Trusting the Currents

Copyright © 2013 by Lynnda Pollio

First Edition October 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or

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SageHeart Media

Lynnda Pollio

P.O. Box 1196

New York, NY 10113

sageheart@lynndapollio.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

Cover and interior design by Vanessa Maynard

Edited by Victoria Stahl

LCCN: 2013911831

ISBN-978-0-989-1953-2-4 (Hardback)

ISBN-978-0-9891953-0-0 (Trade Paperback)

ISBN-978-0-0901953-1-7 (e-book)

Literary Fiction —Commercial Fiction—Women’s Fiction —Spirituality—Inspiration

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

For George and his relentless love

C O N T E N T S

P R O L O G U E

O N E

T W O

T H R E E

F O U R

F I V E

S I X

S E V E N

E I G H T

N I N E

T E N

E L E V E N

T W E L V E

T H I R T E E N

F O U R T E E N

F I F T E E N

S I X T E E N

S E V E N T E E N

E P I L O G U E

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

I am in deep gratitude to everyone who participated in the realization of Trusting the Currents, who joined me in the long, crooked journey to this moment.

I never would have completed Trusting the Currents without my generous and supportive editor, Victoria Stahl, who took me in, got me out of my way, and loved Addie Mae as much as I did. I want to thank the book’s designer, the talented, sweet and very patient Vanessa Maynard who created such a beautiful visual reflection of the story.

I am grateful for the small miracles that arrived in the form of amazing, supportive human beings: Lacey O’Connor, Amy Frost, Kelly Fermoyle, Shari Novick, Bettina Gordon, John Peterson, Ben Bingham, David Ord, Steve Bennett of Authorbytes, Pierre DuBois and Amy Tam, all who believed in me, sometimes when I didn’t believe in myself.

Thank you to my wisdom sisters, Ronit Herzfeld and Elsie Maio for holding a safe space for me to be me and being such an important part of what I am becoming.

And most importantly, adoring thanks to my dear mother who began this life for me, and taught me that as long as there is love, there is everything.

I never understood folks fussing over such things—us being so plainly mortal. Don’t they know they gonna die? When I see them worrying about what they be wearing, or who they be sitting or not sitting with, I wonder, do they know they gonna die? When I see them running from love or caring or kindness; when they don’t live fine ‘cause of the way they look, their hair not right that day, or fat parks on them in wrong places and they be feeling worthless, I wonder if they remember they gonna die? And on that sad day, their hair won’t matter, and those few pounds won’t matter, and whether they wearing the proper clothes won’t matter. Hardly anything at all will matter. All they gonna be laying there thinking is how time’s up and what they shoulda done, and the life they coulda lived, and the love they woulda given if they had only remembered this moment was coming.

Addie Mae Aubrey

P R O L O G U E

Since her first whispered words, Addie Mae has been my guide into truth. Not the kind you tell other people when you’re feeling righteous. But the hardest truth—the kind you tell yourself when you know there’s been a lie festering inside for a long time.

We’ve been together longer than I expected. She held me captive, holding my heart with her surprising voice. Because of her, I now see magic where there was only coincidence, faith has replaced fear, and time has become the most miraculous gift. There is always a chance for change.

Addie Mae and I were joined by love, by a contract I suppose we made many lifetimes ago, or maybe merely in my imagination. We never know these things for sure until we join the Invisibles. But if I created her, so has she created me. I am transformed by her presence.

It wasn’t all her. I had to be willing to listen, rise above obstacles and insecurities, face fear and the darkness of uncertainty. Loneliness often flirted with me. Still, I was blessed. She was always there, reminding me that the best journeys take us through fog and fury as much as glory.

It was Mother’s Day and the phone rang. If I trace Addie Mae’s presence to its first guiding moment, I think this is where it all began. Not that I knew it then. All I understood that Sunday afternoon was that my father, whom I hadn’t seen in seventeen years, lay dying. A heart attack, his kidneys, the drinking—whatever we chose to believe. My uncle just wanted to let us know. We didn’t have to come. He understood.

I knew right away I had to go to Pennsylvania. My brother came to the same decision, so we got up early and drove two and a half hours down rain-soaked highways in anticipation. We could hear each other’s hearts pounding as we walked into the room and looked at our father’s frail, unconscious body. Relieved to relinquish his care to us, my uncle left and Bryan and I stayed with this sleeping drifter. A social worker asked us to sign papers. No, we didn’t want dialysis. No resuscitation order either. Let him go. Get this over with. I placed my hands on my father and practiced the healing arts I had learned. I willed God’s forgiving energy into him, cleared his aura, soothed his brow. A few hours later he was still alive and it was time for me to leave.

