Broken Halleluiah:
An Earth Mother's Song
by Patricia Harman
Chapter 1
Water Dream
I am standing in a shower, a small tin stall with stained walls that I don't want to touch and a torn gray plastic curtain. In the dream, as the water beats down on my shoulders, I hold back my sobs with the back of my hand. I am thinking of leaving Stacy, my companion of seven years, the father of Mica, my two year old son, the baby we'd made out of love for each other. The water smells faintly of iron.
I wake with a start. The mostly full moon shines down on my face and the man lying next to me isn't Stacy. This is Tom, my husband of thirty-two years, a person whose body is as familiar to me now as my own, his broad shoulders, smooth face, straight nose and full lips, his short silver hair in the silver moonlight. One hairy legs sticks out of the covers. One arm, with the wide hand and sensitive surgeon's fingers, circles his pillow.
The moonlight shines in through a small window at the peak of the white cathedral ceiling of our home on Hope Lake. Sometimes I can't believe that I live here, so far from where I ever thought I would live... so far from where I ever wanted to live.
I hear again the rattle of water on the tin shower walls and music, a Cat Steven's tune. I recognize that song. It's Peace Train. "Ride on the Train. Peace Train."
Mica's clear little voice stands out over the music. He's telling Jody, my friend and the owner of this seedy apartment, a story about a red fox we saw out at the Homestead. I can picture his expressive round blue eyes, his white hair like dandelion fluff, so like the Little Prince in the story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I don't deserve that little blond boy.
Gathering my waist length brown hair I work-up some suds with the Bonners Peppermint Soap and breathe deep of the fresh calming scent. I've never felt this near to a break-down and I thought I'd been close before.
If I leave Duluth and our beautiful wilderness farm, Mica will grow up in a broken-home like I did. If I hit the road, one of us, Stacy or I, will lose his child. But I can't stay. I can't stay any longer. Something is splitting open inside me.
A man knocks hard on the bathroom door rattling the handle. "Come on!" he growls. "The rest of us want showers too. You're using up all the hot water!" He's right, I'm being selfish. But what's new about that? I push my fore-head against the slimy tin wall.
It is over. After seven years of living with Stacy at Tolstoy Farm in Washington State, the Committee for Non-Violent Action in Connecticut, Freefolk in western Minnesota, Chester Creek House in Duluth and our beloved Homestead in Lakewood Township, it is over.
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