She had dragged the stroller out of the rain under the door’s overhang long enough to call him. He surprised her by actually answering. Still, talking to him never led to conversation–he knew exactly how to wield silence until she cried.
I just need to know if you’re going to help. Her voice escaped her loudly enough that people walking by stared. I just need to know if you’re going to take care of her or not.
How did it get this bad? she asked. I didn’t even notice.
Was it ever all that good? he replied.
They realized, then, the width of the chasm across which they spoke, the volume of the wind, the depth at which the water rushed by below. They might as well have been living in separate landscapes. They might as well have stopped seeking out rope bridges long ago shredded and fallen away.
They popped Christmas crackers first, paper crowns and plastic toys and jokes spilling onto the tablecloth. When the scones arrived, she donned her crown, and demanded the rest of the table do the same.
“We can all be queens today,” she decreed, and so it was.
“All you have to do is tap your heels together and say, ‘There’s no place like home,’ and you’ll get there,” said the mother to her four-year-old. “See? Try it if you want to go home so badly.”
He looked up at her from his perch in the stroller he was already outgrowing. She didn’t want to give it up quite yet — there were still times when he tired before the rest of the family.
“But you just did it,” he said. “And you’re still right here.”
Compasses sometimes point North, but other times spin like tops, so turvy with uncertainty, so lost to the magnet. Scientists would call it impossible — such a thing cannot become unmoored. Logicians would argue the lack of cognitive structure. But the artists would remind you to hold tight and love the directionless world unfolding. These are dizzy, dizzy days.
Most people never choose to dive directly into muck, to submerge below algae-coated surfaces of stagnant pools. Under that bloom-skin, there is only dank, only dark, only that which chokes, confounds, confuses.
I prefer chlorine and filters, or the clarity of tropical seas. But down there in the darkness lies a long-sought answer, a key, a fulcrum to the lever that could change everything. I could leave it latent, but to dive deep means returning to the surface, peace between my palms.
Sometimes, love asks us to scale mountains, and other times, traverse the sea. We travel miles in search of the most right heart. We sift mementos from the journey to make sure we have chosen the most true itinerary.
When wayfaring finds companion, the connection is like a passport issued by a rare consulate. There is some greater authority there, in that place where we nestle tightly, set down the suitcase, and become, in that moment, our own new country.
* For EJ & JP on their wedding day
100 Proof 