candle, story, prayer
I lean against one of the wooden posts whose bottom is submerged in the waters surrounding the pier on which I sit, legs extended, water bottle beside me, a flimsy journal in my lap, pen in my left hand. Ground zero feels as palpable as ever on the final full day of my Swedish pilgrimage, the feeling of being the lone inhabitant on this small island off Stockholm fading fast.
I had been incanting the Swedish light, asking its blessing of my way. My faithful solar companion had presented in an androgyny of fashions from the pretty in pink of three a.m. to the tailored shine of high noon to the confetti tutu of six to the sexy lavender tux of eleven to the classy finale of a post-midnight indigo negligee. Oh, ancient sun, I entreated, you have bound me up in this homecoming. How can I leave you now? They/she/he tossed a rainbow of tresses across the waters which sparkled like the jeweled moments of my journey, each one an illumination of birth, breath, dream. Each one a generational candle, story, prayer.
We had come by commuter ferry to Storholmen to spend the final three nights of the journey here. My sister and Swedish cousins and I had filled the preceding seven days with church visits, cemetery searches, highway hours connecting us from Göteborg to Lundsbrun to Kristianstad to Gränna to Norrtälje to Sundsvall to Stockholm. The final days were for lagom, not too much, not too little, for planting ourselves together in a home on a west-facing hill to rest and dine and sun and dance and prepare ourselves for the idea of departure.
Sudden motors whir and boats appear, hull trails crossing in slow motion waves halting at the post that holds my back. Schplat. Schplat. Schplat, the water declares. What has all this meant? she/he/they implore.
Oh, my soul! Words are mere intruders. I turn on my side, then to kneeling, then push up from an inversion of U and rise like a supplicant to the sun. I step my feet over the planks from Swedish forests to the pier’s edge and tip up and off to the surround of waters, and then I surface — to sunny, Swedish joy.
