Blessing the House on the Wrong Day

 I sit on a thick layer of brown, crumbling leaves, looking up at tight buds on a canopy of trees. Somehow, although the season is wrong, I know where I am, though I don’t know how I got here: there is no canoe in sight. 

I’ve only ever been here in the winter, when Crystal Lake is thick with ice and it’s possible to make one’s way through deep snow to this tiny island, travel the circle of its shore, and walk back, all within a couple hours. I do this every year. 

Today, it’s hazy, the sun sending thin rays of light through wispy fog. I’m wearing a light jacket and am comfortable enough, though I can feel the damp ground beneath me. Birdsong, loud and insistent, provides background music, until I hear the distinct call and response of cardinals, the only birds whose song I know for sure. I look around for a red wing, pink tail feathers–but the birds are hiding well.  

Then, I hear a sudden, rapid rustling in the distance, and a doe appears, almost skidding to a halt when she spots me. She stands just six feet in front of where I’m sitting. 

For a brief instant, I’m terrified that she’ll attack. No, I think, deer are afraid of humans. She’ll just run to the other side of the island, stay out of my sight.

I look around; she’s alone. My heart begins to ache for her. I can’t bear to look into her eyes, although she’s standing still and looking right at me. How long ago did she walk across the ice to get here? Is there enough food on this island to nourish her until the winter returns, until the lake is frozen again? Where is the rest of her herd?

She lies down, her thin legs bending to the ground. She regards me with large, black eyes, and this time, I look back at her. 

The sun begins to intensify, concentrated in a small circle in front of me. I see a caterpillar there,  writhing slowly over a fallen branch. As the caterpillar moves, the circle of sun expands to accommodate its journey, until the whole island is bathed in a rich warmth, the fog dissipating, everything clear and bright. 

I lie down and close my eyes. I remember being here in winter–the deep snow, my son swinging joyfully from a tree branch, the dogs running in circles, playing hide and seek. I see my daughter’s red cheeks, her thin lips smiling widely. We’re walking on the water, like Jesus, she says–the same joke every year. These two, of our five children, are most like me in that they connect to what holds us all, to the sacred, through the natural world.

In real life, March has finally arrived, but the snow is still deep enough in places to reach my knees. It is Ash Wednesday, the end of a relentless winter during which I did not make my annual pilgrimage to the island in the center of Crystal Lake. I’ve been homebound, on a leave from work, caring for my beloved ones who are living with deep grief, rage, darkness. 

I’ve given up every aspect of my external identity. I don’t talk to anyone besides my family–there isn’t time in between bouts of violence or tears or listless waiting beside a loved one’s quiet sadness. I am the witness. I can’t possibly feel it all, though I try to hold it, to be there in the center, as much as I can. 

But I also have to make supper, pay the bills, sometimes go to the grocery store, let out the dogs, teach one class (the one work responsibility I kept), get everyone else to and from daycare and school activities. I do these things as quickly and efficiently as possible, because my only work now is tending to other’s pain. I say yes to anyone who offers to help in any way, even if only to see a familiar face through the window leaving a meal at my doorstep.

Today, everyone who lives here is gone for the same two hours. It is a miracle, one I didn’t anticipate. There is so much to do: prep the next couple suppers, pay the rest of the bills, finally attend to the clutter and dust that has been accumulating in the living room, check in with staff at work. I run to the store. I start a pot of chili in the crock pot. I check my mental list for what to do next.

But then, I remember that the winter has been long and I’ve forgotten who I am. I remember that I never blessed the house on Epiphany. In the old days, when I wasn’t married to a woman, when I lived in a place far away, the priest came every year to do this blessing. Since then, I’ve done it myself, a trail of children humming along or giggling behind me. 

Epiphany was so long ago, and only yesterday. I remember weeping in front of a fire on Epiphany day, aware that the ground beneath us was shifting, aware that I would be called to change my life in order to help them heal, to heal myself. 

In between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, in Ordinary Time, nothing has been remotely ordinary. 

And so, without thinking, I light the first bit of incense I can find in the incense burner that is somehow miraculously right where it is supposed to be: on what used to be an altar but is now a small desk piled high with mail I haven’t opened. I pick up my drum, too, though I can’t find the drumstick. 

Then I walk through the house singing the old Greek hymns, all the ones I have memorized, whether or not they fit this season (none do). In the end, I dissolve into Agios O Theos–Holy God–and  Kyrie Eleison–Lord have Mercy. I sing these short, repetitive lines over and over, until I hardly know what my voice or body are doing. Even the animals eventually settle, though at first the scent and sound dismayed them. 

