Linden Tree

Linden Tree

When I was young, or to be clear on the verge of passing from younger to young, and the time of dancing neared I felt the old woman keeping a closer eye on me as I played among tree roots, and wended through branches. As a child of the woods, I had often felt the old woman’s notice, a glancing awareness that she was there and curious. But, now as my cycles of age passed the double digits her attention had a weight to it and a seeming focus. I remember asking once why she was there and how long had she been waiting for people to dance? My Mother’s mother had said the old woman had been watching looking, and looking exactly the same ancient age even when my mother’s mother was young and had lived far from here in the dry and sands. And my mother’s mother was a small skinny girl who played by the cliffs, river, and rocks, and even for her the old woman waited by the trees till she was ready to dance.

Cycles passed and moons grew and shrunk, and time began to gather substance. The weight of time grew so to my way of thinking I felt my chest squeezed by the heaviness of what was yet to happen. The time before the dance should have been called the time of weight. If I hadn’t been a child of the woods I may well have become a still rock of the home, a pillar of support made to just to hold up the bower of the hearth. I can’t say what I felt was nervousness as many described it as the dancing time neared. I trusted myself, much more then, more than I often do now in fact and I did not question my steps, though I knew not for sure what they would be. I could sense that I was coming to a place of foundation, where one of the building blocks of self would be set. I carried my coins with me always, the dance would build and set that stone, because of this I knew my steps would have to be sure but not rehearsed.

Rehearsed steps could be pretty or build pictures, but they may not fit the dance and faltering or improper steps would mean unsteady foundations. I had to look no further than my father to know that this was true. He could flit and float start and stutter at a great many things, many of them fine and pleasing, but he could not build. In truth looking back, it was amazing that he even had a family though he hadn’t lasted long there, a brief bright flame in the hearth gone almost before the tinder caught. Maybe it had to do with his wooden leg, many people do live with them and dance amazingly but whenever he had walked it was with a staccato hop. As if only one leg was certain of where the next step would be, it wasn’t his flesh one.

No, the soon-to-be dance had to come from me through me and not peppered by excess planning and preparation just from surety and sincerity, I could feel this was true even if my eyes, memory and stories told me the same thing. The days of the dance would come, and I would just have to be ready for them.

Waiting. I could be infinitely still with patience as long as I wasn’t expected to do something. Every now and then I stepped extra hard to stop a building staccato twitch. The sound of a lost echo had no place here. I hoped the old woman would approve. Would my dance be something that she would expect? Find useful? Regardless, it had to be fitting for me.

That first one, the dance, I remember the moonlight, the clearing that hadn’t been in the woods before, and most especially the dancing tree that occupied the center of the field that had not existed. On a cool night, the shelter of the tree cooled the rustling grass further with moist fairy jewels. I had worn no coverings for my feet and each of the dazzling drops of dew laid on my feet like pleasant tingling brands, then as the old woman waited somewhere between the trunk and bower my steps began to strike down and flowed, my dance-floor the shelter of the tree. One step became a fleeting gesture as another would strike suddenly through me and time-stretched. A roll of the shoulder a flick of an arm to bring my young finger to a snap, from there and onward I continued.

The ground under my feet became muddy and my feet slipped, muck running up ankles and calves, between toes but I did not falter. If I fell it was with a roll or a spin and it was meant. My dance rang with the truth there between the roots of the tree that I danced under, it brought the branches above to frame the sky. As a child of the woods, trees have always been my friends and the great dancing tree was no different and supported me when I needed it, roots never caught my feet and never were in the wrong place when I tumbled. Where the trees could not support me, the wind did. Blowing my tresses holding me aloft when I left earth. My trunk swayed as I spun, individual strands of hair waved with flickers of motion. In a state of non-prediction of motion, I knew the course as I came to it and the steps followed. In ceaseless movement I chased after my breath only catching the ends of it as I stilled.

When I finished the old woman’s, face held a wry smile. Now after several dances, I still don’t know if I surprised her or moved as expected.

Her gaze communicated all she would ever plainly say to me. “And so, you’ve chosen, it suits you.”

And so, it has.