Rise Up Babylon

Without doubt, my mother made unfeigned efforts to shield us from my father’s rage and wrongdoing, and she never confronted him in front of any of us. We didn’t tell my mother we could hear details of their arguments, with Mom trying to help Dad see he’d lost his way by coyly quoting verses from the Bible.

One night I was awakened, not by my parents’ fighting, but rather, their boisterous celebration. Dad had finally fixed his numbers for a successful Tricera earnings release and after the board meeting he’d returned home late -- drunk, sloppy and loud. Mom kept whispering “quiet or you’ll wake the girls.” Which of course he’d already done.

I waited with anticipation in my unlit bedroom, until I heard my parent’s door close behind them. They were giggling and occupied with one another so they didn’t hear me sneak down the stairs to the front door. But someone did. 

Annie’s soft, little voice cut through the darkness of our entry hall, “Maeley, are you going to your Magic Forest?” With one hand pressing on the front door I spoke sternly, like a good big sister, “go back to bed.”

But she was anxious from hearing my father’s slurred, thunderous voice. She pleaded, “Take me with you. You promised!” 

Though Annie was a regular visitor in my enchanted forest during daylight hours, she’d never seen the silver stars held by the pine branches, and she’d been pestering me about it. 

Now I’d never snuck out in the middle of the night. My ventures to the trees and stars had always occurred in the pre-dawn hours when I was supposed to be practicing piano.

I didn’t want to get caught and face my father’s wrath, especially with my little sister in tow. 

However, the desperate need to escape our home’s walls and sounds was even stronger than my trepidation.

Without words, we walked along the wooded path in our PJs, guided by the flashlight on my phone -- two young girls, hand in hand, on a healing adventure in the enveloping dark.

As we entered my Magic Forest, Annie fell under the spell of the scintillating skyfield. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.” Her reverent whisper amplified my own delight, a nameless joy that until that night I’d kept only for myself.

Annie again broke the silence. “I hear the voices of the trees! I hear the song of the stars!” I was ecstatic that she could hear them too, these nighttime treasures of my secret realm. 

We stretched upon the softness of the pine-needle floor, two young fugitives watching the depth of the sky expand with ever-new pinpricks of light. A meteor shot right through the center of Orion, and Annie giggled with glee. “I want to BE a shooting star!” she exclaimed. “I could fly so fast!”

My Magic Forest was a sacred place, facilitating my most treasured memories.

My childhood cherished bookends of night and day were that transcendent night with Little Annie under the stars, and also the luminous sunrise that I shared with my father a few years earlier. And still, I relive them again and again and again.

Tonight Prelude

So still in the darkness long before dawn

Night sky like a blanket with the stars shining on us

Tonight, tonight

It’s a perfect night, it’s a perfect night

Tonight’s a perfect night and my heart’s flying here with you

Hold tight to remember, this night our whole lives through

Always and forever I’ll love you