The doves were released, one by one, from behind a black
coat, momentarily cupped in large, male hands and then tossed into natural flight,
while I watched, still and silent, from my bed.
From my bed, in the midst of an illness, I watched them. My
night was comprised of inescapable insomnia, coughing and delirium. And not the
good kind of delirium that some people enjoy.
Still, I have to wonder, why doves? Kind of a cliché if you
ask me. A symbol of peace? Oh come on. So what were they? Real doves? Who's to
say? In the almost darkness of my room, they just went…flying. Softly.
Silently. Where they were flying wasn't really important actually. Their
existence at all was what mattered. That - and my still and silent lying there
and witnessing their escape. Their beautiful, transformative migration to
somewhere other than here.
In my near sleep, I saw men with wings like Icarus draw
swords on horseback ready to fight. I saw children gaze at the roots of tremendous
swaying trees, swaying too - and waiting for something. I saw the fertile,
curvy bodies of naked women full of want and need and angst. And, in the same
breath, oh yes, please, let's have some tea.
Then I remember that I read my friend's fortune in his cup
of strong Turkish coffee after dinner earlier that evening. I saw those things
in his tiny, yet manly, of course, cup. Those things were not here in this
room. Was my imagination soaring? Of those who claim manic episodes, I wondered
if, perhaps, this could be the calm, quiet, subdued version. Another part of me
thought, nah, I was just seeing things. I should have found that disturbing, I
guess. But I didn't.
Before bed, I did not take melatonin. Or klonopin. Or
Ambien. Nope. I just took me. The same way I do each and every night. A hefty
dose of imagination. That is my curse. My undoing. But, also, maybe my
salvation.
I've lived in homes with spirits. Several homes. With several
spirits. And they always find me. Even my non-believer brother suddenly
believed. After years of making fun of me and my 'senses.' One day, she visited
him while he slept in that room, too.
I've lived here in this house for five years now and this
was my first encounter, if you can call it that, with anything even resembling
a spirit entity. For a home having breathed in and out on this earth since 1923,
it seems strange for no spirits at all to remain. And it is also strange that I, attuned to these things, have sensed so little here. Certainly nothing sinister.
Nothing that comes up from behind and makes me run. Like the ghost in the carriage
house I once lived in - on a glamorous and expansive, but now somewhat desolate, estate outside Philadelphia. That chauffeur was
still there. Just like the old blue gas pump that sat collecting dust in the garage that, at one time, housed the fancy cars he drove for the wealthy family in the main house. The chauffeur, in his somber black suit, watched me. He watched me bathe. I'd catch a glimpse of him in the mirror and just as quickly he'd vanish. He watched me brush my hair. And get dressed. And eat breakfast. And laugh. And cry. I
could always feel him. All the time. Jeff, always rational, never could. But Jeff was also strangely creeped out by the Titanic-size boilers beneath the house. He'd never go down there. Never.
At my family's home in New Hampshire during high school
- a 10,000 square foot historical property – built originally in 1780 and later
added on in 1930 – came with the usual history of deaths of many who were laid
up for Protestant viewing before burial, including the accidental death in the
attic of a 12 year old girl. Even there, I felt little. My parents physically moved
the house back onto the property and gave it a proper view and an entirely new
foundation – and I can't help but think the spirits (if there were still any
residing there) fled during that time.
But, then, later, after I went to college, my family moved
to an even older home a few hours south– a charming Colonial built in 1760 –
and that house was positively teeming with ghostlike energy. Part of the house
had been destroyed in a fire and rebuilt many years before and when I was home visiting I would feel the need to
tear up the stairs as if I was being chased. The first night that I came home
from college, mid-winter in the dark, I was shown an old drafty room, and told it was mine from
then on. It was typically bitterly cold, and my sweet mom had done her best
to make it hospitable – with freshly washed down comforters and warm, clean
flannel sheets and cozy throw rugs and candles – but still, as I drifted off to
sleep, I'd feel….her.
This presence of a woman.
Her face. Her breath. A ghost's face right up close to
mine. And I'd feel her every night the moment I switched off the light in the
pitch black dark. I knew she was really there when, heart pounding, I'd flick
the light back on and she didn't go away. More than once I sensed a weight on
the bed, as if someone was sitting there beside me while I slept.
In the silent terror, part energy, part imagination and something altogether unexplainable, there's also some strange magic in these
experiences too. Like you've been chosen. Unless you've felt it, you just don't know. As for the doves
released from behind a black overcoat just last week, well I can't be certain that
it wasn't purely my imagination running on overdrive, or something else. The fact that they were
doves somehow calms me. Peace doves. White. And pure. But still. What has my
imagination unleashed? Or perhaps my sense of the spiritual has been reawakened. I've always had it. And I
welcome it now. Again.
Or maybe this house, after all this time....all this time that I've lived here....maybe this house finally trusts me.
