A Summer with Promise

“I’ll let you take me,” she softly said to the late June evergreen trees, lush and rich with shadows full of more life than she could imagine. Or, maybe it was simply the potential of life, unrealized and therefore ready for anything. Either way, she knew that if she stared too long into the depths made by the abundance of greenery, she’d get that tingle in her spine that meant that someone or something, just out of sight and provability, was staring back at her.

Breaking contact with an uplifted look into the leaves overhead, the young girl, at the age of knobby knees, growing questions, romantic daydreams, and confused hair experiments, spared a moment to appreciate the songs of birds. She then continued her soliloquy.

“I’ll let you take my bones when I’m old, and I’m ready to join you. But for now,” she sighed, speaking even more softly as the light shifted with the rustling leaves, “I am not old, and I’m not ready to join you just yet.”

She looked, her chin forward in determination, deep into the shadow long enough for the tingle to drop through each vertebra of her spine and ricochet back to her skulled synapses. Her mind burst open, her senses dissolving into the environment around her as her skin prickled at the pressure change. She opened her mouth on instinct, though it took a moment before her brain could catch what her ears heard her mouth say:

“So you’ll just have to wait.” She was fully contained in herself again, and the statement had no room to discuss other options. And, based on her resolved tone and posture, and how the birds continued to sing in their trees, there was no need. All that was left was a sense of confidence and completeness; a sense of peace.

She did, however, feel an itch. A small one, starting at the juncture where the spinal column meets the brain stem, and nesting into a home in a corner of her soul. That itch told her that she was promising something more permanent than this single moment, and while she was making a promise as a child, she’d be holding it for the rest of her life.

Her mind, starting to feel the pricks of existential anxiety, quickly smoothed it over with the promise that she didn’t need to worry about that right now; she was young, and the forest would wait. She paused for that moment, radiating the peace and assurance she felt. Her breathing aligned with the wind that brought a kindred sense of belonging, rooted in ages beyond understanding, to join her.

With a final exhale, blown out to match the visiting gust of wind, she was off. Her attention soon turned to counting petals on nearby flowers, watching the sun dapple through upturned leaves, and talking to all the creatures she could find. This is how she scampered in and around the fading day until she returned home.

Home she had stayed - relatively speaking - and it was from her current home that she reflected on a summer long, long ago, where she made a promise with the woods.

She was old enough now, at least compared to how old she used to be. Even with relativity (and modern science) on her side, the white hair and deep wrinkles were her proof of the time passed. She was proud of how she spent it, and mementos of travel and love – some lost and some still growing – adorned every available space of her home. Even with so many crowded nooks and crannies, nothing in her space overwhelmed the senses or felt cluttered; the home was simply filled with an invigorating sense of someone who belonged, knowingly and completely, to life.

That was a summer where nothing had changed outwardly – she had grown no taller, broken no bones, and had no heartbreaks during that particular season – but her soul had changed in those long days before the nights started staying longer that year. She had learned she was a person who didn’t trust blueberries enough to pick them recklessly, though she would always risk a blackberry. She had learned she was never scared of climbing a tree, but ladders made her stomach drop to the soles of her feet. She had learned, through a chance meeting in town, that she could grow up to study plants, jumpstarting her career in botany. She learned that trusting someone’s smile isn’t the same as trusting their eyes.

That late afternoon, she had caught the sun reflecting in the trees on the edge of the grove bordering her home through the window as she made a cup of Earl Grey. It was all too easy to start reminiscing. It all felt too familiar, and, as she flitted through memories of that time, she couldn’t help but feel like her memory of that summer wasn’t the only thing returning. Something was still lingering; it itched at her soul, like a scab barely healed over.

“You said I could take you.”

The voice was low and quiet, and came from the furthest corner of her mind. It was not a voice that belonged to her, but it felt like hearing an old friend, one who knew your soul from where you used to be and loved you through to who you are. The comfort and clarity cracked the scab open. She remembered, not the sun and the joy of the memorable season, but the tingle in her spine that followed the promise made on a single day, and the sense that something was looking back from the shadowed depths of a lush wood.

Her heart knew, clearly, that it wasn’t just the warmth and sun from that promise that had stayed; it was also the shadow that had been with her for her entire life, just on the edge of feeling. She had sworn herself to the whole forest, and therefore to both sides of it. She felt a pang of guilt, the start of shame; she had never invested in acknowledging the shadowed heart of the thicket, though she knew, deeper in her bones, that it was always in its rightful place at the corners of the world. And it was waiting for her.

Looking out the window, the day was just starting to fade. The light, strong from the recently passed Solstice, still looked just as warm as it did that day in her memories. The wind, lazily gliding through leaves, seemed to call to her, to join as she used to do.

Her tea was starting to get cold. The guilt had morphed into a fear she had angered some primordial god she never learned the name of, and the fear that she hadn’t lived a life as fully as she thought. The fear continued its flight into absurdity and then regressed back to guilt.

“I could have done more.” Sinking into the sentiment, letting the “what if” tendrils unfurl in her mind, she was grabbed back by an unexpected and small voice, her voice from long ago, reminding her:

“You told them to wait.”

Wait, they had, and wait, they would if she needed more time. Freeing herself from guilt, relief framed a picture that waiting for the right time was not the same as avoiding something.

With this realization, and looking at the time, her marrow urged her to move. Looking around more – books on the table, plants recently watered, loose notes scattered, dishes drying – she set her mug down as an offering of thanks to the home before she left through the front door. Closing and locking it behind her, she placed the key under the cerulean blue doormat. She did not expect to return and wanted to make it easier for whoever would come around to check on her.

The last of the sun warmed her face. The sounds of birds enjoying the extra hours of sunlight with their song and the steady hum of a road somewhere in the distance filled her ears. She inhaled the seasonal vegetal aroma. With every step she took towards the grove’s edge, her brain started to catch up with her body, and more “what if” tendrils uncoiled in her mind.

She wondered if now was really the right time. On one hand, there was a conviction rooted in the deepest foundations of her soul that was currently channeling through her limbs and carrying her lightly ahead. Yet, she still wondered about how she left things, wondering if it was, or ever could be enough. She exhaled, letting the cycle continue. She knew it was the right time, even though, as doubts crept further, it wasn’t perfect. Wryly, she reflected that she never had been perfect before, and what a shame it would be to try and start now.

She had reached the edge. Her mind still oscillating, she took a step, then another, and another still deeper into the wood. Before she knew it, a mania swept through her, inspiring her to skip and run (as best she could) through the leaves, roots, and thickening branches. Reaching a small clearing, she laughed and spun, arms outstretched and face lifted towards the quickly fading light.

Stopping abruptly, she looked, decidedly, at the deepest shadow, growing closer by the second, as the dapples of light blended into rich shades of darkening greens. Her heart drummed exuberantly as her eyes blazed to meet the foliage; she took some time to catch her breath.

“I’ll let you take me,” she declared. A breeze cradled her back, a comforting gesture that boosted her confidence as she began slowly pacing a circle around the small clearing. “You’ve had to wait so long, and my bones are so old.” A crow cawed in support, joined by some nearby chickadees.

“And I don’t know if a human like me can ever be ready,” her hand gliding over a nearby yarrow plant, “but I am joining you now.”

She smiled as she looked up to see the path opening before her, and a tunnel forming through the verdantly ferned landscape to show her the way. She walked through to join them.