The Queen of Peace Room

Chapter 2 Saturday Morning

13 SATURDAY MORNING I shower, dress, find the dining room, make a cup of tea, help myself to a few of the tiny muffins laid out on a sideboard, and wander upstairs to a sun-drenched room overlooking trees and an unpainted barn I hadn’t seen last night. Trees are golden and lit by a sky of the same colour. Sunlight rests in branches like pieces from a broken mosaic. There’s a cool breeze and silence except for the furious rapid song of a single robin. Then more birds, clear distinct sounds, like flute music. Sounds of flutes are coming from the trees. Maybe I should say this is all a dream and that would make it more believable. But this is a dream: One night I was a photograph, in black and white. Someone had a missing piece—a large ripped piece of paper torn from where my left arm would have been if the photo were complete. This arm fragment kept being passed among a group of people. I kept trying to reclaim it. But each time I got close, it was passed away from me, like a bird in flight. I moved faster and got closer. I could see the texture of the fragment . I almost touched it once, but then it vanished, like a shadow. That was a dream. This is the truth: the entire landscape is shimmering . Healthy plants are set upon tables the full length of the room. Lace curtains move in each breath of breeze. Large comfortable chairs are scattered about in a semi-orderly fashion, and around the windows, which run the full length of the room, are small wooden plaques with handcarved inscriptions, photographs of nature, and paintings of birds. 2 Windows can be like clay in the hands of a potter, can be outlined with lace and geraniums. In churches, some windows are filled with colour and mysterious people telling a story; light spills through glass and rainbows appear on the face of a holy person, birds and angels seem to fly through a stained glass sky; windows can be broken and under the sea, tossed there from the back of a truck, fish darting through, coral attached to one side; they can be flung open and jumped through from the sixth floor of a city tenement by a dancer unable to dance again, who leaps instead to death; or jumped from by a wounded person, so hurt, so helpless, so angry that death through an open window becomes a passage to anywhere except here. Some windows can be so boarded shut, they may as well be plastered with cement, a wall now, instead of a window, never to be reopened. Windows can be the eyes of a soul, can be a thin wooden frame around a lost woman’s face, looking through glass as if it were a mirror, having absolutely no concept of who she had been, or become, or where she is going. I walk downstairs, outside, and stand in the cool wind and the smell of summer vegetation. I can see now that it’s a complex of buildings , a few barns, a large main wooden house with a wide veranda, and the brick structure where I’ve spent the night. A low stone-wall edged with birch and spruce surrounds everything. The only sounds are birds and crickets. I walk along the paths surrounding the complex, then up the pristine wooded steps of the main house and can hear someone say, “All things that are supposed to meet will eventually meet.” In the large, lightly furnished room, people are seated in a circle, and there is a peacefulness I want to wrap myself in. There is gentleness , tremendous energy, and an unexpected warmth, like the top of a luncheonette counter on a winter morning, just after the orders to go have been picked up. I listen to the voices, not the words themselves so much—but more to their gentle tone. They sound like nuns or angels. No, not nuns! Angels. I have a pen but no paper. What am I thinking? I fold a borrowed piece of paper and begin to take notes: • What is a journey? • The new voice you hear is often your own. • Walk closely to the wise ones. 14 The Queen of Peace Room • Always ask questions. • Pain happens to most of us. • Get close to...