There’s a small shack where you can stop to pray under an oak tree. It’s made of half very old lumber and half very old stone. I step inside and light a stick of incense, taking a moment to watch the smoke and smell curl into the air, pass through the open door and drift up in little ribbons toward the wet canopy. I think about healing.
For such a long time, I was searching for a cure: a good husband, a job, a pill, a surgery, a path to God, a path to enlightenment.
“Fix me. Make me better,” I used to pray.
The words left my body more times than I can count, but what I needed more than anything was to hold on to them, to send them inside. It was never the cure that I needed; it was the healing, the spiritual and emotional peace, the connection between body and soul, the acceptance. Blue and golden flecks of sunlight sneak through the gaps in the walls as I stand and think. I remember living in my bed and I can hardly believe where I am and what I’m doing. I never imagined I’d have the physical, financial, and personal freedom to experience the world this way, to really pursue healing on my own terms.
Thank you. I look up and say it without releasing a word.
Drizzle gives way to sun. I leave the shack and continue up the path.
I go through the woods a little while longer, and then a burst of too-early summertime heat welcomes me into a broad clearing. Young golden flowers have opened all around and the clouds look like packing peanuts glued to the sky. In one direction the flowers stretch from the edge of the woods to the horizon, in the other they thin to grass, then to dust; the terrain beyond grows tall and rugged. My eyes find a path that snakes up between two soft peaks, more than hills but less than mountains, steeper still than any I’ve ever tried to climb before. I don’t feel any fear, just peace, and I start on my way up, letting the body I once gave up on carry me higher and higher.
I listen to my body as I dodge plate-shaped rocks and twigs on the ground, but it has nothing to say. It’s silent and joyful, like the rest of me. The muscles in my legs tighten and release, tighten and release, letting go of a little more fear, a little more grief with each step. I taste sweat on my lips and feel my lungs grow bigger with breath than I thought they could. I keep going up, up, up and feel the sunshine sloughing off years of old stories and traumas.
Finally, the ground levels. I’ve arrived.
What I would once have called barren feels instead like a place filled with promise. I walk almost to the edge of the ridge, left right, left right, and the smell of a hundred different flowers, of my own sweat and the minerals under my feet, hits my nose at once, a perfume that can’t ever be bottled. I sit, body cradled in the most exquisite afternoon light. Held in that same light, the world stretches out in front of me, expansive, soaked in love, abundant with truth. I look out into the vista and behold everything in the glow: the monastery, the flowers, every animal and plant and human underneath the sky. It seems limitless. I imagine it illuminating my mom, my brothers, Jack, and Laura Treppendahl. I imagine the light falling across my daddy’s smiling face. I think about him for a while. I always do in the beautiful places I go. Fat tears, part grief, part gratitude, slide down my skin and become a part of the earth beneath me. I weep as quietly as possible.
I wonder if he can see me, if he has a spot up front in the colossal, never-ending sky. I look down at my hand and remember the way it felt wrapped in his. I try to remember the last time we held on to each other but I can’t.
I wish so badly that he could know me now. The last time we saw each other I was consumed with pain, living in my bed, and hopeless. Today, I climbed halfway to the clouds and I’m consumed with joy. I keep my eyes closed, stay still, trust in the universe, and hope for a sign of him. Somewhere.
22 Home
There’s the journey of healing, the work of it, the treacherous climb toward peace. Then there’s the magic of it.
We’re at Tim’s house staring up at the twinkling boughs of the Christmas tree. My niece Lucy is dancing and singing a pop song she probably shouldn’t be listening to.
“She’s just like you were,” my mom says, smiling.
She’s right. I watch Lucy for a moment, shaking her little hips as hard as she can, trying to boogie her way out of bedtime.
Laura and Libby laugh in the kitchen. The big kids practice cheerleading moves and baseball swings out in the yard. Lile and Tim half watch from the porch. It feels good to be home.
My mom and I are alone on the couch, talking. We talk often now, about life, my daddy, her hummingbird feeders, whatever floats into our minds. She’s been one of my greatest champions, encouraging and embracing me in the most supportive and loving ways.
“Ru, have you ever done DNA testing?”
It’s an odd question but her friends are all at the age where genealogy, like growing hydrangeas or entering pies in contests, becomes a hobby. I’ve done just about everything under the sun over the past year—tarot cards, sound baths, sweat lodges—so she’s not wrong to assume that I spit into a test tube somewhere along the way.
“Several of your father’s friends found out later in life that they had children, you know.” She shrugs. “It was the sixties, boys were enlisting. It was a strange time.”
Her eyes dart to the window as she speaks. I wonder if she expects to see my daddy walking across the yard toward her, the way he’d done so many times before. We both sit still in the silence for a while. The holidays are always a little gray without him.
“I actually have,” I tell her, “but I’ve never logged in to my account or anything.”
Ancestry.com sponsored a tour I spoke on earlier in the year and all the panelists got free testing. For a few minutes, I imagined that I was secretly an Italian noble, but then I forgot about it.
“You should. You never know.” My mom’s eyes, as gorgeous as ever, shine out into the tree line.
I don’t log in. I go home and back to work and she doesn’t bring it up again.
* * *
A few months later, I’m on the phone with an intuitive, a healer who taps into your energy from a distance and helps you better tap into it all yourself. I’m still trying to understand my place in the universe, my purpose. I still look everywhere for direction. She talks about my future, the book I’m writing, and where I’ll be living in ten years. Then she tells me something I never expected to hear.
“I keep hearing ‘missing brother.’ ”
My brain tells me it’s crazy, but I think of my mom’s eyes combing the garden for my daddy. Something in my soul tugs at me, insists that it’s true. In the days that follow, it’s as though I can feel him in the world, as though we were connected in spirit without ever meeting in the flesh.
It’s May when I get the message.
* * *
A sweet woman writes me from Oxford, Mississippi, where I went to school.
“My husband matched with you on Ancestry.com. I believe that you’re closely related to him.”
I give her my phone number and wait. It rings less than an hour later.
“Do you know why I’m calling?” His name is David. His voice is a mix of Tim’s gentleness and Lile’s enthusiasm for absolutely everything.