Girl Ghost

There's a paranormal theory that some souls or spirits come back as the age they were happiest in life. Manifested memory, bodiless under the sun.

I consider this while tapping my grandfather's urn methodically as if to conjure him like a genie. It's fruitless, I know. He isn't here.

Though, perhaps if I stake out Mason Street, I could catch a glimpse of my grandfather's boyish forehead peeking out the window of his childhood home. An Indiana boy with blue eyes.

If I waved, would he wave back?

//

Perhaps a hundred years from now, an unsuspecting family on Norton Street will see a girl ghost crouched by the tulips, searching the yard for a lost Barbie shoe.

The girl ghost would be me. Or, rather an essence of me. A shadow at the edge of the playscape. A harmless haunt, hanging around the kitchen table in hopes of sneaking a mouthful of sugar cookie dough.

Would I remember the taste of cream of tartar? My great great grandmother's recipe.

There wouldn't be anyone to tell regardless, but a mote of baking flour suspended in the air would be enough for a girl ghost like me to stay.

//

A few summers ago, I found my mother dozed off on the porch. The weather had just gotten warm, and she looked so peaceful nodded off in the spring air. For just a fraction of a second, I thought she was dead.

My first instinct was to shake her in a paranoid panic, even though I could see the heartbeat in her neck.

It's this same urge that leads me to think about searching out her childhood hand in another dimension someday, somewhere.

May I meet a girl ghost in my mother and exist without explanation. Fluid, unsearching.

Surely, we could play forever - passing the time beyond time in our most carefree form.

//

I can't picture myself growing old, you see, but I can picture myself as a girl ghost. Undefined, uncontained. Static hair. Peeking around doorframes.

In youth, everything was brighter, yet the weight of each moment, softer. Part of this paradox, this youthful mystique, is the unexplainable quality of being unbridled by time.

For instance, the time it took for mom and I to make calzones - from supermarket to oven - was endless. I'd wait under the stove light with my fingers crossed, hoping mine wouldn't burst at the seams.

Similarly, each sleepover was a time warp, contained in metallic flashes of candy wrappers, shards of popcorn lodged in carpet fibers.

There was such power and simplicity in transcending the watchful eye of a mounted clock. At every turn was adventure and not a single moment spent worrying if one was worthy enough to be here. You exist, therefore you are worthy of existence.

Thus, part of the allure of a childlike afterlife is this sense of unquestioning ease. Rediscovering oneself in the manner in which you were happiest.

On that note, if, eventually, we can make it back to our half-forgotten youthful selves, it would be a form of rebirth, I think. A familiar transformation, like waking from a dream.

If, at lights out, I get the chance to ask where to?...what now?... I hope I have the wherewithal to follow a slant of moonlight pouring across my childhood bedroom floor. I hope the humidifier is running. The door, ajar.

Even if it constitutes a form of purgatory, a liminal space, I'd like to linger as a girl ghost for a while - a 3-foot shadow out of the corner of a stranger's eye.

For if one can dance without a body, a girl ghost like me would enjoy the afterlife in audienceless youthful gaiety.

If I felt inclined to speak, would I even recognize my own voice? Would my whole existence be contained in a sound, a reverberation? Resonant and warm, like the inside of a cello.

Surely, by harmonizing the residual strands of my existence, a faint hum, at least, may prevail. The whole universe hums.

In my absence, the smell of hair detangler and birthday candles.