Tall Grass and Purple Flowers

I am alone in a field of tall grass and purple flowers.

Irises, petunias, lilacs. The sky is clear above, save for a few wandering clouds, stretched thin, like pulled cotton. I hear only the breeze and feel only the tickle of the tall grass on my palms, the earth below my feet. I have been here for a lifetime and could stay here for eternity. Where the air is warm and I am free. I could run, I could sleep, I could sit still and breathe.

Suddenly, I feel something I've never felt before – the cold. It trickles down my spine like a sharp nail. The cloud thickens grey, the earth shutters. I hear a woman calling me by a name. I try to respond with words I do not have. I move toward the sound, as it crispens with each repetition. The warmth of the landscape around me is gone under an overcast sky, but light radiates from the sound of the woman’s voice far in the distance. I can finally make out the name she calls, Jane. Am I Jane?

I feel my legs moving toward the sound like an undercurrent I cannot fight against. I want to reach the warmth of her voice, but I look over my shoulder at the place I've always known, the place just a moment ago I wished to never leave. Jane, it echoes, and my legs pick up their pace, trampling grass and flowers in my path; my vision narrows. Jane, Jane, Jane. A pinpoint of light in the distance, I can barely see, scarcely feel. I reach for it, outstretch my arm as far as it will go, I notice my hands, my glass like skin, I’ve never noticed them before.

The light seems to be furthering with each step I take, my vision narrows, and with each step forward, I forget the field of lilacs I've always known, and I cannot bring myself to turn my head and discover it once again. Still here but not here at all.

Jane, she says again, and I jump off the edge, into the darkness, and I am falling, a racing, pounding feeling in my chest, takes my breath and sounds in my ears, I have a body, and I am just now realizing it. I am afraid, and I can’t stop it. I scream, I wail, the first sound I’ve ever made. I am falling into darkness, there is no end in sight, except for that pin point of light. Jane, I hear again, and the light begins to grow, below me, above me, all around. I shut my eyes tight, and the sound of my name echoes all around and then…silence. Bone-chilling silence. Where am I? Where did I come from?

“It’s a girl,” someone says, their cold hands on my back. I open my eyes and see no sky, no clouds, no lilacs. I wail. I am handed back and forth between cold hands and colder ones, until I am finally placed in a warm embrace. “Jane,” a woman with dark hair and blue eyes says to me. She’s clammy and smiles. It was you, I think. You were the one calling my name. “Oh Jane, my love, my life.” She says, and she leaks from her blue eyes. Then there is a man, he too leaks from his eyes, he takes me from her arms, “baby girl,” he calls me.

All that was is gone. The man places me back in her arms, “I’m your mom, Jane.” She says. “I can’t believe I am a mother.” She says again. “And you’re a father.” She says to the man.

Mother, father and Jane.

Years pass, they mark time with candles on cakes. I meet many people, none like mother or father. I go to many places, none like home. I find myself drawn to things, barbie dolls and colouring crayons. Waterfalls and sunsets. For a time there is peace, a familiar feeling. Mother, Father and I read books and find shapes in the clouds.

I am safe in their warm embrace.

They call me a child, and they have two more children. My siblings, they say. At first, I did not like them. Mother, father, and I don’t watch the clouds anymore, and one of them is always screaming about something.

One day, father left, and we didn’t see him again for a while.

One day, I started school and met other children, but they didn’t like me much. They made fun of my body. The school had a field, and I found myself drawn to it. I’d lie on my back and watch the clouds, I’d pick purple flowers. It felt like home, and I didn’t know why. But the other children would laugh at me; one time, they kicked dirt on me.

I felt afraid.

Father came back on occasion, and he and Mother would fight. Mother would look at her reflection often and tell herself all the things she hated. On the day my body started to change, breasts rose from my chest and pimples on my cheeks and hair in places hair ought not to be, I too started to tell myself all the things I hated.

They called me a teenager.

I found a way to fit in, changed my clothes and spent less time lollygagging in fields and picking flowers. Took pictures for the internet, cut my hair in a million different ways. Kissed a boy, kissed a girl. Hid in my closet in shame. Mother got me a diary, said to write out my thoughts. Told me to spend more time with siblings, but they were simple and sticky, and I didn’t like them.

I was lonely.

Father brought me a guitar on one of his visits, and I started writing songs.

“You have a real knack for that,” he’d say. “We should put her in competitions.”

I started playing in front of people, and they would applaud. They would come up and tell me how talented I was – gifted, they would say.

I liked it. I felt powerful.

Eventually, I moved away from my mother and my siblings – I lived in a box in a big city, and I learned to cook, clean, and pay my bills. I met a man, and it was wonderful. I thought of nothing but him. My heart ached for him. He would kiss me in places I had never been kissed. He was mine for a time, but not long. Like father, he came and went; he would yell when I displeased him. I looked in the mirror and I saw my mother, and the voice of judgment became louder with each year.

I made friends too. Other women who saw my heart, and some who didn’t. Some who “took advantage of my light,” mother would say. I learned discernment in my choice of companionship.

I got a degree, I got a job, I got drunk and high. I spent days curled in a ball in bed and days dancing under the sun. I watched sunsets and sunrises, I took planes and trains to far-off places.

At a certain point, I stopped lying in fields. Stopped looking at the clouds, stopped thinking of home. I didn’t call my mother enough.

Then one day, she called me and told me my father had died. Death was just a concept, one which got scarier as the years went on.

The year my father died, I feared god, and the year my mother died, I cherished him.

I met another man, and he was kind, quiet and humble. Nothing like father. He made me his wife, and we had children of our own. When I looked into the eyes of my baby, I suddenly remembered the feeling of falling into an abyss of black, into the unknown of life.

My siblings and I became close in our middle age, our children were friends, and our homes were just around the block. I saw more of the world, and I made more music. I laughed, I cried, I prayed.

One day, I woke up in unimaginable pain. My husband drove me to the hospital, and they told me I was dying.

I heard my name again, I heard Mother.

I closed my eyes and drew my last breath, and when I opened them, I was alone, in a field of tall grass and purple flowers.