A Tolkien Moment

The loss of childhood.

 

There are funny shaped trees in her friend's yard. The vines that grow on them make them appear to have soft  rounded  fuzzy appendages, like teddy bears on sticks. Out here by the front steps, as she smokes a cigarette, the wind is blowing. She hears it and it reminds her of a memory. Yet it is fleeting, slippery. She can't think of it -if she uses too much effort – and experience it at the same time. It is not a memory of any one particular event, although it feels that way. It is actually a memory of a feeling -that she use to feel with no effort.

She tries to to get her mind closer, but  thoughts compete for attention, and there is some sense of urgency, no, immediacy, that makes it difficult to travel in that direction. But she manages to decide that it is memory of a feeling: a feeling that as she grew up, got older,   grew away from her. Hidden now, lost now, She can no longer find it. She has no access.

 

The sound of the wind tells her something different. At least to her, it seems like it tries. She tries too. For a moment, she almost has it. It seems like a beckoning to somewhere else.

 

The wind says, “Here it is. Here it is.” Among these funny shaped teddy bear trees.

 

She looks at one tree, slanted over with so many teddy bear sticks, and she is almost there. As like many times before, she is almost there. Almost.  Sometimes it is a lone seagull far from the sea. Or the twilight hour. It can be sitting by a running gurgling brook on a hot summer day. The first snow fall too. Today it is the wind and a funny shaped tree. It is shorter than all the others, and it stands out. Different. Special. Asking to be noticed.

 

She tries to imagine that  the wind talks to all the trees. And to her.  To all of us.  But her mind can nolonger fully immerse  in imagination, and this is the best that she can do:

 

Is it  hard for the trees, hearing the wind bring voices and sounds of distant places?  They are all stuck. By their roots. Do they long for still days when the wind is missing? Or do they miss it, feel lonely when it is gone? Miss the excitement of hearing the far off places, and imagining what they might be? Feeling part of them?

She wanted to be able to imagine more. Feel more. From the wind blowing through the trees.

 

Lonely is what she feels in such moments. She knows sometimes that she has lost something. This feeling that visits her sometimes over the years is just a glimpse of something that use to have a welcome door.

 

As a child, she could walk right through. Immersed.  But it had diminished over time. Lessened. And then: lost.

 

She felt it the last time- truly- as she read The Lord of the Rings. She was thirteen.By that time, it took a book to bring here back  there.  She had read the seriess again over the years. Saw the movie. But it was gone. Now the best she could hope for was this memory of that feeling.

 

Like now. Inspired by the wind and the funny shaped tree. She can contemplate. Wonder. But  imagine is too strong of a word. Imagining is not the same as it was.

 

She 'imagines' (contemplates really) that the wind rises to a crescendo sometimes- to scream and remind. Please try. Listen to me! Listen to this! It is right here. It is everywhere. It is here. It is here. It is in between the trees. In between the wind.  That the welcome door is hidden but not lost.

She thinks: In between thoughts, perhaps? But it is useless to think such things for there is no space between her thoughts.

 

She calls these Tolkien moments. And they do feel lonely. And she does feel lost.  Fleeting,slippery, and transotory.  Now - that's just the way it is.

 

She can never quite get there anymore.