The Wisdom of Elephants

The Wisdom of Elephants

I sit on my mat in the candlelit room with 20 other wanna-be yogis. I have an open mind and left logic at the door. Cross-legged, eyes mostly closed, I listen to the instructor:

“Picture your favorite place in nature. You feel calm and peaceful here. Whether it’s by a river or on a mountain or by an ocean. Go to that special place.”

Crane’s Beach, my favorite ocean beach in New England.  

“You feel the warmth of the sun, inhale the smell of your special place, hear the sounds.”

Woo-shhh! woo-shhh! Crashing waves. I love that sound, as familiar and comforting as my heartbeat.  

“You ‘round a corner and come upon a path. The path is just for you. You start walking down it.”

I try not to peek at the others, but I do. They are still, and the room is as quiet as a held breath. I come upon a familiar curve in the beach, but this time is different. There’s a sandy path from the beach through parted seagrass that sways in the breeze.

I can’t wait to see what’s down there.

“Someone is on the path. They’ve been waiting for you. Take a moment to look at who it is.”

My Grandma. I step back, shocked. Her smile is wide, her front teeth slightly crossed just as I remember them. Cynicism and doubt melt away, and my heart opens.

I haven’t seen her since shortly before she died when I was eight. Then she was frail and tired, ravaged by cancer, sunken into her hospital bed. But all of that is gone now. She stands before me radiant and still Jewish-Grandma-looking somehow. Plump, beautiful, hopeful, though for what I’m not sure.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” my grandma says, the life flame in her eyes flickering. She beams. Few people have ever looked at me with that genuine joy upon seeing my face.

Like me, my grandmother was a middle child and slathered me with special attention: taking me shopping at Lord & Taylor’s where she used her strong mathematics skills to check the receipt for errors; complimenting my red hair that “makes mine look natural,” she’d say; and buying my favorite chocolate lace cookies. Though as an adult, I know that she made each of us grandchildren feel special.

The teacher goes on, “The person on the path has something they’ve been waiting to give you. They put it in your hand. Picture it, hold it.”

My grandma’s hands are cool and wrinkled like crepe paper. Her liver spots are exactly where they had been three decades earlier. She holds a little elephant. It is silver with wide ears and sits solid and strong.

I know that elephant families are led by matriarchs who protect the herd from danger and pass on the wisdom of previous matriarchs. Together, they raise the young, celebrate the birth of babies, and grieve loved ones.

“I’ve had this for you for so long,” my grandma goes on. “This is your birthright. It is the power of all the women in our family who’ve come before you, those you’ve known and those you haven’t. Survivors, fierce women.”

My grandma was fierce, but I didn’t realize that when I knew her as a child. She raised young children while my grandfather was in the army. After he came home, she bore the impact of his long periods of debilitating depression when he lay on the couch unable to do much else. She withstood his screaming temper and never seemed to take it personally. And she drew strength from her two sisters who lived nearby: one a chemist when few women worked in the sciences, the other raising her daughters after her husband died young. Lavish Sunday dinners were a touchpoint for them, reinforcing the power of family.

As the salty ocean wind blows auburn hair in her face, my grandma sweeps it away and goes on, the elephant still in her hand. “Our power now lives in you, in your genes, in your blood, in your heart. We’ve protected and fed our children, just as you have. We’ve forged new paths as you have and will. Don’t be afraid. You are strong. We are all with you, always.”

Her words click into place like the combination on a safe, unlocking another memory of a wise, powerful elephant. That one visited me during Reiki months before. As the Reiki practitioner’s hands hovered above my belly, an image appeared: I was bathing in a golden pool, with warm light surrounding me.  An elephant was in the pool with me. Its trunk wrapped around my belly holding me, so I could float effortlessly. “I’ve got you,” it said gently. I relaxed, letting it bear my weight. “I’m always here with you and have always been with you. You are okay just as you are.” I sighed as calm and peace filled me. I felt the firm mattress I lay on and the warmth of the blanket tucked around me. The tight ball I carried in my gut like a stress tumor, loosened a little. At my core, I was solid, loved, protected.

I don’t know how much time passes in the yoga room, but tears fill my closed eyes. I hear no other sounds. And I refuse to open my eyes and break the spell.

Too soon, the teacher says, “It is time to leave now.” I grab my grandma’s hands, desperate. “You have what you’ve been meant to receive,” the teacher continues. “Go now, back along the path.”

I know I have to go, but my leaden feet are stuck in the sand. “I’m with you, wherever you are,” my grandma says. “Remember?” I’m being torn away from her again. The grief wave hits against me. I am porous sand, and my cheeks are soaked. She vanishes.

Eventually, I flutter my eyes open, back to the candlelit room. My chest is heavy with loss but full with a security and confidence I haven’t felt before, like I am buoyed by a net of my women ancestors.

My matriarch left me her wisdom and strength, just like an elephant matriarch does. I feel ready to create a life for myself that is full of possibility and vitality, rather than one defined by wallowing in the regret and shame of past career failures.

While I am trained as a lawyer, a parser of words, a seeker of logical flaws, I resist the reflex to find a logical thread of why my grandma came and what she said. Logic would have rescinded the gift of that unique sense of peace, strength, and purpose. Though I do know, when we are quiet and listen, the whispers of lessons we need find us.

I return home that night feeling blessed to have been with my grandma one last time, a wish I often had when I was young. I remember that I have something she’d given me from her trip to India when I was five or six. I root out the tucked-away white box from the back of a drawer, which I haven’t opened in a decade.

As I lift the lid, a golden necklace with an elephant charm rests on a cotton puff, as if it’s been waiting for me. Its eye is a white diamond that winks at me knowingly in the light. Now I wear that necklace with gratitude for the strength my grandma and my women ancestors bestowed upon me.

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