Persephone 2011

Waking Point

by Helen Noakes

“Say what’s your purpose then,” I said. “Or tell me mine. I think I have lost it.”—Katherine Beutner, “Alcestis”

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—2/28/22—Myths never die. They might disappear for a while but, because they speak to our human condition, we resurrect them on the screen, in books, in music, and within our minds. This latter phenomenon often presents in dreams.

If we take the time to examine our mundane interactions, we’ll find that those faraway, ancient stories have come alive in the myriad and constant rituals of our contemporary lives—in particular, the rituals called relationships.

The current unfolding of my own story has brought to mind the great myth of Persephone and Demeter—an archetypal myth (aren’t they all) of the mother/daughter relationship, of the value of Shadow and the necessity of Light, of transformation and rebirth.

It set my imagination wandering towards the possibility of what might have occurred in this tale, 50 years after Persephone bit into the pomegranate.

My fancy transported Persephone to the here and now, where I overheard her message to her mother:

“My journey with you began in the dark of your womb and continued in the darkness of your    inner landscape.

Glimpses of sunlight and peace were few and precious.

You took your life’s journey in fear and visited your terrors on me.

The blows you delivered left bruises on my flesh, which disappeared, and bruises on my heart which faded slightly, but never went away.

As a child, I bore them, weeping, screaming myself into nausea, cowering, hands over my head—ineffectual shields of small, ten-fingered flesh.

The day I did not cry out, because of what? Exhaustion? Hopelessness? No. It was rage, as deep and searing as your own. I was twelve.

I remember your eyes, momentarily wide with surprise, fear, and a new loathing.

All those years of forcing me to my knees had not subdued my spirit.

Did you think that I might rear up?

Did you wonder if I’d learned your ways too well?

I might have, but I didn’t.

I fled.

As soon as age and time and life permitted, I fled into my own depths, sought sunny lands, dove into words, art, music, the inglorious past and its glorious ideals.

I fled your poison words, your sour-faced disapproval, your screaming rages.

I fled, seeking a purpose to my past, a purpose to my present.

I knew enough to seek nothing of the future.

But I could not flee that old familiar nausea, induced by your displeasure.

Nor could I eradicate the rage.

And yet, I never hated you, never wished you harm, never became you, although I lived in constant fear of it—in perpetual vigilance against it.

Oh, once or twice she peered at me, this other you, peered at me from her place deep in the netherworld of me.

For years I would not take her squarely on.

Until, one day, in frosty windswept Delphi, I looked my mother-self in the face and ran her out.

Your fears have grown darker, you tremble with them.

‘My heart pains me,’ you say.

And I realize, for the first time in all our years together, that it has always been so.

Your heart is bruised and wounded, and it terrifies you.

It aches with your terror of life, of love, of being vulnerable.

But most of all, you fear yourself.

For all the pain you caused me, I tremble now, driving you to the hospital where for the first time, in all those hundred visits, I’ll say: ‘Help her. Her mind is going. It was always fragile.’

You chatter beside me in the car, as you always do. Never suspecting what I intend.

Tears flood my eyes, my heart, my soul.

Surprised, I blink them back.

This sadness that grips me, unexpected.

Am I betraying you?

If so, why do I quake at the thought of betraying you, you who betrayed me so often?

Then I remember that winter day in Delphi and my grim disposal of the one within me who would have sought retribution.

I stand over your hospital bed now, looking down at you.

Your body frail, your fearful eyes searching mine, begging.

I weep with you.

Soothe you.

Promise to be there for you as I always have been, my current purpose suddenly clear.

Yes.

I realize, for the first time, that beyond the simple mouthing of the words, I forgive you.”