A Coming Out Party

All the food was ready; the sweet-acerbic smell of my famous Hawaiian meatballs filled the kitchen.  Sodas were chilling in the forty-year-old cooler on the well-worn redwood deck.  Lee had just hosed it down for the expected crowd and an after-the-rain smell hung in the air.

Tension in my stomach and shoulders reminded me I was losing control over my private space.  I told myself there was no reason to be anxious--these were all family and friends coming to this celebration!--but I wasn’t sure just who would actually show up.  Will there be enough people coming to make it feel like a real party?  I already knew my son wouldn’t be coming, and that had dampened my mood.

As I set out the iced tea the doorbell chimed, and when I ran to open the door my heart leapt into my throat.  It was Carol Purroy, my writing teacher, with a pot of raspberry-colored flowers in a hand-thrown pot.  I shouted out her name with great delight and drew her in.

No sooner had I helped her orient to the surroundings than other guests began coming.  Lee took over the door as I moved them outside to the newly landscaped garden—one of the two big reasons for this party.

 I repeatedly explained my design, “This is a Jungian conceptual garden where union of the opposites is the key. Here is the English country garden with its daisies and roses representing Western culture.  On the east side is the Japanese garden with its heavenly bamboo and rounded bridge over the dry creek bed—Eastern culture.  Uniting them is the labyrinth, the feminine aspect.  Looking up the hillside outside the split-rail fence, you’ll see the rocky ledge with iron benches—the masculine element.  Here on the level ground we have the formal, cultivated area and just outside the gate to the hill is what I call the wild garden with naturalized plantings from Western high desert areas.”

I smiled as I noticed guests beginning to walk the labyrinth in measured steps and a quiet, meditative mood.  Let there be much prayer and praise in this place!

A half hour into the festivities, Heidi came up to me with her toddler and pre-teen explaining she needed to leave.  Chevy, the baby, was having too much fun rearranging the rocks of the labyrinth and she’d had it trying to keep up replacing them.  I urged her to stay just a few more minutes so I could unveil my new painting for everyone, and she agreed though she wrinkled her brow warily.  I asked Tina and Lee to shepherd everyone in for the event.

      I brought a little stool in from the deck so when I removed the cloth I wouldn’t jerk the painting off the wall.  When everyone was comfortable, I teased off the drape to soft gasps of pleasure.  Using the laser pointer Lee had bought me at Walgreens that afternoon, I pointed its scarlet light at an assortment of symbols, explaining their meaning, such as the concentric circles representing campsites, or in my case, places I’d lived; wavy lines indicating trails, my path to the next home site.  It was the story of my life told in golds and reds, purples and whites, all dots, circles and lines in the style of the Australian indigenous peoples.

      In that moment, with the dearest people in my life all facing me, obviously enjoying themselves, giving me their rapt attention, I felt completely at one with all things, quietly filled with a gentle ecstasy of welcome.  Lee told me later I was radiant, and I knew my own inner gold had finally escaped its introverted container and was shining for my entire world to see.