bright white puffs of smoke

They would puff up in random places—the corner of the kitchen where the window met the ceiling, in front of the door to the hallway, above my bed. Puffs of smoke, clear and white and round. It didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t burning any candles, hadn’t been cooking, hadn’t lit a match. I peeked outside, into the courtyard—no one was there. No gardener having a cigarette or neighbour sitting with incense. I opened to door to the hallway, there was nothing. And yet the puffs of smoke kept coming, pauses in between them where I considered what on earth they could be. There wasn’t an answer that made any sense. So I just decided to be ok with them, the puffs of white smoke appearing from nowhere, inexplicably. They continued on until late in the evening.

the navajo medicine man

Days later, I called a new friend of mine, a Navajo medicine man I’d met in Arizona. He’d walked into the conference room and I’d felt that tug—you know that one, the one that says: ‘Go over there’. But it’s not a surface level tug, not a physical attraction or curiosity. It’s that uplifting pull from within that says ‘There’s something for you here. Something that you’re destined for.’ He was tall, straight-backed, with long black hair like a river. A fierce nose. A strong face. I couldn’t shake it. “I keep getting the sense I’m supposed to go talk to him.” “Go for it,” my friend said. She smiled. I left my chair, walked towards him and said “Hello.” “Hello.” He smiled. “I just felt that I was supposed to come talk to you.” “Thank you. These are my children.” I went back and sat down. That was all. Something was missing. Something left unsaid.

the first blessing

The next day he came back, stood outside the conference room door. On the break I went out to stand beside him, and we looked out over the balcony railing to the dessert below. The air was filled with the heat of the sun and crickets sent out streams of tiny sounds like bells being rung. “You’re the one that I’ve been waiting for,” he said. “The seventh one. My grandmother told me to speak with seven people. She said the seventh one would come when I was distracted, but would know me anyway.” It all sounded like a tale from a children’s book, something from The Chronicles of Narnia. My mind was grasping, trying to make sense of it, trying to make it rational. But all of that thinking and figuring was getting in the way of his speaking, and when he spoke it was like rivers running through the earth. So I decided to suspend logic. I dove into the river. We went and sat cross-legged in a shady corner, creating a circle around us.

“this is for you.”

He showed me a pink stone. “It’s been part of many sacred ceremonies. It sits beside the fire.” It looked like me, like a stone that had encapsulated my soul. “I saw a rainbow the other day, before I flew here,” I told him. “It lifted me up; I’d been crying, having this terrible day, in despair. And when I saw that rainbow I knew that something was coming this weekend, something that would reassure me and remind me.” “When did you see the rainbow?” he asked. “Thursday.” “I saw it, too. The rainbow came to me in a vision while I was sitting in ceremony in the mountains. I knew it was you—the person I would find this weekend.” He placed the stone in my palms, began to raise and lower his hands from the sky to the earth, inviting heaven above to join earth below, speaking sometimes in English and sometimes in Navajo—and I understood what he was saying. He blessed the stone, cupped my fingers around it. I held it to my chest, breathed deep. How did he know I was coming? How did his grandmother know that stone would be the perfect one? I don’t know. It doesn’t make any logical sense. It just is.

the second blessing

The puffs of smoke he sent as a blessing, weeks after I’d returned home. That day I called him and told him about them he asked when I’d seen them. “Tuesday, I think.” “I was doing a ceremonial blessing. During the blessing, you smoke a pipe and for each round you send the smoke up as a blessing for someone. I sent some to you.” Oh. Oh, thank you, I thank you. Dear wonderful wonderous world, I thank you. L more stories from the LibreFree Project: imlindseylewis.com/librefreeproject/