Tower of Transition

When I was a teenager I heard a conference leader say that somewhere between high school and adulthood, you get to look at your life as if you had got your head out of the clouds for a moment — you get a moment of clarity that will rarely come again amid the busyness of life.

And I remember feeling as though I had experienced this phenomenon sometime in the transition period after I had graduated high school, around the age of nineteen. That’s when I wrote the first draft of this “allegorical essay”: The Tower of Transition.

I bounded up the circular stone stairway, anticipation soaring inside me, running ‘round and ‘round and up and up. I stumbled when I reached the top of the stairs, because my legs had expected to keep going ‘till I reached the clouds. Looking around, I saw that I stood in the center of a dome-topped colonnade.

Through the archways all around me, I glimpsed far blue mountains, distant plains, and nearby forests and buildings. I strolled from one archway to another, my eyes roving hungrily across the panorama before me. I had anticipated this day for so long — the opportunity for a spectator’s view of my past and possible future. Would I be disappointed?

Then I spied a comforting sight. The playground! Forgetting my fear, I stepped out from the archway to the solid parapet which guarded the edge of the tower. I leaned over just a little, and gazed down toward the familiar jungle gym, the swings, and the monkey bars. But I couldn’t see what was happening. So, I fitted the retro-spect lens into my spyglass and lifted it to my eye.

In the circle of focus, I saw a little girl with blondish-brown hair who stood by the tallest of the slides in the playground. She held the hand of a woman who stood next to her. The woman beckoned toward the slide. The little girl shook her head. The woman knelt on the grass and spoke to her, but the girl hung her head. The woman softly stroked the hair back from the little girl’s face and tucked it behind her ear. I could almost feel the caress on my own cheek. They turned away from the slide. The little girl looked back once and then ran ahead to the jungle gym.

With a wistful sigh, I turned away from this scene to focus my glass under what appeared to be a gathering storm cloud. I saw a young girl – remarkably like the first but two or three years older. She sat on a couch in a sunny living room. She pored over a text book, a deep scowl on her brow. A woman walked into the room and sat down beside the girl. Some words which I could not hear passed between them. The child motioned toward the page and curled her lip. The woman took up the pencil which lay in the crease of the binding and scribbled on the blank left page. Then she handed the pencil to the girl.

The girl imitated the woman’s scribbling, then hesitated. She tossed the pencil onto the carpet and slammed the book shut. The woman sat back hard against the couch, and put a hand over her eyes. She must have spoken, for the girl looked at her, then marched to her bedroom and slammed the door.

Then the rain began to fall. When the woman knocked, went in, and embraced the girl, the water flowed in torrents. But the clouds dissipated in the returning sunshine, and the bedroom, freshened by the rain, glowed in the smiling rays.

There were ever so many skits and tableaux I could have viewed in the land of childhood. Most of all, I wished I could look beyond the mist of the highest mountains of Infancy. But my glass would not reach that far.

So I turned, slipped a future-spect lens into my glass, and gazed out over lands I had not yet explored. I looked out over grass-decked plains, hazy deserts, dense and cool forests until I saw the mountains past which lay the dark sea. I had seen bits of this land before, but only through the spy glasses of others. Even then, I had seen it only by glimpses and often through a colored lens. But now I beheld it through my own glass. Some of it seemed familiar, but familiar like a place you see in real life after having only seen pictures. It was not familiar like an old bedroom in which you have slept for years.

I opened my map and studied it. Soon I would venture out into this life-scape, and I wanted to know what to expect.

First, I located a hill called Responsibility and focused in for a closer look. A young woman toiled up the hill doggedly. She wiped her brow often and just as often started in fear and glanced around anxiously. I noticed snares and pits and ditches all over the path. Some were marked “pride” others “laziness.” Then a voice floated to me on the breeze. It whispered, “Failure.” As it spoke, the young woman started again, as if alarmed by the voice. But then she turned and continued her climb.

I looked further on in the direction that she was going and noticed a complex of buildings. A sign over them read: Jobs Found Here. People came and went from them busily, but one young woman stood idly on the side walk. Every so often she entered one of the many doors. Most of the time she soon came out empty-handed. But once in a while she returned with a bulging purse. Then she stood idle again until the purse steamed and deflated like a popped balloon.

This skit discouraged me greatly. But as I sought some other scene to turn to, I spotted the young woman who had been climbing the hill Responsibility. She walked up to one of the doors of the job complex and entered confidently, but with an air of humility that seemed to waft to my nose like a sweet perfume.

She remained a long time and my heart was lightened when I saw her emerge — a healthy plumpness to her purse — and wind her way through several streets until she stopped before a quaint, tall building with elegant tracery along the eves. It boasted a simple sign stating: Marriage Councilors Within.

Eagerly I waited for her to come out again. A wedding party soon emerged. The groom wore a striking black-and-white tux, and the bride’s lacy dress could not have been more beautiful. But the love in their eyes captured my attention the most. My heart leaped as I recognized the bride. But it plunged to the depths just as quickly. For out of the building stepped a woman of about thirty, unmarried, who looked exactly like the bride.

Children clustered around the bride and groom. Together, the family grew and aged before my eyes as if they were in a time lapse film. The unmarried woman returned to the job complex. This time she entered a small, well-appointed office, and she stayed. I squinted through my lens and read the sign on the door: Christian Service.

My heart was flooded with an overwhelming bitter-sweetness that lifted my gaze beyond all the lower elements of the life-scape.

I focused on the great mountains through the ever vaporizing and changing mist. The air between me and the peaks seemed to be bursting with cloud-like visions of possibilities and fulfilled dreams.

Beyond the mountains lay the dark sea, and through a saddle between the peaks, I beheld just a glimpse of fierce-looking white caps and angry waves crashing on the cliffs of a headland. Horror touched bottom inside me as I gazed. I did not gaze for long.

I turned my focus upward and a light nearly painful pierced my glass. But in the midst of that light, I saw a golden city in the distance, built upon high ground beyond the sea and gleaming with a glory that yet frightened me with its awesome purity.

A hand reached out to draw me in. And even as I recognized that hand, a fear seized me. What if I should not be able to enter? What if I should find only darkness and fire beyond the deep sea? But the hand reached further, and I looked upon its scar.

The hand clasped mine.

Lowering my glass, I turned from the parapet and trod slowly down the stairs in deep thought. I had gazed over the uncertain dramas of adulthood, and gazing had filled my heart with a tangle of hopes and fears, doubts and dreams. How would it all really play out?

I visit the tower of transition often in my mind. Often, I gaze through my retro-spect lens, and marvel at the molding of my geography. Often, I ride the mist of dreams and watch the vaporizing visions through my future-spect lens. Fear of the horrors of the deep sea, and the pure, unapproachableness of the city of light keep me from contemplating what is beyond the mountains as much as I ought. But the thought of the hand that holds mine anchors my life from beyond the sea, drawing me ever nearer to my home.