Page 116 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

Grandmother Squirrel

Carolyn Brigit Flynn

There was a time, perhaps when I was seven or eight years old, when I talked to the sky and chattered

with birds. I lay in grasses tickling my cheeks; the lush green shoots were a chorus telling me stories.

The earth smelled good, so I ate it. I lived in a leafy urban neighborhood, and everything in our yard

was friend: the tall linden tree, the hydrangea bushes, the honeysuckle, the dandelions. Then I grew

up.

I have been trying to grow back down for many years. Growing up was effortless: every person around

me cheered as I learned to write school papers, eschew play, preen my appearance and slowly but

utterly relinquish the outdoors. By the time I was in college I was a brainy girl at a university in leather

boots and turtlenecks who wanted to live a life of the mind. I followed this to its logical conclusion at

28 years old and began a Ph.D. program in American History at Stanford University. I was set to

become a college professor and walk the streets knowing I was smart and pithy. Then a random traffic

accident severely ruptured two lumbar discs in my lower back. I was disabled for eighteen months.

Classes, papers and academic work spun to a halt. With my outer life taken away, my inner life

shattered. Familiar things that had kept me focused and very busy were gone. In the emptiness, I

feared there was no solid essence within me. In great need, I explored meditation, deep tissue

massage, mystical poetry, Eastern religions—and the outdoors.

By the time my back injury had healed, I had become a more physically active person, and also more

settled in my skin. I looked at my pile of history books and then at my poetry volumes and spiritual

texts. I wrote to Stanford University and relinquished their scholarship. I did not know where the path

would lead, but at thirty years old I did know I wanted it to be wild, creative and unplanned.

That was twenty-­‐five years ago. Ever since, one might say that I have been trying to grow back down to

the girl who knew how to talk to the sky. It is said that the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung concluded as

a middle-­‐aged adult that he did not know anything as valuable as when he was an eleven-­‐year-­‐old boy

building forts. The small boy still had life, he realized–a creative and mythic life he lacked. He began to