Life is one loss after another starting with the loss of belief.
After her mother explained that there was no material human Santa Claus, she read the heartbreak on her child’s face and backtracked, trying to repair the tear in the fabric of a world view constructed of hope and fantasy.
Santa was a feeling, her mother said. He lived in the act of giving and the joy of making someone you loved happy. People all around them embodied the spirit of Christmas. Didn’t that make them all Santa Claus?
No. It does not. Virginity lost cannot be restored by a lifetime of chastity. Gossip cannot be unheard, knowledge unlearned. Love’s last breath cannot be resuscitated. Loss is a hole in the shape of the thing and nothing can ever completely fit in its place. Loss is the ash that cannot be reignited, it is the tower blasted and never rebuilt. It is the sandcastle in high tide, revealed as a lump by the ebbing sea.
When she is low like this, she does not believe the sun will rise. If it does, it will offer neither warmth nor light.
After eight hours of sleep, a conversation with a friend, a smile from a stranger, a glass of wine, or maybe two, she begins to believe.
She puts her hand in the pocket of her robe and finds the reading glasses in the lining where they slipped through the seam of the pocket. It is a sign. And when the hairbrush she lost on vacation reveals itself at the bottom of her backpack, she knows that what the world takes, it returns, sometimes in a different shape but always eventually, that which was lost will be found.
Hadn’t her mother been right about Santa Claus? She herself had become him, filling stockings and taking bites from the chocolate chip cookies left beside the fireplace on Christmas Eve. She had even sprinkled soot on the bricks in the shape of hoof prints.
It is a matter of observation. She has to look at the world to locate the hidden pieces that only seemed to be missing. There are hints, signs and messages everywhere.
The water dripping from the faucet beats out a rhythm that synced with her heartbeat and then
stops and suddenly restarts with a single loud plop.
The plop is the message.
It is more than a drop of water from a leaky faucet hitting a porcelain sink. It is the voice of the house, telling her that her daughter is there with her.
Every rattle of the pocket door is a shout from the other side. She has only to listen, to feel and believe. She has not lost her child to crushing, crashing metal. Her daughter has transcended her material human form and is here with her every minute of every day, living on not just in her memories and dreams but in the wind that rustles the trees and pushes branches against the window like fingers tapping out a message.
Her job is to open herself, to observe and interpret. Her friend’s friend told her about a woman who has the fit of interpretation. This woman can hear signals from the other side and can teach others to hear them. Some, the very special, can learn the meaning of the signs.
With this woman’s help she could learn to hear her daughter’s voice again. She will communicate with her child and her child with her. All she needs to do is open herself to the world and that which lays beyond, and believe.
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