What Did She Hear 6, cont'd.

(We left our story at: “In later years, whenever Ramey thought of Thane, she always pictured him in white slacks and one of his peacock-colored Hawaiian shirts that, to her, had a very Great Gatsby feel to it, a sort of flamboyant freedom. She thought he loved disrupting solemnity.”)

Ramey was delighted with the new attitude of the employees and all the free coffee she could drink. She wondered if the mafia had also renovated the hallway. The wallpaper, although not new-looking, was certainly brighter than before. She wondered which hallways had been dilapidated. Where was the torn wallpaper? But she didn’t get to muse about it very long as people were running past her with very serious looks on their faces. Swept up, Ramey began to run with them, up stairs, up more stairs, up, up all the way to the roof.

 There perched on the edge of the roof was one of the students. People were all shouting instructions to her in an attempt to talk her down off the roof parapet. A large blond woman, as stunning in her way as Norma Keller was in hers, stepped out from the crowd and began to out shout all of them. She was a steel magnolia of the most charming kind. She demanded everyone return to the hallway. She then turned and said, “Mary, if you jump, that’s your decision. You don’t need anyone’s input but your own. Don’t listen to anyone else. No one here will feel guilty if you jump but we will miss you more than you can know.” With that, she spun round and marched off the galley of the roof into the hallway. What Judy D’Vad had said sounded cruel…well, maybe just the words because, at the same time, it sounded like they were spoken with the most vulnerable sense of love out of the depths of mother earth, herself, punctuated by a full southern drawl. It felt enveloping. Oh, and the student chose not to jump and lived to be a continuing nuisance to the people in her life.

 Ramey was to learn it was not unusual for these people to do as Judy had done—to throw students back on themselves time and time again. Ramey began to get the message that she and she alone was responsible for everything in her life. She began to listen less and less to others as she discovered her best answers came from herself. Opinions began to lose their power over her, freeing her to step beyond herself, to find her mind and soul were as elastic as her skin. She had thought she couldn’t do a lot of things, only to find there was something else entirely holding her back—the opinion of others.

 Ramey returned down her own hallway thinking about her first encounter with these people, that clandestine meeting of the Adams Family. But in all honesty, there were three people traveling with the silver-haired Pied Piper that were truly beautiful of countenance. Ramey now knew their names—David Weinman, Suzanne Deakins and Tom Charlesworth. In looking back, it did seem their beauty was more than physical. She had almost missed that in the midst of wallowing in her disgust for witches. There was, though, so many attractive people in this organization that Ramey wondered if they had taken a shuttle bus to some Hollywood back lot, scooped up a bunch of folks and made them all members.

 She pulled her mind back to the present and again wondered how these halls could be renovated this fast. She almost began to wonder about her eyesight. Had she just thought it looked drab and old? Maybe it had been overcast that day making it appear so.

 Ramey passed the auditorium the organization had rented for classes and lectures and nearly tripped over someone’s foot. She then fully noticed her surroundings and turned to apologize. There were three people sitting at a table. The boy had his feet stretched out, which she carelessly tripped over. There were two girls seated with him and they were busily writing things down, flipping through papers, etc. She learned these three, Rick Thomas, Anne Bowman, Janet Cornwell were the pillars through which all students passed to become members of the organization. They were the keepers of the school’s history, its doctrines and records. And they were stalwart in their dedication. Pillars are underpinnings, which Ramey thought fit these three perfectly.

 She turned from the table and ran into two of the young mentors named Stephanie Bowdan and Heather Williams. Ramey thought, “At last, people I can relate to, normal people.” As she felt the draw to follow and participate more fully in, what she now knew to be, a school, she moved from Kentucky to Denver. The size of the city, its diverse cultures and crowds were a shock to Ramey. She had heard of tunnel vision but never experienced it until then. It was just like they said. People looked to be far away down a long tunnel. A friend had tried to talk her into returning home, but Ramey felt if she did that, the darkness she would return to was worse than what she was going through now, because she could never forgive herself for giving up.

 She was remembering a time when she believed she had to travel to India to find people who might know about that perfect self she had experienced. She remembered how she felt as she sat on her living room floor crying because she knew she was too limited, too small, too held back to ever bring about such an ominous trip. Now, caught in the throes of culture shock, she vowed to hang on and weather it to the end, determined not to ever let that happen to her again. So, in the effort to steady herself, she latched onto anything familiar she could find. These two girls, for a short time, became the moorings she tethered herself to, to secure her sanity—until she no longer needed them or anyone because that outward dependence would move inward and find a solidity all its own.

 There would, however, come a day when she would doubt the methods she learned in this school. But she would remember a workshop she had attended in which a mentor by the name of Calvin Harris had annoyed her almost beyond her patience with his, “Practice, practice, practice.” But those simple words would push past her doubt and give her the fortitude to keep trying in the midst of her “giving up”. Her soul was waiting for that commitment. Once given, a whole new depth of discovery opened up for Ramey.

There are only two installments left of our story. Check back next month.