A weekend-long yoga workshop brings me to a comfortable, yet secluded, home in the mountains of North Carolina, just a few miles outside of Asheville. My friend is visiting her aunt in New Jersey this weekend and generously offered to let me stay at her place, a perfect opportunity for me to have some much-needed alone time in the evenings, something I don't get much of. What a glorious treat! But what I found was that it wasn't as glorious as I was expecting it to be, at least not this first night alone. Perhaps this weekend's lesson isn't going to come from the yoga studio, perhaps this weekend's lesson sits right here, with me, a lesson on how to not be afraid of the demons of being alone. I had forgotten that I was ever afraid, but as I lay in a strange bed in a strange house with strange noises, I could suddenly hear my heart beating loud in my ears. In that moment of acute awareness, I was drawn back to my early childhood. I am about four years old, and all alone in the terrifying darkness of my green-walled bedroom. The creaky old house sits in the middle of 20 acres of rural Northern California farmland and is approached by a long, dirt driveway. The only light my eyes can access comes from a humming fluorescent lamppost that stands tall at the edge of the expansive lawn of thick Bermuda grass that surrounds the old country house. The play of shadows from the flickering light shimmers through the silky sheer beige curtains, dancing frighteningly across the blanket my mother crocheted for me for my third birthday. I lay utterly still underneath the variegated mint and white afghan, frozen with absolute fear, a terror so intense that I feel as though it can't possibly go on a moment longer. With each surge of blood through my head, I see a giant tiger getting one step closer to me, turning off of the main road, coming up the dusty driveway, one step at a time. "Thump-thump......thump-thump," his big hairy paws say as they land solid on the soft dirt, producing billowy clouds in their wake. In my mind's eye, he casually walks all the way up that driveway, his pace increasing as he nears the house, "thump-thump.....thump-thump," making his way up the rickety back steps, through the musty porch, entering the darkness of the kitchen, moving through the living room, getting closer and closer, "thump-thump....thump-thump," until finally, he stands in the frame of my open doorway, staring at me with those intense red eyes, drooling with anticipation of the kill. "Thump-thump...thump-thump. Thump-thump..THUMP-THUMP!!" He pounces, swift and precise, he's got me, I bury my head in the scratchy covers, a silent scream filling my head, overpowering the sound of my heartbeat, every ounce of my tiny body rigid with horror. This is it, I'm doomed!! At some point in the height of fear, the savior of sleep overcomes me. I sink into the long, black night. When I awake in confusion, head pounding and sweat-slicked hair stuck to my face, the fresh sunlight is streaming through the sheers, holding me close in its warm, loving arms. I am alive, I am whole, the tiger did not pierce my delicate neck with his giant white fangs and drag me away to his lair. I am saved. I can go on for another day. And then, last night, 40 years later, my tiger came back for me. This time I didn't let him come up the driveway, I didn't let him come up the back steps and make his way to my room. I didn't let him pounce on me and cripple me with fear. Instead, I found all the courage I could muster and I walked tall down the driveway to meet him. We came face-to-face, my tiger and I. Bravely I reached out to touch him, I embraced his thick neck, I told him I loved him, he lowered his head and a single tear streamed down his face. I climbed onto his strong back and took him fully into my heart as we made our way up the driveway together, as one. Scared of my own heart beat?? Not anymore.
Durga Comes Up the Driveway