A Mother's Answer

I ran through the forest, sniffing the air as I went, and watching the trees dance around, in front, and behind me. The pack was with me, running, and enjoying the night as I was. The moon was becoming full and spring was coming. Everything was awakening once more, promising new life. I could feel the pack as they realized this also would temporarily mean an end to hunger. I slowed, because this feeling came from behind me. They had stopped.

It was at a walk that I entered the clearing in the trees. The nearly full moon shone right down into the center like a spotlight on the strange hammock before me. A hammock made by the living boughs of the two trees in the center. Woven together, they provided a bed that logic told me would be extremely uncomfortable, but something told me that it wasn't.

She was there, laying on the boughs. Her hands weren't folded on Her chest this time, nor by Her side. They were laced behind Her head, more in casual repose than slumber.

"What is it I want of you this time?" I asked.

She smiled, just a gentle curve of Her lips, but it threw me off. "Have you forgotten that I am waking?" She asked.

"No." I dared speak aloud, although in a whisper. "But you are not supposed to be awake yet."

"I am not supposed to be?" Her voice was amused. "By whose rules?"

I didn't respond, not even with a tangible thought, yet She smiled again. "I know, you are more comfortable when you approach me in my sleep. It scares you when you see me face to face and I am awake."

Her eyes opened and bore into me. They sparkled with an amused and gentle fire, yet they pierced me to my soul. Like in an instant, with that gaze, She would know everything about me. Be able to dissect it, take it apart and reassemble it.

Her eyes closed, but the smile stayed. "But surely you know I need not be awake to do that?"

I tried to formulate a response to this. Not a defense, just a demonstration of how much I understood this to be the case. She shook Her head slightly. Barely a motion.

"I know that." She said. "But that is not why you are here. Wasn't that the question you asked? Why you are here? You know, once you would have asked me why I had come to you."

"It seems you rarely do anymore." I said, before it occurred to me not to. It sounded petty and trite when I said it. I tried to explain. "It's not that I am complaining, or feeling neglected. It just seems that once you would stop by and talk to me, now it seems that we only talk when I seek you out."

Again a smile, and She turned her head, eyes still closed, to face up into the moonlight. "Did you seek me out this time? Do you remember doing so specifically?"

Thinking this over, I had to admit I had not. "See? So there is no real difference. I have always come because you sought me. The vehicle in which I do so has changed as your understanding of the circumstance has changed. Something important to reflect upon, but that is not why you are here either."

"If you are planning on forcing me to ask the question this time, you are out of luck." I told Her. "I don't even know what it is." The pack howled. They always became worried or chided me when I talked to Her like this.

"That indicates a certain level of wisdom you could aspire to." Her tone was more reprimanding for a moment, but then the smile returned. "No. I plan on telling you this time."

I waited patiently. So did She. "Should I say please?" I asked sarcastically.

"More often than you do." Was Her curt response.

For a moment I thought She was going to sit up and look at me, even though She hadn't moved. I felt a surge of panic race through me.

"Fine. Then I won't." She said, with another smile. The smile evaporated immediately. "Is that truly what you think? That I am somehow more dangerous or threatening if I fall outside of the mold? Beyond intimidation at looking upon me, you would panic because I was awake before I should? That this meant I was dangerous?"

The thought hadn't even really gotten processed for me yet, but she was right. "Isn't that the case though? If something dragged you out of your schedule, that would mean it was serious, and that something was wrong. You know, when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy?"

Her laughter pealed through the forest, and it was a comforting sound, amplified by the fact that Her mouth only smiled slightly. Seeing Her laugh outright would be more of a sign of being fully awake. She had done that for me.

"No huge thing." She chided. "I am not quite awake yet, and that would have been obvious if I stood up. Yet you distract me again. After you said please and everything."

"Please, explain."

"You are never going to remember what I said to you. You rack your brains, waiting to display the right thing, but you are never going to remember it.

"I suspected that." I admitted, idly poking a stick into a fire that hadn't been there a moment ago. "But you do, don't you?"

"Of course I do." She responded, opening Her eyes again, pinning me to the spot. "No, you don't get off easy now. The burden you have chosen is great, and now you have to look me in the eye. Show me that you can teach the person you are most desperately trying to reach. Show me that, and I will allow you comfort."

"You know I can't dance." I replied breathlessly.

"On the contrary, I know you can." She answered. I started to reply, but She cut me off. "I can't tell you exactly what I said to you. Not because I don't remember, but because it didn't happen in one night. The night you first asked who I was, you weren't even listening to me. It was later that you paid attention. I talked throughout, and I repeated myself. So I will tell you what I said, and it is up to you to explain, or not, what the impact was, and how you put it all together.

"You ask me to give you a name and a picture. As if, much as the man who appeared in your window I could just pop before you and answer your questions. You are not ready. A roadmap to a name, or a church, or a picture will not help you. You do not desire to be a fanatic, consumed by my presence to the point of lunacy, forsaking the teachings and guidance of all others including me. I don't desire this either.

"You do not need me to tell you who I am, for at the core you know the answer. The important part of the answer. I am the one you talk to. I am the one you ask to prove my own existence, despite the logical mind screaming that if I do not exist, you are asking this favor of noone.

"You knew me when you were a child, before you allowed the world to break you. No, I do not mean in the churches you worshipped and prayed in. I was there, and you talked to me even then, but their books and their classes won't help you. You've already figured this out.

"As a child, you walked in a windstorm and laughed. You loved the wind whipping around you, and you cupped it in your hands. You stood and manipulated the motion through your hands, as the wind roared at your back, to give you the feeling that you were actually calling it up and sending it forth. You knew this was not true, yet you also knew in a small part, for the most seemingly unimportant fraction of that wind, you altered it's path through your actions. You manipulated your environment and you love it, and you laughed. I laughed with you, and together we enjoyed the storm.

"When the wind rises now* you are afraid. You cower inside as if there is something that is there that you are missing. I am telling you that what you are missing is me. In the faith of a child, you spoke to me there, and now you look at it and know that you have cut yourself off, and you don't even know why.

"Yet, even now you have opened the door a crack, and that is all I need. Open it more and you will find an even clearer understanding of who I am. Much as with the wind, I am what has been missing in the latter portions of your faith journey. I am the one who stood quietly and watched as your brain screamed, You are forgetting something!

"I am not going to tell you who I am, because the quest for that answer is the point. Walk towards me, and wait for the most unexpected of events. When you keep walking towards me, you will find me. Not at the end of the road, or the far reaches of the world, but right next to you. Right where I have been the entire time.

"Open your eyes and see me. Open your ears and hear me. Open your mind and know me. Then dance, and you will be free.

"You loved me when you didn't know me. You discarded me as foolish when you did know me, but had left your search behind. Seek me and you will know me. I have been waiting for you."

The last words seemed to resonate through the forest for a moment, and then the wolves took up the howl. Incongruent with the sudden noise, Her features became more relaxed and her eyes were closed once more.

"Hit the snooze button on your way out, timekeeper." She said with a wry smile. "Someone says I haven't gotten enough beauty sleep yet."

* Editor's note. The "now" referenced in regards to my feelings about the wind would be at the time in question, many years ago. Not "now" as in now. I am back to playing in the storms, although next time I play in the storms with her I might remind her that there wasn't necessarily any reason to include that short term phobia.