A Woman's Hand

I didn't ask the question, but what was said struck me. Teacher. Coach. Counselor. Maybe even Kolee-dok-Zumil (for those who get the reference...I think it is a particularly apt description for this name in general). I added the last two myself, but the core of the thought is the same.


I was born on a clap of thunder. I was an outsider, always. Chaos is my natural element--it inundates my personal and professional life. But these things...


Do they make me his or are they the reason he walks with me?Nature or Nurture? The argument proves older than modern psychology.


 My family is mostly atheist. If you ask any of them, DNA is the force which makes the bones of who we are and anything gained beyond that is skin deep. Decorative and ultimately malleable. But in my heart I think on it and wonder...


I resemble my mother. It is a fact made clear to me by my father's frequent confusing of our voices over the phone and the comments of strangers. My mother is proud of it. "We're so alike," she tells others "we even finish each other's sentences."


That is true, to a point. But when I step back and look...when I am honest with myself...we are not the same. There are things from her that are in me, but a life lived differently makes a different woman in me. Teachers changed me. Friends changed me. Faith changed me. Books changed me. I changed me.


So what if He isn't my DNA?


What if he is Kolee-dok-Zumil? Does that matter? Does it change me or merely the way I see myself? Even if he is teacher, friend, faith, and knowledge. Even if he governs my life...does that mean he was the one?


There was a moment in my hour of deepest darkness--years ago-- that I looked up and cried out that the pain was too much. That there was no reason for me to exist. I was sure of it. I was sure that even if I asked for a sign of a higher power, there would be no voice to respond. But I asked, and I was answered. And for a long time I have thought...or told myself... that it was His voice. But is that true or was I misled because His name was the first name to speak to me personally in the days that followed? I think back on the moment now and I remember that it was not the voice alone which so impressed me as to convince me to give existence another chance. It was also the touch. The feeling which frightened me and comforted me all at once. The briefest sensation that couldn't possibly be real and yet, was. The phantom hand on my shoulder.


A woman's hand.


I remember that clearly, but only now do I realize the significance. There was someone else there in that moment. Even if he was the one that came for me... he was not alone. I realize that though I asked the question at the time, I never got an answer:


Who was she?


And now I ask and again, and I ask also: Is this the way for me to find out?


I don't know yet.


But this is a mark in their favor. I am on my way to being convinced.