I never thought I would get old. (Yes, I know — consider the alternative.) Society treats aging for women as a liability, throwing in words like “faded”, “hag” — honestly, though, it’s not that bad. If one doesn’t read mass media or the screeds of militant meninists, the reality is that people think I’m too skinny (absolutely not true), more men hold doors for me, and people ask about my grandchildren (no kids, no grandkids — would you like to meet my grandkitties?) In a culture that worships youth and beauty, I’m finally off the hook.
Sometimes, as a writer, I use struggles to write a moment of utopia. I think it’s a natural urge to give my messy reality a happy ending. Utopias are never perfect,however, because that would be boring. In fact, the imperfection of utopias makes for good drama (several Star Trek reruns use that principle to good effect.) But at the same time, reading one’s written utopia makes for a satisfying sigh and a feeling of being wrapped in a security blanket, if only for a moment.
For example, the short story below. It takes place at the setting for a few of my books, an ecocollective named Barn Swallows’ Dance. The main characters are a May-December couple who have been married for about 30 years, Josh Young (age 53) and Jeanne Beaumont-Young (age 83). The Kami mentioned in the story are spirits in Shinto. Enjoy!
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That day, as she had every day for the six months since her husband died, Jeanne Beaumont- Young sat in the back yard of her cottage in the circle of cottages waiting for him.
Her daily help thought she was morbid, maybe even senile, but they allowed that her relationship with her husband had been something of a fairy tale. He had been an author — not a paperback author, but an author that The New York Times and the like lauded as important. He had credited Jeanne, a much older botany professor, with much of his inspiration. The age difference had been considered controversial, but no one could argue that they hadn’t loved each other.
The back yard, like the front, sported a lush collection of trees, vines, and plants, all edible. She had planted them all years ago when they had moved there. Others took care of them now.
She sat in the wooden lawn chair for hours a day, a wizened woman with a fall of thick white hair. Waiting.
Jeanne wished she could see visions. Gaia had not given that gift to her. Jeanne could talk to kami, or nature spirits, encourage them to grow big, strong plants. But she could not see them, or even see metaphors of their presence.
That had been her husband’s gift, and she desperately missed him.
That’s why she sat in the yard, in her permaculture guild, a planting of trees and perennial food plants, day after day. Josh had told her once that Shinto religion believed that the most exemplary of humans would reincarnate as kami. Josh had believed in Shinto, and she believed he was exemplary. She believed he was out there, as a kami, waiting for her.
She could not have told anyone about this, and no one would have believed her anyhow. But she sat. And waited.
A mist rose up from the depths of the woods. One patch of mist grew more defined, more opaque, and did not burn off as the sun rose. “I?” the patch thought to itself as it coalesced, taking form, although no more solid.
It clutched toward sentience. “I … am?” It looked around at the trees surrounding it. “Purpose?” It knew it had a purpose, and its purpose had to do with the sun slanting down through the branches, and the cool green, and the muddy scent of the nearby lake. A fragment of sound, more staccato than birdsong with odd pauses, crossed its mind: “Sometimes, the most exemplary of humans …” In the jumble it heard its name, knew what it was: kami. Protector spirit.
The kami floated toward the lake and slid inside a tree trunk to see how it felt inside. The tree, which it recognized as willow, felt good, right. But – It felt a lack of something, a piece of itself gone. It strained to remember – remember? What was that? Didn’t it always live there? Remember …
Somewhen, it had been something else, dying in a place of stones and earth, its life pouring out of it. Remembered birdsong: “My willow, I’ve called for help, but I’m afraid you won’t make it.” It – he — recognized his last words: “I told you you’d outlive me.”
He was a willow? That made no sense: He was inside a willow, but he was not a willow. Another word: metaphor. Someone, the old woman with the husky voice, called him a willow. That realization jogged another memory, a robust woman who stood next to him in white, and a voice like wind whistling through a log which he surmised was his voice: “you are my brook, and I would die without you.”
He was looking for a brook? No, he was looking for the woman; this was metaphor again. He vaguely remembered his past life was based on metaphor; now he was stripped to his essence and had no need to speak obliquely, or even to speak. He moved now, like a cloud blown by wind, looking for the woman.
He didn’t travel far. He felt her presence, bracing and quicksilver, and floated down to a clay-walled cottage where a frail, white-haired woman sat at the edge of a circular grove of trees. He knew these trees – had planted them with this woman in his past life. Jeanne! he realized, and his sense of detachment crumbled. “It makes no difference what I am now, I am as much hers as I am Gaia’s.”
First sunset in the grove: He stood in the sunlight in front of the clearing, showing himself to her. She squinted into the clearing, wrinkling her brow, but she did not see him. He felt an ache in his center that he remembered in his previous form – his heart. He tried to call her voice, but he spoke only wind. He stayed there, watching a tear run down her cheek. When all was dark, she walked inside the cottage.
Second sunset in the grove: She wouldn’t recognize his current form, because it did not look human as she was, as he once had been. He tried to remember what “human’ looked like – upright, two legs, two arms. He tried to remember what he looked like as a human – this was much harder. He remembered being small, mouselike – not mouselike in actuality; that was another metaphor. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes…
It took many sunsets for him to remember what he had looked like. He had to walk in the woman’s dreams as they floated over the forest. The ephemeral world dismissed the tiny silk fluffs of cottonwood as seed parachutes, but they carried the dreams of humans to the places where they would grow. He became as tiny as dust, walking through the rainbows reflected on each tiny strand of fluff. One night he came across her dreams, smelling of watercress. He saw himself from a distance, a young man who gazed at the woman she once was. The woman was soft and formidable in a sweater and jeans, her dark hair tied back –
“No!” He admonished himself. “Look at yourself. Study every detail.” Black thick hair touching his collar and falling in his eyes. Large, almond-shaped, luminous brown eyes – he never would have guessed. A slight smile, sulky lower lip. Long but not prominent nose. Slight body, like a willow sapling.
“Josh?” he asked his younger self, his ephemeral self, but got no answer. This was just a dream, not a life.
He – Josh – floated back to Jeanne’s grove. He stood in the grove in a patch of sunlight., standing right in front of the now-old Jeanne; the white-haired woman seemed agitated in her chair but did not see him. Josh felt rain on his cheek that matched her tears. Then, a flash of memory, tinged with a feeling that tasted like flower nectar, which he now knew as love–
Jeanne could actually hear kami!
He knew what to do, now that he remembered speech.
Hours passed. The light hit the guild in a certain way, spotlighting a patch of grass in the ring of trees and shrubs. She heard a voice, light and dry, a hallucination, her Josh: “I remember you don’t see things, but you do hear. Step into the light.” So she did. Within the circle, Josh stood as she first knew him — a black-haired, ethereal, mercurial young man rather than the calm, greying, near-sighted older man she remembered from their later years.
He kissed her, as he always had, like he was slaking his thirst. “You are my brook, and I couldn’t live long without you.”
“You are my tree, my willow, and I would have grown dry without you.” These words were their secret, their wedding vows. Nobody else had ever heard them.
“You know there are birds to feed. Come along.”
“What do I look like now?” she whispered
“A goddess of summer, as you always have to me.”
They stepped into the apple tree, as they had no bodies to burden them anymore.
Words Like Me 