The Harbingers

Looking at photos of my mother when she was young, I’m reminded of a youthful Michelle Pfeiffer circa 1975- pale, rail thin, long straight blonde hair and side-swept bangs framing her moody ingenue face with black-rimmed eyes. In her later years my mother would come to describe that make-up look as ‘two burnt holes in a white sheet.’ It always made me smile when she said that, and it was an apt description, but my God, was she beautiful.

I am the polar opposite of my mother in appearance. Since I was born I have had jet black hair and dark eyes. I always supposed this was the doing of my mysterious father’s gene pool, and while I have been told I am beautiful, I have always envied my mother’s unmistakable allure.

I never would have told her as much when I was a teenager, of course. I kept a tight lid on any kind words I could possibly dispense to her during those years. Instead I brooded in silence around our old house, which was too large for just the two of us and was perfectly cavernous for teenage brooding. Besides, I had reason to keep my emotional distance. My mother was seldom around when I was a little girl. Instead, I was left with a babysitter most evenings at home while she was out, and she preferred to be alone in her room during the day whenever possible. I never knew my father (she refused to discuss him), and we had no other relatives to speak of, or that my mother chose to remain in contact with, at least. So it was just the two of us, and many times, just me and a random babysitter. My mother was never a cruel woman, but she was by no means a warm mother, and so we lived as individuals more so than as a family.

Our house was on the edge of town, and I still live there now. It used to be a farmhouse, at least that’s what the horribly dilapidated barn at the back of the property suggests. That’s the only remaining sign that this was once a working farm. The fields have overgrown to the point of beginning to blend with the surrounding forests. In the evenings it is very quiet and peaceful. I like to have the windows on the second floor open as much as possible in the summer evenings to let the cool breeze flow down the upstairs hallway and down the stairs through the house. As I write this, I am sitting by the open window of the upstairs guest bedroom, which I use as my writing room.

Peaceful as it is, our house was unsettling to grow-up in alone. I have never believed in ghosts or anything like that, which is probably for the best because if I had, I certainly would have taken every creak of the old floor or draft down the darkened hallway as a malevolent spirit. No, I was always very practical, even as a child, and even more so as a teenager. Maybe because my mother was gone so frequently in the evenings, I grew up rather fast, and became the responsible adult of the household. When I outgrew the need for babysitters and was left to my own devices, I made sure to make myself dinner every evening, finish my homework, wash my face before bed, and then go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I learned to do these things without being prompted to do so, because there was no one there to do the prompting.

My mother didn’t actually own the home. It belonged to a very old couple that rented it out to us. The husband and wife, Edwin and Teresa, used to live in the house but moved to town years ago when Teresa became ill. They were a sweet couple; Teresa always sent me cards for my birthday and Valentines Day and a card addressed to both of us on Christmas. She felt like an adopted grandmother that I rarely saw, but I still saw her more often than any real grandparents, which was never.

***

One bright day, the summer I turned seventeen, I was sitting outside reading my book. My mother was inside, resting as she usually did during the day, after whatever last night’s adventure had brought. I stopped reading mid-sentence as a dark semi-transparent curtain seemingly dropped in front of my eyes. I blinked repeatedly, trying to right my vision, but to no effect. The dark haze colored my view no matter where I looked. Stumbling slightly, I stood and began to make my way back inside. Then I saw it, not physically in front of me like the dark haze of a curtain, but a perfectly clear vision in my mind. It was Teresa, the old woman I adopted as a distant grandmother. She was clutching onto the back of a chair, struggling to breathe before she collapsed on the ground. Without trying, I let out a wailing cry of a scream.

My mother came running out the front door toward me with a look of alarm on her face.

“What is it? Are you alright?” she asked frantically, still not entirely awake from her dozing.

I attempted an explanation, but my words only came out as gasped syllables, ““I saw…. I see…. Teresa!”

It was then that a calmer look overtook my mother’s fair features, replacing the panic.

“You saw Teresa just now? Here?”

I nodded.

My mother looked me in the eye, took up my hand in her own, and calmly asked, “Are you upset because you think she was dying?”

I looked at her incredulously since it was as if she had been able to read my mind. The dark curtain began to lift and my sight returned to normal, but I was still shaken and now confused by my mother’s question.

I nodded again.

“It’s nothing to be alarmed about,” she assured. “Though it can be startling in the beginning.” She began to stand and pull me up with her. “We have some things to talk about, maybe it’s best over a cup of coffee.”

