Posted by Barbara in Helpers of the Land, Lemurian Grand Tour, Barbara’s Journey. add a comment , edit post
A Tale of My Meeting with Dame Washalot in the Faraway Tree,
based on Week 10’s travels on the Grand Lemurian Tour.
The scrubbing brush, a coarse bristle hand brush and pale yellow in color, looked to be a fearsome thing. Its bristles were sharp and left red marks upon any skin it scrubbed. And that skin was soon to be mine. Not that I didn’t deserve a good scrubbing. I did. And Dame Washalot claimed she could scrub all those nasty wrinkles right out of my life. And who wants to sport a mass of wrinkles? Certainly not me. Why, those life wrinkles were getting deeper each day. So did I want to choose living with those gully wrinkles or enduring the scrub of a lifetime?
I thought it over a millisecond, turned chicken and scrambled to my feet to climb down the Faraway Tree, but not before Dame Washalot reached for my arm. “You’re not leaving now, are you?” she asked. “We’ve barely begun. Take off that first layer, Dearie. Get rid of those old clothes. They’re full of old memories and nasty ones at that. I mean to scrub you clean of niggling thoughts, all those needless worries that you carry everywhere, those ’should a done’s’ and ‘could a done’s.’ But I can’t scrub off those ancient, creeping memories that surround the air you breathe. I can burn them away if you wish, but you must first let them go. They’ve taught you nothing useful, nor will they ever.” I squirmed under her gaze as I fiddled with my buttons. She gave me a more determined look and stamped her foot. The tree leaves surrounding us quivered and a few dropped through the thick branches. “No more fussing, Dearie. Hand me your clothes. Why, they’re tattered with memories. Into the fire, they’ll soon go. You go ahead and jump into my tub; relax in that warm, comforting water. Think pleasant thoughts and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
I hesitated, her words whirling in my mind. “Pleasant thoughts? I haven’t any pleasant thoughts to think, have I? I haven’t had much practice…” Yet I leaned my head against the bath pillow, perfectly anchored on the edge of the tub. I was working hard to fill my mind with pleasantries, when the Faraway Tree was jarred by a whoosh near the blazing fire. Looking over, I was surprised to see Dame Washalot dancing by a tiny, enclosed hearth with a roaring fire and smashing little darts of flames which were escaping the blaze. “Whoosh! Whoosh!” She snapped at the flying embers with her wash rag, snapping them into oblivion. Then suddenly I no longer saw the raging fire. I only saw the Dame standing over me with her yellow scrub brush.
“There, there now, Dearie. All gone, that terrible pain you’ve carried. All gone. But you must help me with the next ones. Think about those thoughts that come visiting too often on long afternoons or dark nights. Those thoughts that force feed you guilt and sadness. Quick, now. Give me a thought. Just throw me the first one that comes to mind.”
Suddenly, there were jagged thoughts stabbing my consciousness and I couldn’t wait to pull out the sharpness. “My mother. My sister. I worry about them all the time. I know I should be taking care of them, keeping them safe and comfortable. I could make enough space, let them live with me.” Tears began to sting my eyes.
“Ah, yes. That’s a big thought you slung off, first. A mighty big thought.” Dame Washalot scrubbed and scrubbed, bubbles gurgled and surfaced and floated through the leaves and out of sight. As she scrubbed, she whispered a few words in my wet ear. “Your mum and sister, they’re happy for now. They like being on their own, and they’re okay. So let them be happy and independent as long as they can be.” She patted my arm and went on. “When it’s time, there’ll be decisions to make, but never ones you’ll need to make alone.”
“But those decisions!” I wailed, nearly sliding underneath the tumbling water. “I’m so afraid of those decisions. I’ll need to take care of them or put them away. It’s my responsibility.” I sniffled as the tears tumbled down my cheeks.
Dame pulled me half out of the water and shook me a bit. “Your responsibility? Seems I remember you’ve been told to take care of yourself. That’s your responsibility and it’s plenty enough for you to handle. Let your mother and sister do for now.” Dame wiped the tears from my face, and gave my streaked cheeks a scrub or two.
“But I’m the only living relative they have…”
“You want them to continue having a living relative, don’t you? Then don’t use the bit of strength you can muster trying to care for yourself and them, too. Listen to your doctors, your husband. The answer’s been staring you in the face, but you’re too busy looking over your shoulder for the shadows. Let me know when you figure out what to do.”
In a show of uncertainty, I shook my head. But I really did know the answer and Dame Washalot knew I knew. She nodded at me and then towards the gauzy sky. “Oh, all right. I’ll give you a hint. Let those worries fly away. Only you can let them go.” She scrubbed and scrubbed down to my very bones. And soon I watched large bubbles float above the forest breezes and pop on the very tops of the pointed evergreen trees.
By now, I’d had some thinking time, and everyone’s advice was beginning to make some sense. So I gave it a try, speaking my own mind. “Maybe I do understand. I know the course I should follow. I need to use what strength I have, prudently and wisely. Am I right?”
“Yes, quite right. Listen to your advisers’ opinions, think on it carefully, then the final choice is yours to make.” I then noticed she was watching me closely, but I couldn’t read the look in her eyes. She eyed me from the tip of my soaking wet head to the tips of my pruney toes.
