Sometimes all it takes is a trigger to make your remember, again. I was getting my hair cut and highlighted, and while the color was setting, my friend, the stylist, was proudly showing me photographs of the beautiful fairy house she made with her 10-yr. old “little sister.” I was impressed by the intricate details and the obvious care and love that had gone into its creation, but the images faded into the background as we talked about other things. An hour later I walked out the door and continued on with my day. The little fairy house, already forgotten, lurked somewhere hidden inside my mind.

Sometimes it takes a trigger, and also a release of the old to give way to the forgotten inner. After leaving the salon, I made my way to my tai chi class, where I stayed for the next hour. As I was preparing to leave, I over-heard a woman remark to her companion, “It’s like having reiki.” She’s absolutely right, I stopped in pause.

Or a double dose in my case. You see before I went to the salon, I had my Friday morning yoga class. Both yoga and tai chi work with the energy centers in the body where we hold our “chi,” and allow it to stir back into life where it has become stagnant. We also release stuck energy that’s ready to leave, to allow the true life force energy that resides in all of us to flow as it wants to. In tai chi class, we literally draw into our bodies the energy of Earth and the Universe to rejuvenate our bodies as we shake out the old that we no longer want to carry.

I was exhausted by the time I got home, and I uncharacteristically found my way to the hammock under the oaks and hemlocks and stayed there for so long I could hear the whisper of the arbiter inside me reminding me, “You should be making dinner now.” But, a stronger voice said, “Stay awhile longer. Forget about time as you have grown to follow it.”

So I stayed and took in the contrast of the green canopy of leaves filtering the brilliant illusion of a blue ceiling, allowing myself to just be. I watched and listened to the squirrels in the oak, carrying on their conversations as they clung impossibly to their vertical home. I fell into that hazy sleep of daytime, only to wake and wonder where I had temporarily gone.

The day gave way to evening, and I ventured back into town to get take-out for my family. No one complained that I did not cook. The sky turned from the color of a blue jay’s wing to the color of the crows who had circled the skies like an omen when I had walked the dogs before I ventured to the  hammock.  I grew increasingly tired after dinner, sleep calling louder with each hour that passed until I finally made my way to bed.

I can’t tell you where I traveled while I slept for most of the night, but I can tell you about the scene from which I woke this morning. I am still smiling with the memory of coming home, even though I couldn’t find the tea on the internet after I woke. But that’s really irrelevant.

Home, to my recollection, was mostly the scene of a summer forest. I woke, in the dream, that is, alone and outside. I had been sleeping in some sort of tent and my family was already gone for the day. I rolled my blankets and ventured out into my surroundings, which were lush and green, the color of the oak leaves before they turn in fall. There was some sort of wire enclosure, to keep animals in or out, I was not sure, but I rolled it away none-the-less. I searched the area for signs of life and found myself suddenly in winter, drawn up a hill beside an old mansion. There were neighbors working on their own house. I left them alone and walked through the snow toward a large hedgerow shaped into an archway. It was covered in ice, but there was a narrow opening in the middle, so I squeezed my way through. I was back to summer.

I shed my heavy coat, for there was no longer need of it, and found I was hungry. I ventured inside a hobbit-like house that felt like home, and there inside was a child. A girl who seemed to know me, and I her. She, I discovered, was also hungry. “I think they went to get more food,” she told me, and we saw the remnants of a meal. Animals appeared around our feet. A couple of young cats, and two small white dogs. The blind one lingered around my legs. Daisy appeared, but not my dog companions who are still in physical form.

Soon we discovered the food. It was a full buffet, laid out, partially hidden, in a depression in the kitchen counter. For a moment we indulged our appetites, then began the search for tea. “I think it’s over there, I told the girl.” We culled through drawers filled with tea, but could not find the kind we were looking for. Above the counter were cabinets, and I opened one, only to discover what I had been looking for. My eager hands held the boxes filled with the green of spring. I read the labels, “Fairy Tea,” and felt the inner stirrings of joy. “I used to drink this as a child,” I told her. But, of course, she already knew that.