It's a No-Shadow Day

Today is the first day in a couple of weeks without bright blue skies and sun so bright that its marriage with the snow is blinding. The sky is gray today. Rain is in the forecast. As Aprils go, this has been a dry one. Day after day of 40 degrees have given us all that renewed hope that Spring will not disappoint us this year. It is coming. It’s almost as if I can hear it in the distance, like the pounding hooves of a herd of buffalo. The rumbling. The excitement. Spring will rush past us and fade into the distance, leaving us in its dust, literally. The dry, paved streets are laden with dirt dropped all winter by sanding trucks. The pillows of dust force me to keep my own car windows rolled up and the air vent circulating only the air already inside the car. Soon, the sweepers will come through, leaving us with clean, dry streets for our summer guests.

The absence of shadows today strikes me in a metaphoric way. Shadows often hold fearful places in our imaginations. They follow us around. They can even be a place to hide. Stepping out from the shadows can be both a risky and freeing thing to do. I feel like I’m in that very place in my life, not that I have been purposefully staying in the shadows, but that I am on the verge of stepping away from everything familiar. I’m also breaking away from the past, that has in some ways been a haunting one, and stepping into my future.

Over the next four months, my entire life is going to change. I will be running my own restaurant/bakery and I will be an empty-nester. I have spent the last 22 years as a mother, 14 of those as a single mother. I have always held a steady job working for someone else who provided my health insurance, retirement, and paid time off. My free time was spent absorbed in my children - coaching their activities, hosting sleepovers, and monitoring homework. All of that ends in 4 months.

I had a dream the other night that I was once again a teacher. I was at some sort of teacher training and there were about 10 of us in a classroom waiting for the workshop to begin. Several of the teachers were chatting about their experiences teaching in the bush. I told the woman sitting in front of me that I had taught in Kwethluk. Her eyes grew wide and she turned around in her desk chair to face me as I gave her the 60 second version of my experience there. She was dumbfounded, even confused, as she responded, “But, you don’t LOOK like that happened to you.”

I answered, “That’s because I am healed.” Then I started crying. I woke up with tears in my eyes, wondering just how healed I really am. Does a person ever really “heal” after an experience like that? Perhaps not, but I do feel like I’m slowly stepping away from that shadow.

I’m not sure what my new life is going to look like, but somehow, I’m ready to embrace it.