1. Goshawk
I once saw a goshawk flashing quick, dark and silent as a shark through the branches.
When I was a child, I used to ride in my dad’s backpack. That’s how I first learned the rhythms of walking. As he walked under the old-growth red cedar canopy, I’d hang onto my Dad’s shirt collar, then lean my head way back, so I could see up into the great treetops swimming and swaying like a kelp forest. I once saw a goshawk flashing quick, dark and silent as a shark through the branches.
In the evening, Mom would stand me up in her metal washbasin for a little bath by firelight. By the time she had towelled me off and gotten me into my pajamas, I was too sleepy to stand up. Daddy slung me over his shoulder and carried me to the big green family-sized tent. I was awake briefly, but the sound of nearby creek water talking to itself and the stars soon pulled me under. In those days, I was a child and always dreamed.
Map of the Remembered World
2. Sparrow
These sounds were so terrifying that I flew out of my body and perched like a sparrow on the gable of our house.
When I was a child, I was often confronted and confounded by the mysterious other world of adults. When I was about three years old, we lived way north of Seattle in a little shingle-sided house at the edge of the swamp. One day, I heard a terrible noise and ran out onto the stoop to listen. I could hear dogs down in the swamp below the house. I could hear men shouting as they chased after the dogs. I could hear an additional sound–a human scream. These sounds were so terrifying that I flew out of my body and perched like a sparrow on the gable of our house. I could see my frozen body below me in a red dress, long dark ringlets standing out from my head in fear.
Self Portrait as Owl Woman: "long dark ringlets standing out from my head in fear."
3. Secrets
When I was a child in the same house, I first became aware my father had lived another life before me and my siblings. Under the gable was an attic that was accessed by set of pulldown stairs. The string hung in the hallway next to another string that turned on the hall light.
One day, Mom pulled the string and the stairs magically unfolded from the ceiling. She went about her business, and I was allowed to explore the attic. I first looked out the tiny dusty gable window down into the swamp, then I squatted on my heels to investigate a metal box. It took me a moment to navigate the latch, but then I opened the lid. I found inside metal pins and colorful ribbons, things for which I had no name but I know now were two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, a Sharpshooters Medal and other relics of a soldier’s life.
I carefully closed the box and hugged it to me as I negotiated the wobbly stairs. Mom was ironing in the living room. I ran in, holding out the box of medals, shouting, “Look what I found!”
Mom snatched the box out of my hands saying, “Don’t ever mention these to your father!” She hustled the box back up into the attic then snapped the string to flip the stairs back up out of sight.
I never mentioned the medals to my father, and he never mentioned them to me. World War II is long over, my father long gone, the medals destroyed when my brother’s house burned down, and all this happened long ago when I was a child.
4. The Lookout
Once when I was a young girl, I rode my horse Lance far up into the foothills above our home in the wide curve of the Wenatchee River. I rode so high up and so far away that the trees became a dense forest and snow still drifted thick on north slopes. I entered sunny clearings where spring beauty and avalanche lilies bloomed, then the dark branches would close in around me and Lance and snow dropped down on his haunches.
Although I became disoriented in this confusing landscape of trees and snow, Lance knew where we were, and he finally took his head. He found a logging road that led to another road that led down through the Barnhill’s property to the three miles of switchbacks down to river level. It was late. The night was dark, the Milky Way rich and creamy with stars.
Home After Dark: Original Watercolor by Cheryl Renee Long
Far below, I saw a car begin the slow crawl up the switchbacks toward us, headlights appearing and disappearing around the steep curves. Lance and I plodded on, finally coming down that stretch of road to what we called The Lookout. The car was parked there, and I could see my dad looking out over the silvery thread of river below. As we appeared, he came out and patted Lance on the shoulder, letting the big horse snuffle his shirt.
When I Was a Child: Mandala of River, Cliff, Orchard, Mountains
“Good ride?” was all he said, with never a word of worry or a hint, as I learned later, that he was out looking for me. No shame, no blame, the best lesson in the world, and I learned it long ago from my father when I was a young girl.
5. Dreams
Ever since I was a young woman, I have dreamed of my father over and over and over–I’ve written all the dreams down, but still they come. In these dreams, Daddy never speaks to me–I see him across a piazza in Florence; entering a museum; ahead of me on a mountain trail; in a crowd watching me perform.
Dreams of my Father: From my Illustrated Journal
Sometimes I dream he has returned home to Mom, pale and weak as the ghost of a soldier killed in war, and only she can tend to him. I stand outside death’s door, looking in at my beautiful father.
that my friend Jody Blechman sent me out of the blue. They are thick, chunky, smooth cubes with evocative poetry words on them like “peach,” “shadow,” “putrid,” and “incandescent.” (I made that last one up–it’s too long to fit on the cube.) The idea is to create three line haiku out of them, but it’s not much of a jump to “Snow Day, please” or “No free lunch.” There are sixty-one cubes, and I randomly gave each student four cubes, leaving three at the bottom of the box for me. They were:
