Under the Almond Tree
The Voodoo Lady had said a clear bowl of clean water. Did that mean I also needed to be clean? I feared I would wash away my courage if I stepped into the shower now so no… my body smooth with the feeling of night still dressed in my pyjama shorts and T-shirt would just have to do. I hunted through the cabinets, tiptoeing in my fluffy black house slippers, for a suitable glass bowl.
The Pyrex one with the green snap lid just didn’t feel sacred enough and the vase was just too tall to be practical. Too much work. I made my way across the kitchen, going through the glassware in each cupboard until I came to the small cabinet above the kitchen window. Here I kept my mother’s cut glass and other odd bells and teacups my grandmother had given me over the years. Aha! This bowl with diamond shapes cut into the bottom would do nicely. I think it was from her wedding set, what was left of it after she’d flung piece after piece at my father one day for complaining about her cooking in a particularly hard day during her “change-of-life” era. She had given me the rest to take to my new house when I’d found a place and moved out. I suspect it was as much for it’s safekeep as for my nostalgia, because I hadn’t yet shown any signs of inheriting the glass-flinging gene when angry.
The glass bowl in hand, I pivoted to the fridge to fil it from the dispenser for drinking water. The ice machine was on the fritz again and the water came out warmer than it should, but the Voodoo Lady hadn’t said cold, she’d said clean. “The cleanest, clearest water you have” she had instructed between a pull on her hand-rolled tobacco cigarette and a cloudy exhale of sacred smoke in her Salem scented accent with notes of the Dominican Republic.
I had already picked a spot. The best trees were in the front yard, but my neighbours would get the wrong idea. Well… the Canadian couple in the corner would roll their eyes at my new weirdness and the Russians across the street would probably look down their noses with more disapproval than usual, but Can-Can in the corner might get the right idea, and somehow I just didn’t feel like dealing with that right now.
I picked my way barefoot through the loose leaves over the scattered rock to the young almond tree that stood tallest among the scrubby shamrock, red-flaked birch, and lanky wild tamarind trees wildly encroaching on my backyard. I had put down a cushion and spread an aquamarine blanket of rough Indian cotton before going for the bowl of water and the white candle. The Voodoo Lady hadn’t said anything about coffee or smoke, so I brought along the morning cup and a stick of Palo Santo for myself. But she had said something about gold. She had identified two female ancestors for me to spend time with, one too far back for me to know about and the other very surprising. She had said one would want offerings of gold but hadn’t said which one. “I dunno why, but she reeeeallly likes gold” came out with a cloud of smoke. I figured I wouldn’t take any chances, and I scrabbled together all the gold I can find. I’ve never really worn much of it, but there was now an old necklace I had picked up at a street market in New York, a single surviving hook earring from a pair an uncle had given me one Christmas, and two pairs of studs I wasn’t sure were real gold or just plated. Anyway, they found themselves clinking together on a cut glass coaster-looking-thing (who knew with these old sets what anything was for!), a cousin to the bowl now full of clean-but-not-cold water. She had said I needed more nature and to sit under a tree, so with all my elements assembled, I did.
The dogs had given me hell coming out the house, so I’d locked them in the living room and taken the sliding door exit from the bedroom to the back porch. As I gathered myself to sit cross-legged on the cushion, I could see the big dog pulling off the cushions off the sofa in frustration as he climbed up to better watch me through the window. There was a hint of the tips of the little one’s ears as she joined him. I had my giant earphones on, so I was speared the interruption of their frantic barking. How dare I go outside without them!
Turning my body away from the canine tantrum that was starting to burn itself out, I faced the tree, lit the candle, and willed myself to be quiet. As my breaths evened, I gave voice to my intention, praying that the Goddess guard this little space and quiet ritual. I invited my grandma Cass, the one I had never met, to join me. The Voodoo Lady was dead sure she was the one. “I dunno, you know how those old ladies kept things to themselves and were big in the church, but I’m a thousand percent sure she was a practitioner.” I had baulked at the idea at first, visible shocked at the suggestion but…
ahhhh shit…
She might be right.
Eight years ago, I had had a reading by a Celtic practitioner and reiki master that had shaken me to the core. She told me that a woman was always with me caring for me and full of so much love and her name was Cass. I had been a complete occult virgin at the time and felt like a sinner in her studio, but when my grandmother’s name came out of her mouth? The grandmother who died decades before the internet and was rarely spoken of? The grandmother nobody could find anywhere if they did a secret search on me before I came to visit them? Uh uh, nope. That was just too much to ignore. I had left the studio a true believer.
So I found myself on this Saturday morning under the almond tree with a white candle, a bowl of water, surrounded by Palo Santo smoke inviting her to come talk to me. What would I say if she did? “What’s up Granny” just didn’t feel right.
At first nothing happened. Nothing ever really happens at first with these things, not until you are ready. I let myself float in the dark behind my closed eyes and noise cancelling earphones until my breathing evened out and I felt myself settle into alpha. The familiar presence of the Goddess showed up first, standing guard at my back. I thanked her for being there and told her I was ready.
All at once she was there! Cass, in all her glory. She was young, pretty and quite at home beside me with her legs stretched out before as she reclined on her hands. She had on a long light summer skirt and a shirt with short sleeves and looked really comfortable in her languid repose as if she’d always been there. It startled me to consider that perhaps she always has!
Practiced greetings fled my mind in my surprise at how young she was. She laughed at that, clear as a bell and light as the sunrise. “Of course! I’m younger than you!”
The thought was so shocking, and she could see I was taken aback by it. She continued softly, “My darling, you are now older than I ever was.”
My thoughts and confusion passed wordlessly between us. This is not what I was expecting! I was used to grandmothers older than my parents smelling of Amens powder and peppermints. I had held her as my grandmother, older and wiser, on her pedestal where my imagination had determined she belonged. I felt this pedestal burn to the ground in a devastating flash of lightning. It as a tower made low and flat in this one instant. I had taken my thoughts of who she had been to my father, himself a grown man who worshiped at the shrine of his scant memories of the two years he had spent with her before her sudden passing.
She met my confusion and - I’m ashamed to say it, but - disappointment with pure love and understanding and annoying sense of fun at my disorientation. There was a twinkle in her eye that dimmed slightly as she realized I was moving deeper into distress. She addressed what I hadn’t fully said out loud.
“No my love. I am not some crone. I am a mother to a grown man in his sixties, and grandmother to you, a woman of consequence in your forties. I am not some wise old woman to give you the wisdom of the ages. But I have been here your whole life, and I would be your friend.
My friend. Grandma Cas, my friend? Something new peaked out of the scorched earth where the pedestal had been. A tender, tiny, green thing. An unknown, unfamiliar seedling. My grandma sat beside me, frozen in her late 30s, full of the vigour and youth of her life right before its sudden end. She looked back at me with a face so familiar marked with a knowing born of generations of watching and a pride and gentleness for who I have become that I myself do not have. She tilted her head to one side with a quick to her lips, much like one I sometimes wear on my own face, as she awaited a response, watching me form the new thoughts very slowly, timid to them still.
She might not be the old fairy godmother I had thought I would meet, but I trust that she is exactly who I need at my side right now in a life that feels too big to handle. And what is age anyway? Where she is, time has no meaning or at least it has a different one, doesn’t it? I would be a fool to expect her sixty-plus years of observing our lives from the end of her own to mean ignorance or nothing at all. And so, I rallied as a leaf drifted to the ground from the almond tree and settled next to my knee in the world where my body sat still and waiting.
“My friend.” I answered. “I think I would like that very much.”
Her smile split her face into a ball of light as her form began to give way to the sun dappled leave of my backyard. I sat there a little longer, my breath still even and my body unwilling to give up its rest. I thanked the Goddess for guarding us and looked ahead to my day.
Something is different. I can’t put my finger on it, but something has shifted. In the edifice of my life, a foundational stone has moved or changed shape. I don’t know what that means yet, but perhaps she will tell me when next I sit under the almond tree
.