weary warrior

My warrior princess found me in my pajamas, under the covers, watching bad TV.

Go away, I said. I’ve got a few health challenges I don’t want to talk about and honestly, you’re standing in my light.

She stretched out next to me, took a pillow without asking. 

Tired? She asked, flipping the channel to a rerun of The Wire.

Yes. I was tired. 

I’ve brought you something, she said.

Ice cream?

No honey. The photo album you left by the side of the road.

Well hell, I said. That’s why I left it there.

She began flipping through pages.

Look, she said, and I looked.

There I was, twelve years old, my handsome sweet daddy just dead.

Look what you’re doing, she said.

I looked. With both hands I was heaving up a shield and strapping it across my chest.

Remember?

I did.

And here. She pointed to my mother marrying and marrying and marrying, each time pushing me further outside her home. See? She said. And I saw.

Bigger shield now, bigger muscles.

Oh and look here.

I saw my wild one, my teenager running scared and hungry through the wet dark nights, daring anyone to approach. Closer, I’d whisper. I’ve got a surprise. The Japanese sword shaped like a claw that ripped open the hearts of my suitors so that I could taste their sorrow and grow strong. Stronger.

And here, a picture of me – a young woman, a feminist fool giving lectures on why women should leave their men –  so ignorant of why two people cleave to each other and what it would cost to rip them apart.

Big strong warrior, she said, feeling my biceps, carrying that shield for so many years. So safe from wounding.

But you were wounded, she said, and showed me pictures of my lost babies, betrayals, loved ones gone, my mother’s suicide, my brother’s descent into madness.

Your shield didn’t help you then, did it?

And now, she said, now you face challenges your rage and your wit cannot overcome. Your body ages and does not sing the way it used to. How will you do battle now? How will you travel through the desert of this time with no canteen, breaking open stones in search of water?

What good is your shield now?

I knew she was right. I had no strength left to fight, no will to slay the dragon, no map to guide me through the chaos of this new storyfield. 

Fighting, winning the battle, meeting the challenge, overcoming the enemy, all of this yang when I was yearning for yin. My warrior, sweet girl with the sad tired eyes, needed rest. She’d battled patriarchy, misogyny, rapists and bullies. Liars, hustlers, and thin gypsy thieves. She’d burned down cathedrals, been barefoot and broken, walked through the fire, been queen for a day.

Now I was weary, wanted only to learn kindness, patience and forgiveness.

Now I wanted to return from the depths with the old stories that speak of myth, of fog, of the courage to plunge from the cliffs of doubt.  Stories about descent and renewal, and how to return with the magic spells to make my world new again, because that world as I knew it was already gone. 

How shall I live? I asked her, and although I did not know her name, I knew she came from the land of know nothing, give everything, let your moan open the door.

I knew she came bearing the wisdom of surrender to the tears that put out the fires and water the seeds of faith.

This is how, she said. And she gave me a new language that the birds understood, that stopped the coyotes as they crossed the dusty trail, that caused them to raise their ears, to open their mouths and call Sister.

image by Christian Schloe courtesy of Pixabay