April 9, 2018: Two of Wands by Mary Allen
The two of wands
is my current card of the month. It has been for a few months now because for
various reasons Tania and I haven’t been able to write about our cards and pick
new ones. Tania’s mother died at the beginning of January. I fell and broke my shoulder on February 17 and
I’ve been dealing with that ever since; I had shoulder replacement surgery on
March 14. I have to wear a brace until the end of April so I still can’t type
with two hands and right now I’m using the voice recognition on my computer to
write this. During all that time I’ve had the two of wands sitting on my
mantelpiece and I’ve been wondering what it could be saying to me. I’ve also
thrown the cards a couple of times and gotten the two of wands in those readings.
My first thought about the two of wands is
that in the Thoth deck it looks like bones—two bones crossing—even a tiny bit
like the shadowy broken bones in the x-rays of my shoulder. (Ha ha: Here’s what the computer voice recognition
did with “Thoth deck” and what I said after it:
The fuck deck fuck the heck ha ha
Tania said pickles the fuck Dexter fuck Dick.)
In the Rider
Waite deck the two of wands shows a man in a red cape and astrakhan hat standing
between two wands anchored in the ground on either side of him; he’s holding
the world and gazing off into a distant vista of water and mountains and trees.
At one point, when I was sitting in my recliner, idly staring at this version
of the two of wands (I have lots of time to idly stare around the room these
days), it came to me that it might be saying something about carrying the world
on your shoulders and being forced to put it down. Angeles Arrien says the two
of wands is about balancing inner and outer power. This time is teaching me many things about
personal power, where it begins and where it ends. Mostly I’ve learned we have a lot less of it
than we imagine we do. And there’s
another kind of power that comes in accepting that.
I read online this
morning that the two of wands is the card for partnerships, two people working
together successfully, and that makes sense to me in terms of what’s been going
on since I’ve had this broken, trying-to-heal shoulder. In October my old
friend John came from Washington, DC, with the idea of trying out Iowa City to
see if he wanted to move here. He was going to find a place to live but in the
end he just ended up staying with me, and when I broke my shoulder it seemed
like a miracle to have him here in my house. He’s had to help me in all kinds
of ways and he’s done it graciously and generously and without complaining. In the beginning I couldn’t get into or out of
bed by myself—it turns out it takes two shoulders to get in and out of a bed,
although I can do it now and I still have only one working shoulder.
But in the beginning I had to call his name
at four o’clock in the morning and he would be in my doorway instantly, come
around my side of the bed, take my hand and help me get up so I could go to the
bathroom and take another Percocet. One night when the pain was especially bad
he sat on the edge of my bed and read me an essay by Emmett Fox. He read another one to me the first night I
had to sleep in the recliner after surgery—we stayed up till one in the morning
in my living room, him lying on the couch across from me, reading aloud in the
lamplight. (I slept in the recliner for
eight days, then moved to my bed, where I recline every night on a huge nest of
pillows. John says I’m like the princess
in the Princess and the Pea.) He’s
cooked for me and done the dishes and brought my laundry down to the
basement. For the first two weeks after
the surgery I had to stand there in the kitchen while he taped Press and Stick
Glad Wrap over my shoulder and upper arm so I could very carefully get into the
bathtub and wash my hair without getting my bandage wet.
Everything has felt
shaky and tentative ever sense I slipped on the ice without warning, crashed to
the sidewalk, and found myself in this incredibly vulnerable, trapped, and
painful place. I could never be doing it without John here. Now he mainly has
to take my brace off so I can go in the bathroom and carefully change my shirt—I
wear tops my friend Anne made for me, with snaps on the left shoulder for easy
removal and replacement. When I’m
finished changing I stand in the middle of the kitchen floor and John helps me
back into the brace. He adjusts the
straps, pats me on the back, and says, “Now you’re ready to go out into the
world and do stuff.”
It’s a joke, of course. I can’t go out into the
world right now. All I can do is sit and hold the world in my hand, stare out
my window at the house across the street and the gray sky and the bare tree
branches, and wait for spring to come.
April 9, 2018: Ten of Swords, Four of
Disks by Tania Pryputniewicz
When Mary and I
pulled cards in January just two weeks after my mother died, I pulled the Ten
of Swords, “Ruin” with its image of ten sword handles ringing the periphery,
points poised to pierce a central heart, the main and thickest sword breaking
apart. I didn’t want that card for the month and tried a Mary tactic: I chose a
second card. I’m grateful Mary has taught me it’s ok to do so. You could
interpret the action conversationally a number of ways, as if saying to the
Tarot deck, “I don’t want this card,” or, “Show me another version of the same
message,” or “Can you give me a different lesson right now?”
So I pulled the
Four of Disks—a relief! But since I couldn’t entirely let go of the memory of
having pulled the Ten of Swords, I kept both cards out all month. And both
spoke to me as is often the case. I love Angeles Arrien’s phrase for the Ten of
Swords, “Fear of ruin,” specifically love (the heart image) and finances (the
scales at the top).
In the evaporative
state following my mother’s passing, I lost confidence, certainly retreating
from the world with a bruised heart, more prone to succumbing to fears in a Ten
of Swords way, passing through the initiation of a myriad “firsts” as a motherless
daughter—everything, from sleeping to cooking—no task too tiny to haul up the
free-floating anxiety: Here I go into another part of my life without my
mother. The hospice nurse forewarned us that it is natural to take for granted
the loving net of mother presence. And
then all of a sudden, she said, When
you lose her, you wonder, “Can I do this without her?”
In counter to
that worry, the Four of Disks in the Thoth Deck (aptly named “Power”) never
fails to give me a feeling of serenity. We see a structure made up of four linked
towers ringed by a moat. There’s a wide sunlit path leading to a shining golden
inner courtyard. I experience that sunny safe feeling here in our Southern
California home which is situated on the bend of the street, backyard sanctuary
where I write ringed by tall fence boards. In the front yard, we enjoy perpetual
summer: the yellow rosebush blooming and a blueberry bush offering up its
blueberries all year long.
The smallest
actions are the ones that heal the heart gradually, nothing fancy. Like walking
in the late afternoon sun in the San Diego desert, stepping around boulders,
lizards fleeing, turkey vultures wheeling overhead as my youngest scampers up and over the boulders. My middle son uses a rock to chalk a giant treble clef, claiming
his love of music. My husband hikes ahead and uses his phone to look up the names
of the peaks surrounding us.
I don’t mind
hiking nameless hills as long as I’m with my family. I can handle this level of
visibility in my role as a mother. It’s easier than the daughter-self haunting
me at night, the way the dreamtime I used to love is just another time during
which unwelcome and unanticipated questions rise: You
lost your mother…where is she now? And I wake crying from Ten of Swords dreams
replaying it all back to me, still burning off the scenes of my mother
suffering as we cared for her the best we could.
Better the
waking world of agency, gradually overlaid with present activity, where I sand
down our rusting mailbox, primer it, and fend off my husband’s suggestions for
how to do the job. I kindly remind him I’m the daughter of a piano tuner/wood-worker,
and carry on, tape off the bronze medallion where the letters spell, “MAIL”,
then primer it rust brown, and best of all, put on a top coat, a rich and glossy
forest green.
It is a tiny
symbol of my willingness to engage again, spiffing up a box that holds words,
mine going out and letters from editors coming back in the slow old-fashioned
way. Soon I’ll feel up to stepping out past the perimeter of our gate and back
into the world, but for now, it is a beginning: Stamps ferry my words to and
from my green mailbox while I stay behind my own front door.
