Dancing Shadows

February 25, 2020

Waiting somewhere in the idling truck, a parking lot, just sitting, not doing anything at all, not looking at my phone or filing my nails, or listening to the radio, just sitting, waiting. I notice on the wall of the building, a nondescript blank beige stucco wall, shadows moving. It is cold and windy, the American flag above the building billows at full length, straight out, showing the full force of high-knot winds. Against the building the shadows dance. They are the shadows of trees except that in February the branches are bare and have their own peculiar shadows, traces and lines, intricate patterns. These lively shadows on the wall are not bare branches and I turn to find their source, but all I see are tall leafless cottonwoods, still as night. Yet there they are, the puppet-like shadows, of what I’m not sure but they draw me in, as though into another reality and “I” disappear. For only a few moments. I enter into the dance of the shadows, leave the truck, the parking lot, my husband, my world, behind. Empty. Part of a whole I don’t understand. An extraordinary moment in an otherwise unextraordinary day. My husband leaves the paint store and rejoins me waiting in the truck, sets his paint on the back seat, and we go on with the mundane tasks of shopping and eating and talking that make up the little moments of our lives, leaving the shadows behind to continue dancing whether I see them or see only the memory of them. Later in the day, I will recall the shadows, and reenter that state of emptiness, that otherworldly dance. It is a peaceful place to be.