Initiation

my 18th birthday

It is my birthday today. At this exact moment eighteen years ago I was born wailing from my mother’s womb. Now it is time for me to be birthed again this time not as a child but as man, a legal adult, capable of electing politicians, killing foreign men, and making love. I am eighteen. I am also a large block of cement. I sit, the most solid among my brothers, for among them I am the most truthful, the most reliable. I always roll the same way in my bed.

I had not planned to be a cement block on my birthday. If all had gone as planned I would be dreaming different dreams. I had so many plans for this day. I was to go to a sword-fighting workshop taught by my Sensei. The same one who kicked me out when I was thirteen and said I could return when I was an adult. I was going to prove that I was ready to return, ready to enter the adult world. I would be sleeping on a friend’s floor dreaming of blades.

Now I am a cement block. Tomorrow when I am hallucinating a little less vividly I will wonder why. Now I roll back and forth, the most predictable of the cement blocks. I am working for the government. Do my fellow blocks know that I am keeping an eye on them? Perhaps, they are suspicious. I smile a wry smile and continue to roll my predictable roll, my arm always cradling my head in the same solid way.

*********************

On my 13th birthday my Sensei had, quite by coincidence, scheduled a test. It was the first test, the one that determined whether we were to continue on under his direction. I passed, lowest on the physical scores, highest on the mental. I remember being so frightened I would fail that my stomach writhed and the techniques I had mastered slithered snakelike from my brain. I remember the calmer, slower mental exam where I came to life answering questions on what is right and what is wrong.

A month before my birthday my Sensei pops online. I greet him and wonder what he will say. I see him online often but he frightens me. I wouldn’t dare chat with him unless I had something important to say. He says something important - “I’ve been watching you grow Pan, and you’ve grown into a good young man. You can start training again if you wish.” I stare blankly at the screen, I can think of nothing to reply save “thank you!”

I’d let go of that dream, and it’s odd to have it returned now. The impracticalities of training on top of college rush over me as I begin to recover from the surprise. I sigh. I have a lot more thinking to do. Then Sensei begins typing again. He types so fast and a huge chunk of text appears. “I’m holding a workshop on blade-work from October 28th to October 30th” I gaze a moment and then burst out laughing. He’s done it again. The workshop begins on my eighteenth birthday.

*****************

A bullet ricochets off me and hits someone. It’s a good thing I am the most solid of the cement blocks or I would be under suspicion. I work for the government and that both protects and incriminates me. Perhaps I am under suspicion but I only smile a wry smile and continue to roll my predictable roll, whichever side I roll the top knee is always curled up. It’s a difficult maneuver but I do it again and again as I roll and roll and roll.

******************

It is three days before my birthday. I’m sitting in my public speaking class staring at a quiz in front of me. I read the wrong chapter for this week, but the teacher went over these concepts in class. The boy who sits next to me is sick. He only came in for the quiz, and he looks miserable. I send some healing his direction, ground his feet, and relieve him of some pain. ‘You can do this Tayler Gauvere’ I think in his direction. He seems to sniffle a little less and write a tiny bit faster. I turn back to my work, helping him helps me remember.

Two days before my birthday we draw the numbers for when we’ll be doing our speeches. This is the first planned speech. I did horribly in the first unplanned one. I didn’t know how to end so I trailed on till I didn’t know what to say anymore and had to stop. This speech is to be an inspirational one, and I’ve already chosen and researched my topic. I am going to speak on the power of a smile. I unroll my number. I’m number five, Friday, my speech will be on my birthday. I smile.

******************

For three days and three nights I sleep fitfully. My body is too weak to move, my mind is too weak to think, my heart is too weak to feel, but I am strong enough to sleep. I have always been fond of sleeping. The world of dreaming calls and I answer with anywhere between ten and thirteen hours.  Mama considers it wasted time, an indulgence of the body, but I do not believe in wasted time. My dreams are indulgences of my soul.

Seventeen was the last year I was allowed to sleep. On the final fall before I turned, I made the choice to begin waking up at seven thirty, riding the bus for four hours each day, and finding myself in a foreign land without parents or home. It is fitting that my eighteenth birthday was spent asleep. Sleep doesn't seem a waste. I was raised interpreting dreams, the way in which the greater mind speaks to the smaller. A dream is a glimpse the conscious mind gets at the unconscious mind as it roils, and bubbles and burns, deep deep deep within me. Or perhaps it is I that schemes and thinks, and acts within the great unconscious mind.

