There are good witches and bad witches, I have always been told, my wife is either a witch or a woodland elf or some descendant of Shekinah, the feminine face of God, creativity and the environment. Mandy Meyer-Hill, on the right, is a healing witch, she is a massage therapist, and Athena Burke, on the left is mystical and musical witch.
Together, they are a coven.
Fierce individualists and prophets, the three are close friends they text each other constantly and meet once a week at the Round House Cafe, where they give off a bright light, laugh and shriek and turn rude and impatient people into toads and spiders. They have known one another for a while, there is great trust and love between them, they never are awkward together or run out of things to say.
Like most witches, they don’t talk much about what they talk about, but they are always excited to bring their news to one another, I suspect they cast spells on people who give any of them trouble. Some of the people who anger them vanish mysteriously, are stung by bees, chased by dogs, or fall mysteriously into raging waters. They are almost always laughing, when I see them, except when they are crying, which they sometimes are. Sometimes they are quite loud, at others they lean into one another and whisper very quietly.
Angry and clueless men avoid them, dogs rush up to them, they are fond of sweets. The sun always seems to be shining when they gather. I love seeing these three together, friendship born and nurtured. I wonder sometimes if I could ever belong to a group like this, and sadly, I think not.
Is it because I am a man, and I rarely, if ever, see men gathering in this way? Maybe, but I have tried a dozen times in my life to form a gathering of gentle and loving men, and we always have a great few meetings, and then, one by one, we melt away, drawn to work, busy with chores, frightened of intimacy. Are there men who are good witches? I suppose there might, but I don’t know any.
The good witches have a commitment to one another that is deep. When they are in trouble, they call on one another. They tell each other things they couldn’t tell anyone, even their husbands. When they have good or funny news, they text like mad. Their cell phones are always beeping and bonging, except when they are together, when their phones are silent. It is hard being a woman, I think, but most people don’t know that it is also hard being a man. We don’t know how to do what the witches do, we don’t make time for it, stick with it, grasp it’s importance.
Athena and Mandy are important to Maria, they rarely miss a gathering, it is important to them, like work and family. It is family in a way. Some of us have the families we were born with, some of us make our own.
We stagger under the great weight of obligation, domination, we are terrified of getting close, being open. I went to lunch several times with a man I liked, we talked about creativity, our fathers, I talked about my breakdown on the big hill. How great, I told Maria, a man I can really talk to and listen to. Then he was unavailable, I had the sense he was avoiding me. One day I called him up – I believe in being direct – and I asked him if something was wrong. He hemmed and hawed, and then later in the day, he e-mailed me.
He was uncomfortable, he admitted, the lunches made him a little bit nervous. He wasn’t used to talking about things that counted, he said, he didn’t really know what to say. I told him he did well. I haven’t seen him since, I doubt he will call me, and our friendship would most likely not have worked out. He made me a little nervous too, I could see he was about to jump out of his skin.
So I love the good witches, and I grasp the importance of them. It is probably not something I will ever have or know – it is not easy to find men who would do it, I only know one, the other died earlier this year – but I smile every time I see them or think of Maria and these women. They are a community of their own. Today there was a cluster of bees, and one of the witches coughed and whispered, and they all turned into hummingbirds and flew away.