Philothea reached her home just as the storm settled in for a strong blow. On her walk, the wind first held her back and then pushed her forward. Light rain that speeded her step moved in sheets as the wind blew. “This is just one side of the mountain,” she told herself. “Another day we’ll see the meadow…and then we’ll eventually see the other side again.” These words played in her mind again and again.
It had been a terrible day. It was a day of movement, conversation, and worry. There was no silence that day. There were but a few moments when she tried to remember those words and the mountain, trying to find her way through the voices of those telling her how she felt, reassuring her in ways she did not need, distracting her from the understanding she had gained in that simple, short conversation.
When she returned home, Philothea rushed into the doorway out of the rain, took of her coat and hung it on the hook near the door. She removed her scarf and draped it over the collar of the coat so they both could dry. Her feet flexed with relief as she removed her boots and tossed them near the threshold. She stood in her home, surveying the scene of simplicity and quiet.
In this one room she beheld her table and chairs with her cabinet of shelves that held the ominous teacup around which so many of thoughts centered. Across the same small room sat a gathering of chairs and a fireplace. Through another door with a large wooden frame was her kitchen. There was a hallway with two bedrooms: one for her children and one she shared with her prince.
As Philothea surveyed her room, she fixed her eyes on the large wall behind the two spaces of this room. It was a plain wall on which a vision could be written. She took her drawing pencils left haphazardly on the table and walked up to this blank wall.
From the left bottom corner of the wall, she drew a line to the center as high as she could reach. Lifting her pencil, she walked to the right corner and bending down, began the same line, meeting just above the other in the middle, as high as she could reach. Her right arm could reach higher than her left.
Philothea walked back and forth along the wall, tracing the trail on which her life journeyed. Smooth at the bottom and gradually more perilous, ever going back and forth, back and forth, along this room, along this wall, until she reached the top. The top plateaued before the peak. She did not finish the path. She did not know what the rest would look like. But she drew this reminder into heart of her home.
