would like.
“Now, here…finally I can see why you like it. I do like the tin roof and the porches. Will there be shutters?”
“Yes, I’m thinking a nice sage green to match the roof.”
“I’m sure you’re right…nothing could be like Lorton. I just remember thinking that same thing about the beautiful acre of lawn and the surrounding oaks. Being charmed by that old apple tree with its bitter little apples. I never foresaw the problems that lay ahead. I’m sure it’ll be different for you. You always seem to find a way to get what you want.”
“That’s true. Let’s go inside,” I urged.
She hesitated.
I pulled on her arm. “Mom, you just said, it’s not Lorton.”
“Is there part of an old house here?”
“No. There was an old adobe without electricity that was all burned out. It was deemed not historically significant so the previous builder knocked it down. Which is amazing because he didn’t have to deal with old walls and low ceilings, no having to keep to some old footprint where the closets were tiny. Come on, it’s pretty cool inside.”
I pulled her in through a boarded up French door that I’d opened previously. “Watch out for the glass.”
We crossed over the threshold and stepped over the broken glass from s windows that had been vandalized before they were boarded. The house was well lit from the insane amount of sky lights. The concrete floor was bare but there was some trash and debris and lots of old bird’s nests and droppings littered the floor.
“We call it the bird house.”
“It’s neat to see the adobe walls exposed,” she said giving into the house’s potential.
We explored the lay out of the house and the tentative placement of the rooms that had been roughed in with two by fours. The fireplaces were all in with beautiful herringbone brick work in the fireboxes. Large rough-hewn barn beams from New York anchored the ceiling where traditionally pine vigas would have been, a more modern update. The house was large about 3,500 feet.
“It’s really neat honey. There’s a lot of work here. But I guess it will be exciting to pick just what you want for all the finishes.”
“Yes! I’m so excited. I can visualize everything. We’ll need to work with an architect to tweak the floor plan a bit to fit us. But I just know it’s gonna be amazing.”
I hugged her to get her enthusiasm up and she smiled for me, but as we walked up the road back home we were both silent; our thoughts tethered to a dark past. We followed an unspoken code about Lorton. Never speak of it too much for fear of whatever it was noticing our energetic trail, perhaps it might follow us. We had relaxed a bit since it was bulldozed, but still what good could come of it.