The Yellow Way By Kate Everson Smashwords edition Copyright 2012 Kate Everson Thanks for downloading this free ebook. Please encourage your friends to download their own copy at smashwords.com It’s a long way home. That’s all I know for sure. I keep walking and walking. Sometimes I stop and take a break, a rest for my weary soul and soles. The yellow trees cascade over me like a waterfall in this godly place, but I can only feel their embrace. I want to see it to the end. There was no other way home. I had tried various methods, but all fell flat, dead in the water, shot out of the sky. This was the One True Way, the Yellow Way, they called it, those who knew. “Take this,” they said. “This will get you home.” I had swallowed it whole, like Alice taking the magic pill to make her small or tall. I had gulped it down eagerly, too eagerly, as if it were my last chance at survival in this weary world. Indeed it was. Today is my last day on the road. I feel that now. It has been a long journey, but now I am getting closer, so close I know it in my bones. My bones cry out, “Stop! Go back!” But I know it’s a ruse, a clever trick to get me to give up and go home. “But I am going home!” I tell them, “Them,” those ones that give me false leads. For I know there is only one way for me and I am taking it. Now. Finally. My life has been a sham, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I have done it before, many times, lived lives full of emptiness. This time, I am going to make it all worthwhile. This time I am going Home. There will be music and laughter, friendship and cards played on the verandah, small talk and deep, dark secrets with penetrating eyes. But most of all, there will be love. I will know I’m there by the love that I feel, welling up in me. My heart will expand to the point that I feel it might burst, but of course I know it won’t. It was meant for so much more than we realize. “Mommy, come here,” she will call, looking at me with big eyes. I will see her as my daughter, my friend, my youngest child that I have never seen before. She was abandoned at birth, and now, here she is smiling, forgiving… loving. “I am here,” I exclaim, running over to her and picking her up, swinging her high in the air and catching her as the clouds bounce off her shoulders. For we are the wind, she and I, magic in a place that captures sunshine like tennis balls. Pure freedom. “I love you!” I exclaim, but before she can hear it, the wind picks it up and carries it over rooftops and trellises with roses growing on them, and takes the words to every person’s heart. “I love you,” reverberates in the souls of people all over the world in that one split instant when I have come home. When I was born, my mother called me Kathleen. “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen,” she said, and my father hummed the tune. It was an old Irish song, and it fit me to a T. Kathleen it was and Mary my second name for Mary the mother of God. And Ruth my third name for the one who said she would follow anywhere and my god would be her god. Or something like that. I was never much for religion, really. It seemed too trite. Too smug. Too accepting of everything that was taught by men in tall churches. Who could teach me the song of love? A priest? All he knew were empty catechisms that stuck in my throat when I tried to say them. No, I could not follow that Way. I had to find my own. Empty the churches. Lead me into the high places and show me how hard it is if I fall. I want to know death, and Life again. That is why I have to go home. The Light is stronger now. I can feel it on my shoulders. It is warm and comforting. The yellow sun is enfolding me in its embrace. I feel loved. It is all good. “You have to have faced death to truly know life,” they said to me. I woke up and looked at the sky. It was brilliant. I had looked into the dark face of death and did not want to go there. Not now. Not ever. “I want to live!” I cried, opening my arms up to the heavens, the sky, the great blue beyond, to god and goddess, to all that is and ever will be. I closed my eyes and waited. Softly, I heard it coming. A soft, gentle sound like raindrops on the grass. “Rebekah?” it asked. I opened my eyes. A small yellow bird was whirring right in front of me, its wings beating so fast they were a blur. A tiny hummingbird had come to lead me home. I followed eagerly. “Where is life if not within?” its wings seemed to say. I pondered that. We went past a waterfalls and stopped for a drink. As I bent over the rushing water, someone or something pushed me in. I fell, down, down and down into the cool waters over my head. It was good to be there. I felt space all around me. There was no thinking, no time to think, no need. Instead, I felt spaciousness. I opened my eyes and saw light coming from above, an opening in the churning water that led to endless sky. I pushed my way there, desperate for life. Gasping, I reached the top and leapt out of the water like a fish. I reached the shore and flopped on the bank, exhausted, my arms flung out, my legs limp, my head still swimming. I was alive. “I am alive!” I whispered to the small, pink flower at my nose. A frog jumped out of the water and hopped by me, so used to life that it didn’t even consider anything else. Every moment was one of movement, of eagerness, of choosing to be here now. I reached out to it and the frog hopped into my hand. We eyed each other intensely. “What can you tell me of life?” I asked. The frog breathed from its throat carefully. Its eyes checked me out before answering. Did I really want to know? Was I ready? I breathed softly as I held him in my hand. With one movement I could squeeze the life out of him. I opened my hand and he hopped away. What did that tell me? That life was ongoing, never ending. There was no end to life, even in death. Just keep hopping while you can. The old maple tree knows. Every fall his leaves yellow, ready for a quiet time in winter. But he knows that his strength goes on, saved in his roots. Soon to come rushing back with the first warm day in spring. I am alive with new energy now. I know my death in life is only temporary. I will follow the Yellow Way, that teaches me that all things are eternal. I will not fear death. And most importantly, I will not fear life. I will live it to the fullest, as if every day were my last. Just breathe. The End Read more at: Angels and Indians, and The Temple of Light or Light as a Healer.