Source Material

There is a wonderful park - and my family always lived near it until my Mother's passing.

Woodward Park is a giant parcel of land on the edge of the "Old Oil Money" section of Tulsa and I would retreat there from my youngest wandering days.

Part of it is carefully cultivated woods, laced with fountains and streams all cleverly giving a natural feel, all flowing into large ponds that ring the western end.

Anther part is a strange, ethereal Rose Garden, long lines of warm sandstone beds filled with a riot of blooms.  Beyond that is an arboretum composed of trees chosen from a range that runs all the way to the Mississippi.

In between is the Garden Club, a Tulsa institution, a large, faux-Italianate mansion where flowered society ladies would meet back in the day to plan the layout of gardens in all of Tulsa's parks. Now they are the wives of local entrepreneurs, dashing to do good works between Pilates classes and non-profit board meetings.

And right beside them is the Sunken Garden.

It was my secret place from the Fourth Grade on, filled with strange light, even in the middle of the day, its fountain softly splashing; minnows, tadpoles in the water.

I would escape there when the burden of being different became too great, when I needed to feel magic around me. I would escape there in the middle of the night when the traffic sounds were hushed and stars burned through the haze of a million street lights.

Everything I know about magic in the world started with what I learned there. The magic of joy, self expression, singing tuneless songs to yourself, dancing shuffle-thump across the stone parquet - of the magic of affirming yourself, engraving your soul on your heart, so secret and so close that not even you were aware of it until decades later.

So that no one could ever lie to me about myself, make me believe I am something I am not.

Only I could do that to myself. And those days are ending.

This is the safe place I came to at sunset tonight, straight from the hospital.

My father looked so old, so different and frail.

I'd seen him pulling a 60 pound bow, tracking deer (badly), playing industrial league softball (and I was an umpire, age 9), coaching my baseball team - the Lee Beatles (don't ask) .... all the ways I remembered him, all those men blending at one moment, in the strange Cherokee way of sensing all times in one moment, past, present, future.

And I saw him dead, as he must, sooner rather than later.

And I saw him beyond that, living and acting in my life, the very same way my mother does now.

It was a dizzying moment but felt very natural and sweet.  I felt the pain of loss, the joy of memory, the certainty of grace and presence in time to come, all the ways my own life is entwined with his.

Because of him - I am.

I was given tools and source material to make of what I could.

And I came to my garden to be sad, to be amazed, to have sorrow and joy.

And the reconciliation of all those possibilities, certainties, thoughts and feelings is true magic. Something is made of all these feelings and I will bring that back to my father when I see him again in the morning.

My job is to just be there, to be me and the rest will happen.
 
True magic.

Tulsa, Oklahoma