****************

It is the second day I have gone without food. I am not hungry, but I know I should eat. My room is dim with shutters down. The world is so grey that somehow I know that it is not the shades that tint the room grey but my eyes. My mind is grey, the color of dead flesh, the color of stagnant sweat, the color of snot. I shake my head to clear it and my head does not clear. I sink down onto my pillows and back into dreams.

I can taste each food I see. I can feel how they would feel in my stomach if I ate them. All food tastes like motor oil. Little pieces of wool drenched in motor oil, rotting tree in motor oil, food is greasy and rich. I love grease and gristle, I take pride in the way I pick bones clean, but right now I feel nauseous at the thought of my favorite foods.

I know I should eat and so I continue through the list of foods, grimacing at their taste, doubling over at their digestion. Lettuce doesn’t taste too bad. Vegetables I normally despise are tolerable if raw, when cooked they begin to taste rich and greasy. I grimace and my stomach somersaults lurching the bed. Potatoes don’t taste that bad, the idea of butter or gravy is blasphemous to my mouth. I block the thought out before I think it.

ice noodles taste good. They are devoid of taste and compared to the other foods I’ve tasted it is a pleasure. I crawl out of bed and pull on a silk wizard’s robe. Holding the front closed I stagger out to the kitchen and look in the noodle basket. A huge package of rice noodles gleams against the whole wheat ones that taste like asphalt. I boil water, sitting at the kitchen table. I am too weak to stand. I pour the whole package in, and wait.

Seasonings repulse me. I pour more noodles than I can eat in a week into two mason jars and the rest into my bowl. Forgetting my robe I hold the bowl in both hands as not to send it shattered to the floor. Clay shards in my noodles do not change its taste, but my stomach is nauseated at the thought. I crawl back into my bed and slowly eat the blessedly bland pasta. My stomach does not purr but neither does it rebel. I sink back into sleep.

**************

The cough I had from the last cold never went away.  Today I notice that it has been pushed out by the cough this flu has brought with it. Coughs are not supposed to last for three months, but that is how the last sickness had learned to spread. I coaxed that cough into a burst of light coughing, then a single mangled one, finally into something in between, but today I am pleased to see it is finally gone. Replaced by a new cough that is a wolf to the old one’s dog. It tears at my throat.

I cannot slip into dreams because the cough keeps waking me up. I use the bowl for throwing up to spit into, and wonder just how much phlegm has residence in my chest. The bowl, which is the size of my chest, is soon filled.

I learn not to wake up when I cough. I turn over, hack into the bowl and roll over again. The process becomes part of the sequence of sleep. I do not want to disturb my precious dreams.

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I step on a crack in the sidewalk and a visceral shudder shoots through my body. I never step on cracks unless I have to. Sometimes it’s so dark I can’t see them, sometimes the sidewalk is covered in leaves or snow, but even then I know from my body’s reaction when I’ve stepped on a crack. When people see me avoiding cracks they always say in their singsong voice “step on a crack break your mother’s back” They don’t understand.

I take old superstitions and imbue them with new meaning. The sidewalk is my life. Each block of cement represents a segment. The crack is the void between the segments, and I do not want to spend much time in the chaotic uncertainty that comes at these times. Avoiding cracks is my protest against life. I want my life to be seamless. I won’t have it any other way.

**************

In the morning I feel the tickling in the back of my throat, the stuffiness in my nose, the dull grey light in the back of my brain. It is now that I realize that in my attention to Tyler’s well being I had forgotten to protect myself from getting sick. I briefly consider skipping school, but decide against it. An astrologer friend of mine once told me that on your birthday your sun stands directly behind you. The full power of your personality is present. An inspirational speech has to come from my personality. There is no better day.

I spend the moments dressing to make peace. If I do get sick, Friday is the day to get sick on. I do not have school on Monday. It gives me three days and three nights to get well. Getting sick on my birthday, especially my eighteenth birthday fits with my goddess’ teachings. She is goddess of butterflies, goddess of goals, goddess of initiation, and it is in this last aspect that she teaches. Life is made up of segments of life, and within each segment is a little death. Life, or my goddess Leondea, will often mark these moments of change with a painful event that must be moved through for the change to occur. Making me sick on my eighteenth birthday is typical, but then so is an intensive workshop by the man I most respect.

***************

I love my new coat. It is black with brass clasps, and the two bottom clasps can be clasped together behind my back pulling the top tight against my chest giving me a general’s dignity. The flaps on the hood can lie forward on my shoulders giving me a general’s command. In this coat I feel in control, and the grey in the back of my head does not bother me. I feel as though I can demand that I stay healthy and it will be so. I can command myself to keep going and I will do so. This coat keeps me standing, and keeps me standing tall.

