something that lasts forever.

February 17, 2023

My five-year-old child was having trouble falling asleep recently.  Into the dark studded with glowing star stickers, he whispered: “I’m scared…I’m scared”.  The wind was blowing the wind chimes against the house, and the snow on the roof was cracking as it froze hard.  It did sort of sound like a gigantic wolf was just outside the house, tail smacking into it, paws clawing the rooftops.  I didn’t know what to say to ease his fear, but distraction often works. 

We began to think together about all the animals curled up as the temperature dropped well below zero, and what fears they may be confronting.  He was particularly worried about the snowbirds, the baby animals, the resident skunk.  We said together “may they be safe, may they be cozy (just like us), and may their fear disappear”.  He said it over and over, letting the words run together like a stream.  At what I hoped was just the right moment, I invited him to include himself in these wishes flowing out of him - this river of care.  His voice quieted as he took a deep, slow breath, then said simply “okay, I did”.  I smiled at his frankness. It still took a while to find sleep, but he settled, and finally added that delicious, deep breathing of a young child to the softly howling wind.  I sat nearby, remembering something I often say in classes: fear damages the kidneys, wisdom is the antidote, and pondering the connections between cold and fear, movement and wisdom.

Next day, it’s zero degrees out and the curve of the river is frozen solid and white, like gloved hands draped around an elbow.  I’ve never seen this river broken in motion.  I think it should be unnerving to see a highway of ice where the river should be, but somehow it is a relief to see it suspended.  Breathing with the river, I pause at the top of the inhale, full and brimming, before letting go again.

A glacier made this river valley. I live where it slid off the shelf of granite into the silt below. I wonder, what does the fish see from the bottom of the riverbed right now, what color does light turn through sheets of ice?

In the bath, the same child is humming to himself while pouring water from cup to cup.  He stops suddenly and says with conviction, “Mama!  I really need something that lasts forever!”  I peer around the corner from sorting winter jackets and wet mittens and see him surrounded by water.  We spend the next 15 minutes discovering that every single thing, including our thoughts, has been here forever.  Iron tub, metal spigot, plastic cups, bones, breath, laughter, water; all here since forever.  Where else would it go?

Across the river, the beautiful cascading waterfall has also come to a halt, frozen in time, cleaved against the rock.  Maybe, likely even, frozen water holds more memory then its moving counterpart.  The memory of skipping through the nearby woods, but also the memory of once being a cloud, a body, a steadying breath. This waterfall is water reflecting the river water, the river water is reflecting the atmospheric river of cloud, the cloud river is perhaps reflecting the glacial shelves in the distance.  All of it memory, all of it just trading places, over and over and over.