WINNING THE BATTLE WITH THE BOOGIEMAN

Living in the woods as a child taught me about letting go. There wasn’t a lot to do in the country at night. Our nearest neighbor was over a mile away. My sister and visiting friends and I would play a game of “Boogieman” outside to entertain ourselves.

It had to be dark. We’d all gather around a certain spot outside and dare one of us to walk around the darkened house, alone. I must have been young enough, at 10 or 11 years old, because I was terrified. I can remember to this day the physical fear that pulsed through my body while I’d sing out our traditional verse about how the Boogieman “can’t get me tonight.”

I must have been old enough, too, to sense how to hold my own hand, to give my fear over to a stronger presence within, to dare to walk a walk my legs did not want to go. The walk around the blackness was the adventure. The pounding of my heart was the adventure. The coming back to place, the return to smiling faces of my sister and friends on the other side of the blackness, the prize.

When I returned recently to my old house along the Chattahoochee River and saw the distance around it which seemed endless as a child — as an adult, so containable –I marveled at what depth such learning experiences play, what grace they offer.

Friends often ask me now, for one reason or another, “How do you stay so calm?” When economic worries shake my door, when uncertainties seem more uncertain, when I can’t seem to see the plan I set in motion taking shape, I go back to my little childhood game in the woods and sing the Boogieman out of my heart.

I sing instead the woods and the waterfall and the animals I allowed to take the Boogieman’s place. I sing instead the presence within who loves me into behaviors and attitudes I cannot claim myself. I sing until I am no longer alone. Then, the walk in the darkness does not seem so dark.