A Birthday

So today is the birthday of the late, great Lillith Varlock.

Earlier, when discussing the story line and my vague vision of the Binah Chronicle’s, my mother expressed the thought I was crafting a story about revenge. She couldn't be further from the truth.

There is a lot of darkness in these characters, the skeletons on which they hang, had their share of dark secrets. But, in order to illustrate hope, and love, and faith, and all those sunny sides of life, there needs to be a shadow backdrop, for depth. Otherwise, I'm just building a facade of a story with nothing to prop it up.

It's no secret, I'm using moments of my own life to craft this story, but it is just a story. What I fill between those glimmers of biography, is pure fantasy, conjecture, a series of what if's and what might have been's. I guess its my search for an alternate ending, my way of re-writing family history in the tradition of my great Aunti R., who managed to do it both symbolically and concretely in her world and life.

I may have painted Lillith Varlock with an icy brush, and just a smatter of menace but that's not to say that is ALL I intend to show of her. Today I would like to share another snippet of Lillith's character, and address two birds with one story. Champion

It was important for me to explore this sketch of Lillith's character. Recently, when my Granny died I once again found my self falling into the role of the champion of a mother figure. This time my own mother, my biological mother, the mother of my flesh and blood.

At the bedside of another dying matriarch, I watched as our relatives began to fly in on their proverbial brooms and set about to tearing apart the last remaining threads of family I had left on this side of the border.

Driving back from the hospital, my mother took all three of our lives in hand as she sped along the Island highway, her hot tears matching the downpour outside. Half blind by grief, half blind by weather she cried out loud "You are my champion, never never has anyone stood up for me like that. Never!

After listening to my relatives speak so ruthlessly about their own sister, cousin and neice I can plainly see the truth of her words.

As I sat in that back seat, the words of an old friend haunted me, exasperated with my grief and anger over looking to others for support and not finding it she said, "I don't know why no one ever tried to help you." What she didn't say hit me as hard as what she did say. That she couldn't help me either. I began looking over my life, and all the lost opportunities to secure myself a hero. I saw a connection at that moment, my mother couldn't be my champion, for the same reason's Lillith couldn't, for the same reason's my friend couldn't. No one had ever stood up for them either. How does a person learn to give something they've never received? How does a person learn from examples that don't exist?

Once again, I look inward for answers and I see clearly now, we all need to be a light unto ourselves, as the saying goes. There is a small still voice that speaks rythmically from my heart. Call it conscience, call it spirit, call it intuition, call it god. Whatever it is, it guides me. It's my responsibility to create quite spaces in my life and in my mind so I can hear it speak, so I can choose to follow or ignore, by my own best efforts. It can't fall to another to be my champion, it can't fall to me to be someone elses champion. But if I can, by some miracle, learn to be my own champion, maybe then other champions will begin to find and follow their own internal heart sent voice.