Dragonflies dance in my studio window.
A small dragonfly just landed on my arm, maybe an inch long with tangerine colored fuzz on its body. The breeze lifts its stick end into the air – the four wings shimmer iridescent in the sun. Its shadow embraces me. It flits off and returns, higher up my bicep. I can see its faceted head flick right and left. Even the wings, unimaginably thin, leave four tan shadows on my skin. Like the dragonfly, I bask in the sun this unseasonably warm November day. We are both absorbing all the light we can.
Now it’s on the back of my hand, a hand that looks like my mother’s, the same knobby knuckles and protruding veins. I can follow the sinuous tubes of my veins as they surface at my wrists and wind across the back of my hands. My mother died two years ago in November. I only have to look at my aging hands to remember her.
Now the dragonfly is over my heart chakra, its six legs, thinner than pencil lines, carefully perched on my t-shirt. Dragonflies are about illusion. In Medicine Cards, Jamie Sams and David Carson write “Dragonfly is the essence of the winds of change, the messages of wisdom and enlightenment, and the communications from the elemental world….It may be time to break down the illusions you have held that restrict your actions or ideas.”
In the fall of my 61st year, it is most definitely time to let go of illusions and restricting beliefs. My mother died of Alzheimers. Her world became progressively more restricted, her once mischievous spirit reduced to a rare twinkle. One illusion I am releasing is the idea that our lives get narrower as we age. I want to become more expansive as I age, more porous at the edge, knowing that my cells mingle with all the cells around me – this turquoise chair, this cotton shirt, this persistent dragonfly.
I want to be present to wisdom and enlightenment, wherever I may find it. This beautiful fuzzy dragonfly landed on me, alighted, and came back six times, staying several minutes each time. I was mesmerized and grateful for this reminder: November is a time of loss – light, leaves, loved ones and illusions, but loss makes room for new ideas and experiences, growth and expansion. I will remember that as the days get darker.
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