Man, this is, like, the week of intense mother-daughter convos, I guess. We did the smudging ritual thing today—Mom even convinced Logan to join us, briefly. And I don’t know . . . it was nice. Like, bonding. Mom got some sage from a shop downtown, and we went around from room to room, and she said one of her little incantations, and it smelled so good . . . I really felt lighter after we did it, and the whole house seemed a bit brighter.
Then Mom and I were sitting together out on the porch. Can you believe it? The weather is starting to get not terrible! Haha that probably helped my mood too. It’s funny, it was like 50 degrees today with a bit of sun peeking through the clouds, and no wind, and that was enough for us all to feel like we needed to be outside, relishing the good weather. In California we would have bundled up in sweaters and huddled around the fireplace on a day like today.
But it was okay. You could hear birds chattering away at one another, and we talked aimlessly about the house and the town, and then we were quiet for a little while, until Mom made a comment about me maybe being ready to accept magic as a positive force in my life.
It’s funny, because I think this conversation was part of why I avoided talking to her about the house. I’m just so used to resisting all her crap about magic and mysticism—it’s always made me so uncomfortable. Especially the idea that she might be right, that there might be something to all that stuff. But this time I didn’t resist it. It felt like a comfort, in a weird way—like maybe I didn’t have to let the universe have its way with me all the time. Like it could be a conversation.
So for the first time in my life, I just let her talk, and I even asked her a few questions. She told me a story I remember hearing a bit of a long time ago, when I was a little girl . . . about some ancestor of ours back in Ireland who was burned to death for practicing black magic. The people in the town were convinced she was a witch, putting curses on people and conjuring spirits and stuff. But Mom told me about how the townspeople were just confused. It’s easy for people to get confused about these things, I guess. Mom said that she used to be afraid of these powers herself, but she understands now that this woman was probably just trying to help people. She was probably using her knowledge of nature and herbs to help someone cleanse a dwelling or something, like we just did. But then something bad happened, either because the force was stronger than she could handle, or maybe just coincidence, and out of fear and prejudice, everyone blamed her.
It’s a sad story, but I think I learned something from it. Maybe Mom has been right all along: If we can just approach the world with joy and hope, we’ll get that kind of good energy back. It’s fear and suspicion that is the root of all the dark, shadowy things. I get that now.