A dark bedroom, a single light. The lamp was a strange thing, heavily weighted, long, spindly neck, rough black charcoal-like texture of hood and base, the lamp of a mid-century engineer with a black briefcase and shoes buffed until persistently reflective. But engineering was a world away, beyond the walls painted in my comic book interests of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Winnie the Pooh. An unfinished Bambi's glade hid behind the door, next to my glow-in-the-dark sword from the dime store. With that sword, I slew many glow-in-the-dark villains, most of them hiding in my mom's closet.
The room was dark, save that lamp. My dad's office desk was also in my childhood bedroom. I sat at his desk, painting roses on small, heart-shaped pieces of wood we had gotten at The Covered Wagon, Chillicothe's downtown craft store. Crafts of some kind have always been part of my life, much like snack cakes. We also had stacks of Walter T. Foster art books, and, with some careful initial instruction, I was now painting tiny roses with acrylic paint. The roses didn't look as good as the ones in the book, but they still didn't look bad, certainly not the usual work of a six-year-old. "Your eyes are definitely good if you can paint those," my mom had said. I frowned, wondering what it would be like to have glasses, wondering what it would feel like to be grown up.
I would take those little hearts to school the next day, giving one to the teachers' aid named Rose. I liked Rose. She was a large, blonde woman who wore big pink sweaters and big fake jewelry. She didn't believe I had painted the roses, but that was all right by me. I knew I had, and that's what mattered. More importantly to me now, I had painted those roses within that moment that day passes into night, an auspicious moment for Celtic diviners since time immemorial. Outside, the February rain had turned to sleet, making rattling noises against the window, against the butterfly bush skeleton that waved beyond the glass. Late-winter storms can be strange, especially as a piercing setting sun illuminates not the sky but the deep overcast itself, and the atmosphere becomes touchingly luminous despite the gloom. The house smelled like meatloaf and macaroni-and-cheese and cinnamon rolls. It was probably a Tuesday. Eidetic memory is a strange thing.
"You don't really remember all that you write about, do you?" Yes, yes I do. My memory serves me well but it was not until recently I realized such. I assumed all people remembered things similarly. Such a memory seemed as natural as breathing and that, along with two bucks, will still get me a cup of black bitter coffee at McDonald's. On the bright side, this particular kind of memory can be useful and makes me a formidable writer and journalist when the mood strikes. Nonetheless, I'm often more interested in the out-there-in-between spaces, the places of magic that really mean something, even when — especially when — we cannot put our finger on why.
Like the place my older sister found that same winter. "Come with me," she said one cold Saturday morning and of course I did. Any chance to spend time with either of my big sisters was life to my hopeful soul. And so, down to the corner of our acreage we went, down to the Water Hole, which flooded in muddy deluge every spring, flooded so much the path would become impassable, flooded so much I was forbidden to go there alone. Beyond the Water Hole, we had to climb like rabbits up the deer trail covered in brown honeysuckle vines and raspberry brambles red against a gray and towering sky. Atop the bluff, nestled in green moss glowing a luminous yellow, rested a deer skull.
We brought the deer skull home with us, a token of the moment, a reminder of that strange and magic place. There was beauty there, yes, and also death. The skull held such weird potency of moment that I could not explain then, nor can I now. That said, if we but step away from our self-importance, our busy-ness, our shrieking and rage and concern for that which is beamed, telepathic-like, into our own blackened skulls, we could find rest, life, death and the great circle of all things — things like that which are reflected from the eyes of a child or soulful hound, in the opening of a wind-swept memory of cold moors and warm kitchens and soda bread in the oven, and yes, even in roses long ago in a dark room. And there, like the deer skull, may we find rest.
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