The Water, the Creek, and the Wetness
The Water, the Creek, and the Wetness: February 15, 2021
Emma has taken to requesting a story from my childhood, and I nearly always draw a blank. I remember my own impatience and annoyance when my mother couldn’t come up with a childhood anecdote on the spot. Indignantly I wondered: How can you forget your childhood? Unfortunately, all too easily.
But when Jack and Emma will walk with me, my flood of memories can be equally annoying. I’m prone to deliver a monologue throughout the entire walk, because my landmarks trigger observations, which trigger other personal memories, which connect to other family stories.
I have two main walks, one in Greenville, one in Montreat. What a privilege to inhabit and observe two distinct paths, one for much longer than the other. The younger Greenville walk skews toward observations of animals, weather, and plants. Plus one particularly aggressive seasonally-themed display of yard inflatables. The older Montreat walk skews toward trees, water, vistas, and personal history.
Walking the same paths over and over layers thin lacquers of memory, fragile accretions of self, each insubstantial on its own. Repetition is grounding, restorative, calming.
On my Greenville walk I cross two bridges and always look into the water—first upstream, then downstream—both coming and going. Sometimes there are footprints. Raccoon. Duck. Goose. Human child. I’ve seen actual humans, ducks, and snakes. Soon there will be fish in the shadows under one bridge. Twice I’ve seen a huge snapping turtle motoring along. Every time I look, I anticipate what could be down there, and am simultaneously prepared to be surprised. I’m very often, gratifyingly, surprised.
Because it’s the same route, my mind can wander easily, and also notice changes. That’s how I discovered a baby American green tree frog (Dryophytes cinereus) in the whorl of a baby Canna lily leaf. I can show you exactly where. Once I saw a cat crouched on the flat roof above its front door. Now I look for it every time, and I’m liable to tell you about it if you’re walking with me. I know the house for its clever cat, not its people. Each walk layers a bit of experience onto my previous knowledge and narrates not only that walk, but also my larger sense of place.
In Montreat I have private landmarks, too. I check the decomposition of a few trees; the progress of various lichen and moss on an old stone wall; what some humans are doing to their houses; how children are making creative use of their space.
Yesterday I noticed a new blacktop driveway at the Bitzer cottage. Immediately I recalled my Uncle Mike reminiscing about the Bitzer girls, (I think there were four), and his chuckling over his embarrassment from sitting on, and breaking, an LP record at one of their birthday parties. Walking past the ball field (which in my youth didn’t have grass and was called the Dust Bowl), I can hear Mama telling me how in her youth, a boy playing baseball might ask a girl to hold his watch. She might agree if she fancied him asking to walk her home after the game. I can also recall the slightly damp hand of a boy who walked me home one summer. I can remember those layers at the same time, the way I can see all ages of my children in a single glance.
Because Mama died before my children were born, it feels important, and fun, to tell them stories of her. How she learned to dogpaddle in Lake Susan, back when you could swim in Lake Susan, by holding the stubby tail of her Springer Spaniel. How after the first swim of the summer her bathing suit never quite fully dried.
Walking up Shenandoah I can say, “this is where Mama and I came to see Halley’s Comet when it passed in 1986.” And I can tell them that on that same steep hill, the summer before she died, I handed Mama my dog’s leash so she, in her brave weakness, could benefit from Clara’s dog-eager propulsion.
Today, on Galileo Gallilei’s birthday, I like remembering looking at that comet with Mama. I like to think Galileo might have observed its 25th recorded passing in 1607. Astonishingly, Chinese chroniclers first recorded its passing in 240 BC! Edmond Halley, who first calculated comet 1P/Halley to be a periodic comet returning every 74-79 years, viewed its 26th passing in 1682 and correctly predicted, though died before seeing, its 27th in 1758. Halley’s is the only known periodic comet that can be seen twice in one human lifetime.
Mama and I observed its 30th recorded passing. It was her only sighting. It is possible that I’ll observe its 31st passing in July 2061. Maybe my children will haul me up that steep Shenandoah hill. Maybe I can hold on to one of their eager dogs.
All of this runs through my head as I walk, a constant stream of narration. It’s such a good description—stream of consciousness—because it is a constant flow like the water in a creek. My thoughts flow along, around the memory stones, diverted from the main channel into smaller eddies, joining back up or carving new streambeds. Always in motion.
In May 2008, a storm-blown Tulip Poplar destroyed our screened porch in Montreat. That summer was the only time I’d ever seen our creek bed completely dry. Also, I was immensely pregnant with Jack. I was huge, the weather was hot and dry and there was destruction. I half-jokingly called it Armageddon. That’s the Biblical prophecy of God destroying God’s enemies in an epic battle. Moral: You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that battle.
Armageddon is how I sometimes feel during contemplative meditation, because when it works, the stream of my self-narration ceases, I catch my breath, and the sudden stillness can be scary. It’s the truth of the adage ‘you are your own worst enemy.’ My close-grip hold on my own narrative, my lacquered accretion of self, is often the very thing that prevents God from softening my heart. Releasing that breath, and releasing that self into the larger flow of God’s love and acceptance is healing. Rain filling the dry creek bed after a drought.
God the water, God the creek, and God the holy wetness. To surrender is to drown and not need to breathe. Breathe into that.