The next day I drove alone to the hospital and put my hands on him again and prayed. I don’t remember what for, but I know it wasn’t to save his life. I think it was really more to save his soul, to offer peace. Every day I returned, despite my family’s objections that he deserved neither my help nor my consideration. They were right, of course. But he wasn’t a bad man, just afraid of life and its obligations. He was trapped in the memories of his scarred childhood, and like so many others, he couldn’t find the courage to overcome it.

Then, one day, almost three weeks later, the seas of our blustery past parted and my father opened his eyes. It was as simple as that. For the time being, he had begged off death.

My other brother, Guy, flew in from the coast. In many ways, the three of us were meeting a stranger. We no longer needed him to be a father, no longer expected anything from his arms. Daddy had died years before. After initial clumsiness, we talked about our lives and the turns each had taken. I think we even laughed a bit.

Two weeks later, I checked him out of the hospital. As we passed through the doors, he turned to me and said, I just want one year with you kids. That’s all I ask. The doctors told me he could die at any moment.

That next year was a majestic journey. We shared our July birthdays. I helped him pick out a gift for my mother’s birthday in October. He spent Thanksgiving dancing at my brother’s house. My father was determined to have fun, determined to spend every moment he could with us. At Christmas, he was back, wearing funny reindeer antlers, fiendishly unwrapping presents like the little boy he truly was. He gave his old watch inscribed With Love On Christmas, From Dad to Guy. He did the same for Bryan, on the blade of a Swiss army knife designed for fishermen, because he knew how Bryan loved to fish. He gave me a large brass hourglass to remind me of what he had forgotten.

He was demanding of my attention and time, and it wore me to the bone. I cried a lot, and even prayed for him to die so I could reclaim my eroding life. But grizzled, raw wounds were slowly healing. My brothers and I talked more often and more intimately. Even my mother, bitter from decades of broken promises, noticed a light returning to our family.

He got his year, passing two days shy of Mother’s Day the following May. In a swirl of activity, as he lay on the gurney waiting for a bed at the VA hospice, he squeezed my hand. He couldn’t talk but his teary eyes said it all. Thank you, Lynn. I love you. I’ll watch out for you. He died the next day, redeemed.

As I left the hospice, I noticed a worn book lying on the bench nearest my car. The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey. I sat down and leafed through its weathered pages. The spine cracked when I opened it like it hadn’t been held for years. I turned to the first sentence. What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? I tossed the book into the back seat and cried the entire drive home. I was free. He was free. And I had done what I knew was right. I don’t think the sun ever looked brighter or more promising.

The next morning I awoke into the fleeting voice of an elderly, Southern, African American woman. For a moment, she helped me understand everything … and then it was gone. As sleep escaped and the dream and its memories evaporated, she showed me a mountain I would climb. I never saw her face but her presence felt familiar. My heart pounded, only the fragrance of her words remained.

I immediately jumped into a consulting assignment. It was supposed to be an easy gig. A civilized three days a week quickly turned into a five or six day a week grind, hungrily devouring ten- twelve- fourteen-hour days. Laced with the gruesome occasional all-nighter, offices filled with unhappy people, and a growing dissatisfaction with advertising, I quit. I ate badly, drank too much and came to the unfortunate realization that the road I had spent my life stumbling down was not only at an end, it had been the wrong road. I ran away from home.

I don’t know why I chose Sedona. I believe it chose me. Sedona’s like that and those who are called there hear its bewitching song. Soon I was on a plane with no plan, nowhere to stay, no friends, no reason.

Fifteen minutes outside Phoenix airport, my car blew a flat and I limped onto an access road that, thank God, hugged a small motel. I dragged my exhausted body into the lobby, called the car rental company and checked in for the night. Crawling into bed, I opened the book from the bench the day my father died. It was an old story about another woman from New York and her journey to sanguine canyons, to the same canyons I was being called to myself. And even though our reasons for following their call were different, we shared the same blind leap of faith.

At morning’s blush, a mechanic fixed the tire and I continued two hours north. As I was swallowed into the beautiful red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, I could almost hear them welcoming me, inviting me into a secret. I bought the local paper and spent the day looking for a place to stay. By day’s end I was exhausted by what I had seen, convinced I had made a terrible mistake. I crept into a lovely little bed-and-breakfast and cried. What the hell was I doing here?

