"Who's in the House?"

One of my very favorite times of the week is when I take class with former Solid Gold dancer, Darcel, incredibly enough at the Crescenta-Canada YMCA. She also teaches at the Glendale Y, which I catch on occasion. Her honey, Jonaton, teaches the first half hour in the more lyrical style from my past, and Darcel takes us on an energetic journey for the remaining forty-five minutes to the land of funk and hey, hey!!, where we move in a way that my 15 year old daughter refuses to watch when I get home and want to share!

When I arrived last Tuesday, Jonaton was just leaving. With my questioning look, he told me that he'd received a call to get home right away and would see me later in the week. The mystery was revealed when, after class, Darcel shared with us the story of a night visitor. At around 2am, a dark shape flew past Darcel's head and made it's way through the drapes of their bedroom, then out the door into the livingroom. Terrified, Darcel nudged and nudged Jonaton awake, quietly insisting that something was in the house! He sprang up and closed the door, then grabbed a workout weight, ready to defend their territory, but hesitated to leave the bedroom. They could hear as whatever it was crashed through the house, knocking things over everywhere and were afraid to open the door to confront it. Darcel got the idea to call their next door neighbors to see and let out whatever it was, from the outside. By this time, it was 3am and the call woke their neighbors from a sound sleep, despite all the noise going on. Darcel thought one of the doors was open but Jonaton had locked them and the usually hidden key was nowhere to be found. Finally, their neighbor shined a flashlight on the raccoon that was attempting to escape by pushing on the screens of every window it could find. Finally, when it was pushing at the kitchen window, the neighbor removed the screen and the critter made its exit!

Isn't that a perfect metaphor for so many things that we fear? Here were two people afraid to leave the familiar to encounter the unknown, while the misplaced being in the other room only wanted to get out, to find its own familiar surroundings. In this case, there is no way to know what might have happened had they left the bedroom and the raccoon might very well have defended itself had it felt cornered. Everything happened for the best and everyone was left with their own space. By the way, it turned out the raccoon had gotten trapped in the attic of the building and had made a hole above a cabinet in the kitchen to escape. What horrors it must have experienced to realize it had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, so to speak...