Prologue

I came to the mansion in the autumn of my life, my forty-eighth year. I came the way a salmon comes to home waters though I'd never been there before. My first night I laid awake to the sound of rain washing down the front porch pillars, my favorite sound. A sound I'd first learned as a youth at the sanctuary of my grandparents' Ohio farm.

In days of yore I would have been called a witch, a wild woman, a wise woman. Today I am called a psychic and a medium. I read Tarot cards, I talk to spirits. I have even tried howling at the moon though I have to admit even I find that to be a bit weird. The last time I flew it was on a plane, not a broom and I expect the next time will be the same. There are no snakes in my hair nor eye of newt in my spice rack and I guarantee no small children have met their demise in my oven.

I didn't plan this life but it found me nonetheless. My dream was to grow up and be normal. Get married, raise a family, become the matriarch of an expanding brood that gathered adoringly at my dining room table every Christmas right there under the Norman Rockwell painting. And I did do some of that but little in life turns out the way we think. Maybe it was destiny or maybe I am just a product of my environment.

In any event, first credit goes to Maggie. Mothers are the givers of life, sometimes even when they don't want to be, and without her I wouldn't be here. It is a difficult thing to be born of an unyielding womb and to say Maggie's womb was unyielding would be quite the understatement.

It is an insult to her intelligence to suggest, as some have, that she was unaware of the child within. Despite being respectably married she trussed herself up in a corset like the Thanksgiving turkey religiously every morning, sculpting the softly curved figure of a fine woman until the end, hiding her pregnancy from everyone, especially herself. But even Maggie's staunch denial couldn't contain the being who eventually burst forth. If I had been a kitten she could have drowned me but there are laws preventing the drowning of human children and Maggie was a law abiding citizen. So I entered her world much to her dismay. Because of her and in spite of her.

I found little compassion in that early life and it is the acid track of that void that etched the blueprint of my soul. The voice of Spirit whispers in the dark. So it is into the dark where you must go to hear it. I have learned to listen to the voice of Spirit. It is a warrior's journey and a survivor's victory and it doesn't always feel that way.

When I came to the mansion I thought I'd come to tell my story. As it turns out the story wasn't quite done.

Poem - Original and Untitled

She stood amidst the flowers,

reaching for the Sun.

Her fingers bent down slowly,

and picked five special ones.

Gingerly, she brought them up,

with baby doll held close.

And offered them up to the Sun,

without a hint of boast.

I'll take them, the Sun said,

on that you can surely bet.

But first you have some things to learn,

So I'll take them not quite yet ....