SHADOWS

Peter Pan met Wendy when he came to ask her to sew his shadow back in place, having lost it when escaping through a window that closed, separating himself from his other half.  Detaching from our shadows is a fantastical fright, for what is more intimate and yet mysterious than our shadow, our companion from the first sunny days of our lives?  We watch it grow with our own growth and with the rise or fall of sunlight behind us.

The lyrics of Me and My Shadow conclude,  “Just me and my shadow / Strolling down the avenue /All alone and feeling blue.”  It is a sad song, but Peter Pan and I know that shadows keep us from loneliness.  What better friend than one who sticks with you all of your days, who goes with you where you want to grow and can be manipulated in a small gesture, simply by turning with  the light?

As a child, did you play with your shadow?  Chase it?  Try hopelessly to escape it?  My father taught me to play with shadows, casting bunny ears with his hands on the walls of our playroom.  My brother and I competed, trying to stomp on the other’s shadow. Most days, unmindful of my shadow, I am surprised when I notice it lengthening before me on a spring walk.  I notice my aging stance.  Did my knee always turn in at a funny angle, or is this something new?  Communicating with our shadows is a self-indulgent pleasure .

Some sunny days, I look beyond my own shadow to those cast by what exists around me.  Any artist values shadows for how they define the artist’s subject, providing depth and definition.  Sometimes the shadows share importance with the object, as in some paintings by Norman Lundin.  His many compositional brilliances that feature shadows cast across classroom blackboards are equally as important as the object or person who cast them.  Our admiring eye finds pleasure in the angles of lines across a flat surface.

Similarly, going to snip a rose to bring inside, I found the shadow of the rose, the pattern of leaves flattened against the driftwood fence behind the roses, as appealing as the bright red rose itself.  Not a chance of clipping the shadow for a vase on the dining table.

Spring and fall are tops for shadow appeal, especially mornings or late afternoons.  Sun is not yet on top of us.  Its angle splashes across streets, magnificent shadows of trees in their early leafing.  You could be tempted to  run out in the road and try to climb them.

My good friend Jan, who has a scientific understanding, teases me that often I am going off poetically about natural things that have a rational raison d’être.   I agree, and would be amiss if I ended without personifying shadows.  “Only the Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men” were  Introductory words to the broadcast radio episodes of The Shadow (1930’s and ‘40s).  The Shadow was the hero of a whodunit that drips with ominous associations.  So too the superstition around not standing in the shadow cast by a gravestone. I gave some thought to that on a recent walk through Lakeview Cemetery.  How tantalizing to stand in the shadow of a massive monument to Seattle’s forefathers, to test whether my body temperature dropped in that shade.  No icy fingers reached to pull me inside.

Meanwhile, taking my I-Phone from my pocket, I photograph myself leading with a shadow when riding my bicycle along the end of the bay on a Sunday morning.  Can I photograph myself and the bike with our morning shadow preceding us?  Who is that cyclist riding the bike?  Only the Shadow knows.

Author: Mary After Seventy

I am a retired teacher, poet, community volunteer View all posts by Mary After Seventy