My Sensei was always after me for my posture. He commanded me to stand tall and raise my chin during a time when I was pretending to be humble. I could stand straight in the moment he commanded it, but as soon as he turned away I would slump again. I could not hold my shoulders back by pure force of will. I would have to be conscious of my shoulders all the time, and I have too many things to think about for that.

Later I learned that feeling proud would bring my chest up which pushes my shoulders back of their own accord. The muscles on my back I used to consciously change my posture would begin to ache after a few minutes of effort, but the muscles my body uses to do the same thing were based in my diaphragm, and would lift my ribs, which would take pressure off my shoulders which would allow them to be pulled back naturally. I would relax into a good posture. 

This coat makes me feel proud and relaxed and my pride, powerful and relaxed in my power, capable and relaxed in my capacity to speak before my classmates. Even when I take it off to put over the back of my chair I feel its warmth enveloping me. I am prepared, my sun stands behind me. I am strong and can hold my own spirit. I can do this.

*****************

I plant my feet solidly on the earth. I use my chi, my life energy, to connect me to the chi of the earth. My hands rest solidly on the podium on either side of my speech. I take a full breath in and look out at the thousand eyes of my classmates, suddenly unsure whether I am strong, proud, and capable of holding my own spirit, nonetheless I begin.

“I’d like to begin with a simple exercise. I’d like everyone to frown. You just got stood up by your date or robbed while fixing a flat in the rain.” - There is a twitch of a smile from a few people on this. I feel encouraged.  “But seriously - I’m sure there’s some great pain that each of you has experienced - think of it - frown.” 

Some of them look truly miserable. Olivia, a girl sitting in the second row in the middle with the most expressive face I’ve ever seen looks on the verge of tears. I pause just long enough to let the frown sink in and then command, “Now smile.” The effect is exactly as I had hoped. The room is bathed in smiling sunlight, as everyone is relieved of their frown. The exercise is from Oprah, in her article on the power of smiling. I use a few of her facts as I continue to explain just how powerful a smile really is.

I run them through another exercise of trying to keep a frown while looking at my grinning face. Some aren’t smiling so I meet their eyes and watch as the combination of twinkly eyes and a huge grin break through their solemnity. I explain how mirror neurons fire in our brain every time we see another person’s expression, and we mimic that face so we can feel the emotion and identify it. I tell the story of how a single smile had brought me out of a depression, and by the end I have convinced at least a few people to smile a bit more often.

On the long drive home I begin to feel miserable. My nose is running, my throat is sore, I feel my chi scatter. The ride home is usually full of fascinating conversation. Today there is only silence. I relate my success with the speech and then stare listlessly at telephone poles, forest, water, and cars as they whizz by. I feel as if I can shove this misery aside. I know I have the will. I want this experience. I want to be an initiated adult. I have killed colds before. I can kill this one. All my plans are still in place if I can only persevere as I did on the speech this morning. Life is about pushing through fear and pain and getting things done.

******************

As Mama greets me and motions to give me a hug I shake my head. “I’m sick” I say. She pauses and frowns, “on your birthday? You poor baby!” I nod - “I’m feeling well enough to go to the workshop” - Then a thought makes me pause - “would it be considered bad form to go when I’m possibly contagious?” She nods. “Yes.”

I feel broken, disappointed, lost. Papa made me my favorite breakfast, biscuits and gravy. Now they sit, half-digested in a bowl by my bed, the taste of my stomach stuck in my throat. Mama made me my favorite dinner, pork chops and white sauce. When I looked at it earlier I could taste it, wool and car oil. Chamomile tea sits by my bedside. It’s cold now, but it tastes good. The taste of my insides is reduced somewhat and the tea helps my digestion calm.

I am so calm that I dream I am a cement block. My rough, square edges rest solidly against my bed, and I know I have a place among my brothers. I work for the government and so I do not worry. I know that others are concerned, but I know that I am solid, a rock to build a church upon. I simply smile a wry smile and roll my predictable roll. 

I wake up. I wake up fully for the first time in three days and three nights. My room smells of dried sweat, the gloom remains but the grey is gone, my fever broke last night. I wonder whether this was a fever or flu. What does it mean when your temperature goes up and you can’t eat, both? Flu I decide. I open the windows and sunlight opens my eyes to the world. I wake up into the world of an adult.