Who Dad?!

She Whispers

Each time I opened my eyes, I expected to be home in bed, waking up from yet another strange dream, but there was beautiful Ivy sitting next to me, watching me intently. It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking to me.

"He never abandoned you. He had always been watching, even inspiring you. Your love of writing not only came from him, but some of him was being revealed to you as you wrote."

I thought about my recent experiences with odd and spontaneous writing and realized that if what she was saying were true, my father (how strange to even say that) had been writing through me! Again, I noticed she was speaking and I wasn't hearing.

" . . . and in Inuit, the words meaning to make poetry and to breathe derive from the same word, anerca, meaning the soul . . . . A poem then is infused with breath . . . outpourings of the moment . . . basic to life and sanity . . . "

I interrupted her. "How was any of this possible?"

"Poetry?" She was looking at me again as if I were something odd.

"No, remember me? I understand poetry. What I don't understand is an invisible, alien father somehow influencing me and my life."

"He had access to technology you would not comprehend and is best for you not to know."

"But why?!

"He was attempting to use his children to influence the direction your species was taking and to counter a powerful destructive outside force."

"Wait! How much of my life has been my own?! Have all my intuitions come from him? What choices were mine?" I was feeling as if my magic carpet had been pulled out from under me and I was free-falling.

"His first intervention was to save your life. Angry at him and his disappearance, your birth mother was going to drown you. He nudged her aunt to intervene just in time. There have only been a few such moments, mainly to preserve your life."

Feelings and questions were swirling inside me. The one that surfaced though was "What about my actual path in life? Have I been following his way to what he wanted me to be?"

For the first time, Ivy was quiet, as if she were considering how to respond. Instead, she tapped me on the head again and I was back at Pima Community College and about to give a career defining presentation to an august audience of campus bigwigs. I had spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in front of audiences before and had always thrived on the exchange of energy, but not then. My mind was blank. I could not move, nor speak. I just stood there dumb with the realization that whatever I thought I was going to do was now completely lost to me. It was devastating. I felt betrayed by myself, mystified even by the existence of such a kill switch. When and where might it happen again? And, who or what did the switching? If some inner guidance wanted to initiate a course correction, wasn't there a less humiliating way to do so?

"That was him?! That was one of the worst moments of my life! Why?! I've never been able to make peace with that experience. It has kept me from doing so many things since!" I was furious. I vividly remembered the awareness then that I was not in charge, especially not of my own mind. I became a less confident, more fearful person as a result.

"Do you regret how your life has unfolded since?"

Something about her voice, more than the question, and I realized I've always wondered if I would have the life I love today if I had gotten my way that day. I was too angry for acknowledging that possibility. Instead, with my head spinning, I groaned, "Why are you telling me anything?"

"It is my attempt to facilitate the merging of your consciousness with my Captain's. The galaxy is at a critical juncture and I must determine the most appropriate action. There is somewhere I must go now and it will be better if you do not remember any of this until I return" she said as she reached out to tap my head again.