Tag: Mystical Visititations

When Your Inner Child’s a Biter

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

It may take a village to raise a child, but some villages do better than others. And what about the Walt Whitman multitudes within each of us? Who’s in charge of those inner children?

For instance, when things aren’t going her way, or malevolent forces get too close, my own inner child growls and nips like a protective dog. I scold and apply sanctions. Sometimes, she’s contrite. Other times, she clamps her teeth down on my forearm and leaves marks of unrepentance.

God babysits occasionally. My inner child likes to sit on his lap, braiding his beard, poking at his eyes, and pulling on his large, floppy earlobes. The entwined snake tattoo on his temple is one of her favorites, but his various piercings bother her.

Yesterday, she was having a tough time, so she found God and crawled up for a cuddle. He was dozing, a summer novel splayed across his chest. He didn’t rouse himself fast enough to suit her, so she grabbed his limp hand, bit him, and squirmed away. God sat up, put his finger in his mouth, and lumbered after her like the ancient, doting grandfather he is.

“You don’t need to bite, honey,” he said. “That’s not what those pretty teeth are for.”

“How would you know what my teeth are for?” she retorted, pointing at her gleaming incisors. She’s feisty like that.

Gently, God put his hand over her gaping mouth. She kicked him in the shin.

“So that’s how it is,” he said. He winked at me and began dancing around like a boxer. My inner child wore herself out swinging and missing. She finally dropped to the ground, winded and sweaty, her fists still punching at nothing, her ruffly dress torn and dirty.

“I hate you,” she screamed. “You’re a nasty old man. A pervert. Don’t touch me again or I’ll call the police.”

God leaned down and handed her his phone. “Go ahead, sweetheart,” he said.

She slapped the phone from his hand and dissolved, howling and gnashing her teeth. She knew she was bested, but she didn’t seem able to stop the tantrum.

At last, night fell around her, stars came out in forgiving droves, and a holy breeze cooled her miserably enraged body. She and her demons rested in the arms of the river. God stretched himself out on the sandy shore, forearms cushioning his head.

“I love that little hellion,” he said, as if talking to himself. But he knew I could hear him from my mature hiding place in the willows.  

“You can come out now,” he added, his voice tender. “She’s asleep.”

Heat

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

If it wasn’t so hot, I’m sure I’d have more profound thoughts and find something meaningful in the riffraff of this day, but the idea of cold water is as far as I can go right now. Our laundry is currently flapping in the beastly wind. I can go to the clothesline and bring it in, but I can’t think. Even the effort necessary to generate coherence could send sparks flying from my overheated fears into the parched undergrowth of my soul, and a fiery mayhem could ensue. I worry about the trees.

“Stop it,” God says. “You engage in ridiculous amounts of pointless worry. The souls of the trees are not at all like yours. They are fine. Fine, tall, and willing.”

“Willing?” I ask. There’s a pause. The earth wipes its sweltering forehead. I have horrid visions of blazing forests.

“Yield,” God says from a triangular highway sign.

“Unlikely,” I say. I don’t have the energy to yield today. I’m not a natural yielder. I wish I were a tree, but they don’t live forever. I wish I were new and shiny. I wish I were a radio, a cup of good coffee, a perfect banana, a crisp apple, a purple gladiola, or a row of corn soon to be knee high. I pretend that yielding is not required of such embodied objects.

“I’m sad, God,” I say. “Sad and hot. Hot and sad.” The little faith I have is not shaped like a mustard seed or a triangular highway sign. It’s a cheatgrass barb stuck in my sock, irritating my ankle to death. If I could find it, I’d yank it out, but it is embedded deeply in the weave of the yarn.

“Throw the socks away,” God says, and hands me a sweating glass of lemonade.

I take a sip and consider the barefoot road of the blessed faithless. In some ways, it looks easier, less conflicted, less painful, and if these were ordinary socks, I might comply. I might peel them off, throw them away, and rid myself of that exasperating, chronic chaffing—that annoying, inflaming, intrusion of barbed, fertile seed. Someone knitted these socks for me. I don’t know why I wore them through the deceptive, predatory grass, but I did.

“No.” I shake my head. “I can’t throw them away. But thanks for the permission. And the lemonade. That really hit the spot.”

“You’re welcome,” God says, in an approving voice. “It’s an old family recipe.” God speaks from within the twisted rind of a well-squeezed lemon. I realize that this fragrant, yellow God will soon rest on the unstable surface of our compost pile, momentarily brilliant, but willing to yield to the heat as it hastens the eternal dismantling.