Still struggling to keep my eyes open, I walked to the mirror on my bedroom wall. Nothing in the mirror could be seen with the fog in my eyes, though that wasn’t unusual for me, or for anyone
else in that matter. After I washed and got dressed I glanced out my window hoping that it wasn’t going to rain today. Still pretty early, the Sunday morning was bleak and downcast, but there were no dangerous clouds in sight. My trip to the park was safe.
I guess you’re wondering why I’m up early on a Sunday going to a probably empty park or that you think I’m crazy, but Sunday mornings in the park were my sacred times, my oasis. It was the only chance for me to think and write in peace and to avoid being invisible again. On Saturday nights my mom brings her boyfriend home to stay the night. I hated the uncomfortable silence at the kitchen table with him, trying to think of things to say to him, but it wouldn’t even matter a few minutes later when my mom would walk in because then the shield activates. I don’t have any control over it which makes my days really lonely. Whenever it’s up no one pays attention to me or even sees me for that matter. Nobody, but myself knows I'm here and even then sometimes I feel that I'm not here. But it allows me to stay safe. Since no one can see me they can’t hurt me so much. Right now the shield was doing its thing. No one saw me walk out the front door; probably no one even cared.
On the way over to the park I noticed that there was no need for the shield. Most kids were at home sleeping the day away before eating waffles with their family and the adults were either at work or at church. Most of them have one thing in common, faith. Faith that their Sunday mornings will be peaceful and lazy, that if they keep doing a good job that they won’t be fired, or that someone is out there protecting them. I didn’t really have that faith. Just the shield to protect myself as Invisible Girl.

Suddenly I was there at the park that will remain nameless. I will not reveal it to you, so that I may continue to have my refuge and not become invisible. If there is no one around me then I will not be less than a vapor, less than a shadow, less than an unheard sound. I spotted the perfect tree, untouched from the spoils of man and beast together. The trunk of the tree stood tall and firm like the will of a dignified queen, wise from her years and proud in her growth. Her autumnal crown was pulchritudinous, beautiful, and elegant. Among its ornament of gold shown the hues of its jewels of rubies, emeralds, ambers galore. A few of the season’s last robins sat in her majesty’s wreath chatting away with their red breasts and blue eggs like two yentas. How lucky it must be, to be this tree. If it would fall, people will know that it did and that it had existed providing comforting shade from the harsh rays of the world from when they were around and when their parents were around and their grandparents and various generations before.

I opened up my faded demin backpack that I had packed beforehand at home, supplied with the necessities for my solitary retreat to this natural haven. I took out a re-usable water bottle, some of Eve’s apples, a wallet with some money and an almost faceless I.D., several pens, and my journal. My breath still hitched at the sight of my father’s graceful calligraphy that no one could comprehend, but me and the person to whom this handwriting belonged to.
“Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all.”

How my father admired Ralph Waldo Emerson, another individual visible in his view of the divineness of this planet and its creations in Mother Earth’s garden. My dad had not been alone, unseen in the mass of this urban forest. He had let go of his procession to his primal senses, and tossed vanity, narcissism, and self-conciseness to the wind. Here I felt like this too, as I turned from invisible to transparent, never feeling like I disappeared, but as if I became part of something bigger than myself, as a viewer and branch of nature and the world. Just then the sun peeked out of its veil of clouds lighting the multiple leaves that graced the sky above my head. The radiating light shown through the tree’s foliage and set up a kaleidoscope of shadow and color upon my arms and face. Graced with this presence, I knew then that I didn’t need a mirror to see my face and the obvious smile on it and I began to write.