Puzzled, I felt dizzy and was thrown quite off my feet. The tree branches jigged underneath me and shook me hard. I felt different, somehow. Maybe a little better than before. Finally, my neurons connected. “Dame Washalot! The weight on my shoulders is lessening!”
“Indeed it is. Let me scrub awhile over there, Dearie, while you tell me a bit more. Out comes your next thought…”
So I fretted and stammered once more. The Dame was right. I did have another big worry, but I didn’t know what she could do about it. After all these going ons, I was still a Doubting Thomas. What could she do about the persistent nagging deep in my heart, the one I’d never shared with anyone. After all, I thought, she was only a wash woman.
The Dame spoke sharply to me for the first time. “Careful now, Dearie. I can read those thoughts of yours.” In a brief fit of pique, she banged her scrub brush on a thick branch, and bruised its bark. Realizing what she’d done, she immediately turned repentant, scrubbed the bark gently, and gave it a light kiss. Finally she turned her attention back to me. “Sorry about that bit of temper. Dames aren’t 100% perfect, though we like to think we are. Now about the rest of those worries. I can’t scrub them away quite yet. You must tell me about them, acknowledge that they’re unwanted lurkers, and swear you’ll tolerate their presence no longer.”
“But, Dame Washalot, I’m not sure I can.”
“No, buts. I will not listen to anymore ‘buts’ from you. Those trapped ideas feed your guilt with extra fodder. And why? What are they nagging you about?”
I knew the ideas of which she spoke. I heard them constantly berating me, and I did wish for them to disappear. Still, it was hard to deal with more guilt, even though I felt like exploding. “Because. Because. It’s because I’ve been such a terrible mother. When my children were young and in need of a mother’s touch and love, I wasn’t there for them. I am a selfish and self-centered woman. I don’t deserve to be a mother.”
“You surely have a really bad case of guilt; I’ll need to scrub you even harder. By the way, you don’t listen to your guides, do you? Once again, let me tell you. You weren’t acting selfish or self-centered. You were doing the right thing. Before you learned to take care of your babies, you needed to learn how to love yourself. And you fought for both your health and your life. You fought that battle, not only for yourself, but also for your family. And you threw out your demons using a large serving of Mother’s Love, the strongest kind of love there is. Can’t you see? You won!”
“Then why do I feel I’ve disappointed them.”
“Dearie, maybe I need to scrub inside your ears. Listen up! Are your children happy? Fulfilled? Independent? And do they show you their love?”
“Hey, you’re scrubbing too hard.” I was skilled at procrastinating when I didn’t want to play her game.
Dame Washalot, however, wouldn’t let me skulk away. She was on a mission. “I’m scrubbing as hard as you need, and as hard as I can. Now answer me!”
“Okay! Okay! They’re happy and fulfilled and independent. And I guess they love me.”
“So let your guilt fall away. Freedom from guilt, that’s what you need most of all.” She swiped her hand through the tub water and churned her fist in the dirty, scrubbing muck.
Hundreds of bubbles broke away from the suds. They floated towards the heavens and I heard tiny explosions as the bubbles popped. When I finally looked into the water, the surface was clear. And it was hard for me to trust what my eyes were seeing. I saw my loved ones’ smiling faces. All my family who I felt so guilty and worried about. They were smiling and waving, and I heard them say over and over, “We love you. We love you. And we know that you’ve always loved us and cared!”
That last bit they said? The caring bit? That finally did it. The guilt that was still trapped in my heart floated away through a tiny hole. And then that hole stitched itself closed so well, it didn’t even leave a scar. I hollered then, smack dab into Dame Washalot’s right ear. “My family loves me! They’re telling me so.” I hollered those words over and over, as I stared at the faces in the water.
“Hmmmph.” She finally looked over at my rejoicing family and snorted. “Well, my job’s finally done. Looks like you’re all spruced up now, pure as a newborn, but I’ll give you one of my spare brushes just in case. You start carrying that nasty stuff on those shoulders of yours, I want you to scrub it away. Hear me?”
“Yes. Yes, I hear you. And I want to thank you so much.” I nearly curtsied, but held myself in check, and simply pumped her hand up and down.
“Well, Dearie, you can thank yourself. You did all the work. You knew the answers well enough.”
A fantastic thought came to my mind. “I’m just like Dorothy in Oz,” I said, a bright smile on my face. “And you’re my Glenda.”
Dame Washalot gave me a strange look. “Dorothy in Oz? Glenda?” She snickered into her fist before she gathered enough presence to speak without spurting out her words. “Why, Dearie, don’t you think you’re getting your children’s literature quite mixed-up?”
Then the good Dame and I laughed together ’til we nearly choked and we rolled about until we slipped through the leaves and landed on the forest’s cushioned earth. Oh, it felt so good to laugh hard like that. I tumbled about with joy and abandon. And when I stood up, I stood straight and proud. That is, until Dame Washalot gave out another loud “Hmmmph.”
“I would suggest,” she said, all prim and proper, “if you plan on prancing through this part of my forest, you might put these new clothes on. You’re carrying about bum naked.” She pointed her finger at me and I blushed everywhere I could possibly blush. Then I snatched up those clothes and nearly jumped into them. As I hit the ground running on the familiar path toward the Manor’s back door, my face was bursting with the biggest smile, ever.
And do you want me to tell you just one more thing? I haven’t stopped smiling yet.
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