Back inside, my mother stood in her gauzy white bathrobe and brewed a pot of coffee and I sat silently at the table and waited for an explanation. I tried to remember the last time my mother and I were in the kitchen together, and finally realized it had been years since we had shared a meal together or even sat at the same table.

She poured us each a cup and sat down across from me before she began.

“Before it rains, do you know how there is a certain scent on the wind and you can feel in your joints that something in the air is shifting? Or even when the ground is still covered with snow you sometimes see a robin and know spring will not be far behind?”

She didn’t seem to stop long enough for me to provide an answer, so I realized these were rhetorical questions and she continued on.

“The universe has a way of providing clues to certain events of nature if we are paying close enough attention. Some call these harbingers of things to come.” She took a sip of her coffee. “There are also people who possess certain abilities and are called upon as part of nature’s process.” She took another sip. “Many cultures around the world look for certain harbingers as signs of things to come. For instance, many believe owls and ravens to be signs of impending death.” She set her cup down and looked in my eyes. “These are not good nor bad signs, they just are. Just as nature is. And harbingers do not cause the event, they only foretell of it. A raven cannot cause a death to occur anymore than a robin can cause spring to begin. Does that make sense?” Again, she did not hesitate for me to answer. “Tonight, I’d like you to come with me so I can show you.”

“Show me what?” I asked, more confused than ever.

My mother did not reply immediately, only smiling slightly with her lips together before taking another sip of coffee.

“Tonight” was all she replied.

****

After the sun went down, my mother came for me, looking beautiful as she did every night she went out. She wore a flowing silk slip dress and her light hair hung loosely over her shoulders. We went outside in the moonlight. She asked me to walk with her to the back of the property, which I did. As we walked through the overgrown fields cluttered by saplings and shrubs that had taken root, the strong summer breeze blew over us. I glanced toward my mother, and her hair and her dress blew in the wind but seemed to disintegrate at the ends like an unraveling thread on the breeze. She smiled at me and walked on.

We reached the barn within a few minutes and my mother stepped through the dilapidated door frame and into the darkness seemingly without hesitation. I stopped just outside, afraid of how unsturdy the rotting barn must be, and called out for her.

“Mom?”

There was no answer, but I heard a small commotion from inside the structure. Then, out flew a bright white barn owl, swiftly taking to the night sky. I jumped in alarm as the creature startled me with its sudden appearance. The owl made a large lap in the dark sky, before flying back toward me and the barn. As it approached I unwittingly ducked down and covered my head with my hands as it swooped back into the entrance of the barn.

At the same moment, my mother reappeared from inside the doorway. She smiled coyly at me and motioned for me to follow her inside. The wind picked up just then and blew through my black hair. I looked down at my hands and watched them begin to unravel in the breeze as bits of my mother had while walking through the field. I stepped forward toward the barn and went inside the dark threshold to join my mother.

****

We received a call from Edwin early the next morning, letting us know that Teresa had passed away. Of course, I had already known. I could hear Edwin’s voice over the phone, struggling to maintain his composure as he gave my mom the news. I felt deep empathy for him as well as my own sadness over the loss of my grandmother figure. Still, overwhelming fatigue overpowered all else and I wished for sleep. It had been a very long and very revealing night.

My mother hung up the phone at the end of their call and turned to me.

“You ok?” she asked.

I nodded. “Just tired. It’s a lot to process.”

She nodded in sympathetic agreement. “You get some rest. You can join me tonight again if you’d like?

****

I joined my mother many nights after that, and we bonded closer together as the time passed. I loved gliding beside her, watching her white wings reflect the moon as she soared. My own black span struggled to keep up at first, but eventually as my mother aged she slowed down before ceasing to be altogether. I saw her upcoming death, of course, as well as she did. It was neither sad nor negative, it just was.

Now, I’m alone living at the house. It’s just as well, I grew up accustomed to my own company. Edwin passed away shortly after Teresa and left us the property. There are rarely any visitors to the house, and neighbors seldom get a glance of me as I’ve become somewhat of a recluse. Some summer days when I have the windows open I can hear the conversations of the neighbors as they walk past with their dogs or push small children in strollers. I smile to myself as I listen to them discuss the 'shut-in' that lives there and wonder at what she does in that big house all by herself.

Oftentimes that is the precise moment a large raven chooses to reveal itself, setting sail from my weathered roof and startling the passersby as it swoops down from the current of a warm breeze.