The Grasshopper
She didn't know her inside world was connected to her underworld. Until a hot wet stinky breath wakened her nose, a grunt landed in her weary ears, the railing rattled, and the underworld of her pleated skin was parted, exposing a tunnel. She didn't know her inner world was penetrable.
Big brother's hand guided her down, one step at a time, through the sweeping scent of cooked cabbage. Her translucent blue eyes fluttered in the glittering sunlight. The river's song and a gentle breeze conspired to awaken her soul.
Seeking the Earth's underworld with her talisman, a silver tablespoon, a penetrating tool, in her diminutive hand, she dug into the gravelly dirt. Developing the spoon's sheen, she dug deeper, farther down, seeking the bottom of what? She did not know.
The sun was at high noon as the breeze loosened her blond finger-curls, tightly wound like screen-door springs as her grandmother fussed to fashion each curl in perfect symmetry. The sound of the nearby Presumpscot River, primal home of the Wabanaki, aroused an ancient instinct. An urge. She squatted then mixed her body's warm yellow liquid with the dirt. The underworlds merged. She and the Earth were one and the same. She dug more. Mixed. Watched. Wondered. Where is the bottom? She dug until dusk.
Grasshoppers popped. Consumed her attention. She caught one. So many eyes, grasshopper!
Her eyes locked onto the grasshopper's multiple black ones. She was in a liminal space, an underworld thoroughly unlike her own or that of the dirt at her feet. This space is radiant, teeming with color, light, and multiple beings she could not have imagined. A secret hiding place. Free from physical pain, fear, anxiety, without fingers probing her personal underworld to breach the privacy of her inner world.
In the darkness she remembered the grasshoppers and imagined their multidimensional mirrored eyes and through them she entered her safe place, her underworld. No longer were grasshoppers required for her to escape embodiment. She was four.
At sixteen, with the sweet warmth of alcohol she found a new, different underworld. It was wild in a dangerous untethered kind of way. Others' fingers and appendages found their way into her inner world through her body's underworld. Like Jenga blocks, shame piled up, fell apart, and were restacked. Years of consuming alcohol darkened her world until she could no longer find her way into the grasshopper's eyes.
She heard the Saco River's song when she was thirty. Her mind and body free of alcohol she began to see beauty in the flowers blooming on her doorstep. She slowly healed. She heard the trees talk with her again. They answered her many questions. She worked her hands into the rich composted soil, planted seeds, watched them grow into the bounty that fed her body and replenished her soul. The rhythmic sound of the brook that ran behind her home carried her to a place of greater ease with herself.
Love entered her skin, her soul and heart at forty-seven. It was a surprise. She was ready to experience safety in physical, emotional, and sexual touch. Her physical underworld was revealed to her as beautiful, pink, radiant, glistening with untold stories. She rejoiced and felt redeemed in the deep-seeded love of a woman who later matured into, wife. She was at home in physical reality, but did not forget the grasshoppers and the underworld, though she did not venture there often.
She was fifty years old. The crib railings were gone, as was the foul smell of her father's dead Camel breath.
Now, as a shaman, a healer, she enters and exits the underworld at will, not to seek safety or escape from harm, but to be of service to others who suffer from the unspeakable. She merges her energy with that of the grasshopper and other multi-dimensional beings who reside in the unseen realms and who serve as allies in her quest. Sage and sweetgrass smoke permeated the ambient air of the knotty-pine loft, as if transported to a more mature underworld, it was as if all her nonordinary friends were waiting for her to return
She understands now that her suffering was an initiation into the unseen realm of the underworld, a gift, but not one she had asked for. First the unraveling and then the rewinding into a new energy. She does not recommend it but is grateful for grasshopper's gift. So be it.