The last ad I’d circled in the paper advertised a place that just happened to be up the road from where I was staying. A man named Wally, who was everything you’d expect a man who works the land to look like, met me at the gate. Wally took care of the property. Mark, the guy who owned the pretty Spanish-style house, was renting out the master bedroom suite with French doors that opened into a hummingbird garden. I moved in immediately.

Wally knew how to nurture just about everything. He was the one I called when I found a tarantula crawling across my floor. The name I screamed as a family of angry javelinas chased me across the cultivated lawn. He brought me fresh juice in the morning and salads at night; he taught me how to listen to whispering trees. A massage therapist lived in the apartment above the garage. I was in heaven. So in the vivid sunshine—away from my father’s death, designer suits and everyone’s expectations of me—layers of old life began to peel away.

At dawn I’d throw on a cotton dress, and sip a cup of coffee on my patio. If you’ve ever seen the sun rise over the high desert, you know the cleansing power of that miraculous sight. Faces smiled at me from everywhere—the leaves, the trunks of trees, rock walls. I was told the earth spirits were happy to see me. I should have been alarmed, but somehow I was comforted, intrigued. These smiling faces eventually retreated back into their own world, but by then my body was stronger, my spirit rejuvenated, my mind ready.

The desert exudes an amazing scent. Even slight fear becomes part of its mysterious fragrance. And as morning brushes the land and mixes with this fragrance, every atom shivers with anticipation, knowing that something that has never happened before will be happening that day.

I was given books to read on raw foods, solar energy, visualization. I gobbled them up. Soon I was taking herbs to cleanse years of accumulated toxins from my contaminated being, drinking ginger tea and imagining a different life. Every false thing about me was being stripped away.

Wally came by quite often to talk, bring me mangoes, quiet my spirit. We took long hikes in tender canyons. He taught me about the creatures and plants and energies that possessed the land. People I met talked about alien portals and spirit guides. Indian shamans walked barefoot through town and I heard of mountain men who still lived in caves hidden away within the ancient canyon walls. It was a place, a state of grace unlike anything I had ever known. When I talked to friends and family back home, I barely recognized their voices. I had passed through some slight crease in reality and was now living between worlds.

One night, I woke in the dark to an uneasy weight perched at the edge my bed. I remembered my father’s promise to visit me. I turned on the lamp and huddled fearfully. Through the curtained window I could see it was black outside. The birds were still silent, but something in the air promised dawn was approaching. I thought about her. It wasn’t much of a thought; just the memory of that dream, of the familiar warmth I felt towards her. I realized we were sitting within the mountain she showed me. Her tender spirit stayed in silence for a few minutes, until the first bird broke the morning with its hopeful call.

By now, magic filled each day. Every boundary I had been raised to respect disappeared among the mighty teaching canyons. I no longer felt surprise at unexpected voices coloring the wind, or prying eyes peering at me from the shadows of an ageless rock. As Christmas approached and the promise of warmth retreated, I understood it was time to leave. God had bestowed a great gift on me. But the rest of life was calling. As much as I hated to leave, I knew there was more for me to do in the world. I had no choice but to go forward, fuse my newfound self to an abandoned past and see what magical elixir emerged.

Once back in New York, I went back to advertising, though more and more I hungered to support businesses that strove to make the world a better, happier, more conscious place. I searched for others with the same calling.

Then, one afternoon, Addie Mae laughed, and every plan I had entertained evaporated.

It’s not what happened to me that matters.

I stopped, my heart pounded, and I placed these first words on the tips of my trembling fingers. I was afraid to look around, afraid I’d see her. She was that close. It was the challenging voice of that elderly, Southern, African American woman, bold and completely proud of her disturbing affect on me.

Wake up, child. It’s time. We’re about to take a long journey together.

I stared at the keyboard. I could sense her amusement at my fear. I listened to more of her words, let them splash into my computer, whatever she had to say. By the time she finished, a transformational covenant was born. I agreed to tell her story and once again faith guided my life.

There was a comforting promise to her voice even though I never knew where it was taking me. Like an endless, tapestried carpet being rolled onto a barren floor, each day I unfurled the sonorous colors of her words a little bit more. I asked for her name. She told me Aubrey was given by her daddy, but her first name, her God-given name, I had to discover myself. I changed it like I changed clothes while she accepted meager fragments of my time. Bertie, Sarah, Betsy, Luanne became hopeful chants. With great pride she told me the name of every other character she introduced. Jenny was my favorite.

One evening, I watched the television news commemorate the anniversary of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four little girls. Staring at me from the screen was a smiling, beautiful spirit with braids and glasses. Her name was Addie Mae Collins. Like a bolt of lightening suddenly illuminating the slumbering