Read Online Song of the Shaman by Annette Vendryes Leach - Free Book Online
Authors: Annette Vendryes Leach
Tags: Historical Romance, Personal Transformation, Reincarnation Past Lives, ADHD Parenting, Childhood Asthma, Mother and Son Relationship, Genealogy Mystery
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pictured Zig swirling in the tub; when he spoke his eyes were clear, steady. There was no hesitation in his voice. What if it were true? What if he’d had a choice? Maybe he was fated to be her son. But why her? She had little to offer him by way of spiritual means. Unexplained mysteries brought her back to ninth grade. Sitting in algebra class, Sheri would watch Mr. Greenstein’s bearded mouth flap up and down, her stomach in knots, his equations like endless gibberish. Her parents were atheists who raised her without any awareness of God. They taught her to value what was logical, what made sense (death and taxes). Even so, there was always a deep longing within her; she was sure there had to be more.
One Sunday, when she was sixteen, she had waited in front of the sprawling St. John the Divine cathedral to see the parishioners pour out the Gothic doors. She combed their faces for some expression of divine wonder and inspiration, not sure what she was looking for, and found only crabby children, chatty mothers, and bored fathers. College twisted her into a skeptic. She came to view life as if it were a marketing plan—a quagmire of personal objectives, strategies, and goals. But the longing did not let her go. Building a successful career, acquiring all the right things, even motherhood could not satiate her hunger. With the volume set on high in her head, she drowned out the persistent ache she could not name, like her true identity.
On the living room walls her Keith Haring prints hung like hip, sarcastic friends, their hard-edged black lines and saturated colors exaggerated by the ghostly light from the street. Across the room were her Basquiat and Max Ernst birds and her coveted Frida Kahlo portrait, art she bought with the money she made from the sale of her parents’ co-op almost twenty years ago. Friends thought she was crazy, but Sheri had to have them. She felt something transcendent when she looked at these abstract pieces. She was drawn to their primitive nature; their almost childlike compositions were like live wire, bursting with an underlying current of meaning and complexity. The Haring and Basquiat reminded her of the drawings she used to make as a little girl, figures that still showed up now and then as mindless doodles on scraps of paper. In the Kahlo portrait she saw a raw image of herself. Not only did Sheri resemble her physically, but also she identified with the brutal honesty, the endurance of life’s cruelties that lay bare in the artist’s expression. Living with her collection was the closest thing she got to a religious experience. If God existed, perhaps He was hiding there between the brushstrokes, behind the electric inks that stirred her emotions, in the feeling she used to get when she poured her heart onto a blank page.
Predictability and order were also important. Knowing Duane Reade would always stock Zig’s asthma medication and his favorite tear-free shampoo. A pack of Chips Ahoy had twenty cookies that tasted the same as the first. She could count on her babysitter, her doorman, her routine with Zig, her reputation in the business. These things gave a sense of security, of belonging.
Then came 9/11.
It had been five months since the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and life as she knew it. The somber march across the Brooklyn Bridge, the powdery fall-out dusting the faces of stunned pedestrians, the brilliant sunshine on the darkest of days was ever vivid. When she finally got to Excelsior Prep to pick up Zig, she was one of the hordes of desperate parents trying to control their anxiety, trying not to bolt down the hallways. She found him sitting on the floor in his classroom playing with a friend, his backpack like a parachute on his back. He seemed oblivious to all the commotion, even though he knew what had happened. Zig saw the first plane crash from the rooftop playground, before the teachers knew, before they rushed the children back down to their
One Sunday, when she was sixteen, she had waited in front of the sprawling St. John the Divine cathedral to see the parishioners pour out the Gothic doors. She combed their faces for some expression of divine wonder and inspiration, not sure what she was looking for, and found only crabby children, chatty mothers, and bored fathers. College twisted her into a skeptic. She came to view life as if it were a marketing plan—a quagmire of personal objectives, strategies, and goals. But the longing did not let her go. Building a successful career, acquiring all the right things, even motherhood could not satiate her hunger. With the volume set on high in her head, she drowned out the persistent ache she could not name, like her true identity.
On the living room walls her Keith Haring prints hung like hip, sarcastic friends, their hard-edged black lines and saturated colors exaggerated by the ghostly light from the street. Across the room were her Basquiat and Max Ernst birds and her coveted Frida Kahlo portrait, art she bought with the money she made from the sale of her parents’ co-op almost twenty years ago. Friends thought she was crazy, but Sheri had to have them. She felt something transcendent when she looked at these abstract pieces. She was drawn to their primitive nature; their almost childlike compositions were like live wire, bursting with an underlying current of meaning and complexity. The Haring and Basquiat reminded her of the drawings she used to make as a little girl, figures that still showed up now and then as mindless doodles on scraps of paper. In the Kahlo portrait she saw a raw image of herself. Not only did Sheri resemble her physically, but also she identified with the brutal honesty, the endurance of life’s cruelties that lay bare in the artist’s expression. Living with her collection was the closest thing she got to a religious experience. If God existed, perhaps He was hiding there between the brushstrokes, behind the electric inks that stirred her emotions, in the feeling she used to get when she poured her heart onto a blank page.
Predictability and order were also important. Knowing Duane Reade would always stock Zig’s asthma medication and his favorite tear-free shampoo. A pack of Chips Ahoy had twenty cookies that tasted the same as the first. She could count on her babysitter, her doorman, her routine with Zig, her reputation in the business. These things gave a sense of security, of belonging.
Then came 9/11.
It had been five months since the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and life as she knew it. The somber march across the Brooklyn Bridge, the powdery fall-out dusting the faces of stunned pedestrians, the brilliant sunshine on the darkest of days was ever vivid. When she finally got to Excelsior Prep to pick up Zig, she was one of the hordes of desperate parents trying to control their anxiety, trying not to bolt down the hallways. She found him sitting on the floor in his classroom playing with a friend, his backpack like a parachute on his back. He seemed oblivious to all the commotion, even though he knew what had happened. Zig saw the first plane crash from the rooftop playground, before the teachers knew, before they rushed the children back down to their
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