I pay special attention to each threshold, pause and make the sign of the cross in each place where my beloveds and I pass in and out of each room. I remember the most horrific passings–how I’ve walked into scenes of despair and violence, or left them. And then I bless the thresholds through which we pass to enter and leave the house itself, and think of how, before this winter, so many people left and never came back, or came back a shell of the selves they had been at first. I think about how we haven’t had any guests in months. Maybe years. 

When it is over, this blessing, I dip my finger into the ashes and make a cross on my forehead. I wasn’t raised in a tradition that observed Ash Wednesday, though over the last 20 years I’ve participated in this ritual at a local church. Church isn’t possible now, but this is good enough. 

In the Orthodox church in which I was raised, it is on Holy Wednesday, the day Jesus was betrayed, that we are touched tenderly by a priest–only in typical Greek fashion, we take everything the Catholics and Protestants do a step further. I close my eyes and remember the priest dipping his finger into the fragrant holy oil, like the oil the unnamed woman poured over Jesus’ feet. I feel the cross pressed onto each side of my hand, each cheek, forehead, and chin. As I remember this, I find I’m smearing myself with ashes in all these places. 

It’s almost time to pick up one of the hurting ones from his very short school day. I breathe deeply. No calls today. He made it through the two hours. I glance at myself in the mirror just before leaving and laugh at how I look, like the chimney sweep in an old musical I barely remember. I hurriedly clean myself up, leaving only the faintest sign of the cross on my forehead.

When I pick him up, he’s not his best self, but not his worst either. I’m scheduled to talk to my spiritual director at 2:00, and his care staff arrives at 2:15. I had hoped he could listen to a book on my phone while I logged on from another room, but I know right away this isn’t possible today. He gets mad for a moment and tries to kick me. This could, sometimes, lead to much worse–being knocked in the head, police, ER, followed by another rejection from yet another provider that deems him too violent to serve. And so on. 

But he stops himself and lies down. Then he sits up and says he’s sorry. 

We sit on the couch and read Harry Potter until his care staff arrives, and by then he’s calm, ready to let me go into the other room. I hope your meeting is good, he says as I close the threshold that leads from the dining room, shared space, to the place that used to be my refuge but is now just a room piled with boxes of things we need to sort, shelve, store, or give away. I feel a lingering warmth as I step through: the blessing from only a half hour earlier already feels like days ago, and yet, I can feel its resonance.

I log onto our meeting 20 minutes late. My spiritual director is still there, waiting for me. I tell her how hard it has been. I complain that I have to check my phone every time it goes off because I’m always on call, even when he’s with someone else in the next room. That he’s finally back at school but only for two hours a day. That everyone at work is mad because I can’t answer texts or e-mails, even the ones I’d agreed to answer during my leave. I tell her how the others are also suffering, the countless hours I’ve spent sitting with them through rage and grief. How I don’t know what to do. I say I don’t even miss my job or the person I used to be, but that I don’t want to be this person forever, either–the person who is not a person but a witness. 

Though perhaps, when it comes down to it, that’s what it means to be human, I muse, to learn to be a witness, a good one who is really, really there. 

And to allow a witness to be with you, she responds, to allow yourself, too, to be seen. 

I nod, tears filling my eyes, and go on: To let go of whatever we thought the end game was: high school graduation, making it to 25, staying out of prison, whatever. To realize there isn’t one. We only have this moment, and the next, to live in love. 

Is that what it all means? she asks.

Yes, I say. Not about getting through it, but being in it. 

She tells me I look tired, and I say I am. What can we do together for the last 15 minutes, she asks, so that you will feel seen? We close our eyes and breathe together. 

And that is how I found myself in this place I’ve been longing for all winter, this place that, for the first time, I cannot go–too much risk. I wouldn’t be able to get to the emergency quickly enough, whatever emergency there might be. So I go there in my mind, and it is springtime, and for once, I am the one in the story and she is my witness, instead of the other way around.

Eventually, the bright light begins to recede. The doe rouses herself. How will you get home? I ask her. 

She blinks at me, then turns and runs toward the lake. No! I shout. You’re going to drown! 

And then, just as her hooves reach the edge of the island’s shore, I think, maybe I’m wrong about deer. Maybe they can swim. 

But no–she isn’t swimming. No, she’s walking on the water: prancing, actually. I watch her for a long time until her silhouette fades into the distant shore, and she leaps away. Maybe I see other deer around her, welcoming her back, or maybe not. 

A faint scent of lingering incense reaches my nose, and I open my eyes. I hear my spiritual director saying goodbye. I pass the threshold I blessed earlier, back into the small world that is, for now, my whole world. I think about the doe, not floating, exactly, but confidently skimming the still waters as she moved. 

What did it mean that she did not look back? 

What did it mean that she was prancing–was that joy or fear or both? 

All I know for sure: she was right in front of me. She rested. Then she moved in the only direction she knew to move, the only way she knew to go, and she trusted the water to let her pass.