Lesson 2:1, Part I. Whisper of Home

Hush, don’t cry. Hush, your mother’s coming.

A pale memory now, that lullaby. She holds her own babe and sings gentle, slow and soft. The child whimpers in the cold and she kisses him, Samson. Soon he falls asleep and she is alone. The night sky engulfs her, wraps her in its silver silence. Her mind stills and she too sleeps, under those blistering stars and that solitary moon.

Years later and he is not the same. He is a man now. And she sees him… from time to time, but less so as every year passes. Samson the wanderer, ah and so she once was.  Her only luggage a sleeping baby, the two of them attached to that never-ending road– oh how the days had seemed so endless then. And now. She knows that they are numbered, but endless they still seem; slow and careful, long and circular and still. Yes, how still. Years ago they had moved so quickly and so they must now for Samson. Oh Samson, she whispers to herself. Come home. Weary traveler, in the light of a foreign sun and a sky that does not know you, come home.

She can see him in her mind; his beard has grown too long. He is lost. Somewhere. And the whisper of home entices him, but it is just a whisper, so he travels on.

She had caught a glimpse of him in that morning, when he left suddenly and for good. The light caught the shape, the shadow of him and she held it there. And it was still there, but it was not enough.

But it will do for now son. As you travel on.

But Samson is fading. She can see him, just barely in the far off distance of her mind. She can see him as a little babe. And in her womb. And soon she cannot see him at all. Even when he is by her side, she doesn’t know him. He is her brother, or her father maybe, or a man she once knew.

It’s Samson. But Samson was also her brother’s name and he’d died long ago.

And when she breathes her last breath, a quiet, beautiful breath, he is beside her, asleep when she goes. He feels an emptiness, not in his heart, but in his mind, as if a part of it left with her and he knows its gone for good. Quietly now and with great effort he rises from that chair and lingers in the doorway, where the room collapses in on itself and vanishes, vanishes. When he finally escapes from that crumbling hospital, with its lights and its gentle hum, he gasps.

Finally he is alone. Finally the night sky engulfs him, wraps him in its silver silence. His mind stills and he too sleeps. Under those blistering stars. That solitary moon.

* * *

Afterthoughts

I really do apologize for the obscurity of this story. You see, I am currently taking a psychology course on aging and it has really altered my perspective about a lot of things. This assignment made me wonder about home as a construct of the mind and what happens to that construct if we lose our mind, say with dementia. Though the woman in the story has lost touch with reality, she still leaves behind a sense of home for her son, as her mother did for her. I guess this story speaks to something innate within us that knows what home is even if we cannot articulate it. Home travels with us and it stays behind, it changes, it comes and goes. It is both tangible and transcendent, tiny and infinite. Home is a simple longing.

Maybe? I don’t know at all really.

Works Cited

Traditional Zulu lullaby arr. Nick Page. Thula S’thandwa. Hendon Music Inc, 1998. MP3.

“What is TEMPORAL GRADIENT?” Psychology Dictionary. n.d. Web 11 Jun. 2014.   http://psychologydictionary.org/temporal-gradient/