The River

[This is a weird, random piece in which I experiment with the first person present narrative. It is still an early draft and while filled with some nice one-liners, lacks cohesiveness in both tone and content. In other words, there is "meat" yet to be added...]

It began with the peculiar notion that the river was calling to me. Not in the way I might imagine an inanimate force would choose to speak, the waters swelling into enormous lips, a giant, swallowing cavern of liquid monstrously bellowing my name. If given a choice, I might prefer to be called this way--loud, obtrusive, and leaving no room for doubt. But instead, the river called me dove-like, a soft voice caressing my ear. I strained to hear it and when I did, I was alarmed. It was terrifying.

The Boise River is fast and lovely, and I draw near it like ones might approach a tame lion, eager for safety yet marveling at the curious prospect of being eaten. In comparison most, I suppose this river is not unique--a twisting, flowing, tree-lines vein of water and earth for miles and miles. But this river is my river, and I think it is alive. For this reason, I chose to be baptized here today--a choice that I feel was not my own. In a way, I cannot escape the strange yet somehow tender notion that the river, in its wisdom, has chosen me.

I sit on a rocky bank, poking a doubtful toe into the familiar cold as two black Labradors tussle in the water. The noise of their play and the distinct odor of wet fur signals to me their presence long before I see them. The hurries with the rush of the mountain snow melt. I worry that the dogs will be swept away.

It is an old fear, my fear of water. When I was young my family camped by the ocean in a crowded, middle-class trailer overlooking the shore. One summer my baby sister, then a sturdy five-year-old, flitted along the edge of the water when she came across an enormous boulder jutting out from the coastline and into the Pacific. Watch this, Mo! She laughed her challenge, peeking back at me before disappearing behind the massive form, the soles of her tiny feet kicking up sand. After a hesitant pause, I gathered the nerve to cautiously pick my way around the rock after her, a wary eye waiting for her to fly out suddenly and scare me.

When I reached the halfway point, I stopped, immobilized and out of breath. The fear. Before me was my dear, impish sister hanging by one tenuous finger onto the corner of the rock, the tide tugging her body as she floated there helplessly. She had fallen into a hidden hole in the sand, a mysterious gap between beach and rock disguised from human eyes by murky waves. That is what I fear about water--how it swallows and hides, how one can so easily fall in and become lost, adrift in its depths.


Other summers, my father would take us fishing in the river, teaching us the careful science of casting and luring. One day a clever otter snatched my father's rope, heavy with trout, secured to a rock and bobbing peacefully in the river. A day's catch gone in seconds.

Fear is a strange passion, lurking between the cracks of the everyday-ordinary, surfacing on top of the most contented of circumstances. Even with my father there, I felt afraid--my child-heart terribly aware that the river hid secrets beneath its rocking current.

I hate this, how the river hides. The mysterious, the secrets, whatever they may be, frighten me away time after time. Each time I approach this river I am wary, waiting for the river's hidden secrets to leap out from behind a rock and scare me. And yet, for the same reason I am repelled, I am also brought back over and over again to the banks of this river. Waiting.

As I prepare for my baptism I stare at the river, and it gazes back in anticipation, anxious to for me to unearth what it has longed for all these years to show me. The river water splashes cool against my skin, shimmering and singing as its arms welcome me back. I do not know if I trust it. The pastor, a large, dark-skinned man I dimly scrounge from my memory, looks at me kindly. He recognizes my face. Surprising, because it has been months since I have been to church. Still, he remembers me and smiles, as though he knows what is to come. He speaks, placing his hand behind my head, and I fall back, sky and clouds above, floating dreamlike into the water that has been awaiting my arrival.

Langston Hughes wrote, "I've known rivers; I've known rivers as ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers". Perhaps my soul, too has grown deep like this river. Unlike it, my physical body will grow old and deteriorate. My breasts will sag with grandmotherly wisdom. Time will sketch her ragged beauty across my face and my now firm abdomen will become ravaged, stretched from carrying the lives of my children. As my children grow older, their lives will, in a way, slowly pilfer from my own. They will take from me until we are one--my life absorbed into theirs. Lost only to be gained again, in them. And still, time will steal those loved ones. Like a river otter, she will grasp them and slink away, leaving me along.

The river whispers these things into my ears as I lie in the water, a future corpse received by mother earth. I am afraid. The river speaks. Go, go. I am sure of it. My body is still and cold, yet I am oddly warmed in defiance to my prickling skin. Peace. Peace and a fantasy of that sudden sweet inhalation--the first and last deep breath in this fantastic dream, this haven of water and earth. I am safe here in this river. The dark waters cover my body and for a moment I am no longer just me. I am substance existing within the water, within nature, entwined with something ancient and mystical. Here in the water, we are intimately connected--the river, my loved ones, and I.

But all dreams and nightmares end, at least in this life, and with a jolt I am wrenched from my water sleep to shouts of joy. They are all cheering, for they are glad I have returned, risen from the potential and figurative grave. As my eyes blink back the murkiness, I realize that not only am I awake, I am alive. Alive. Strong hands have lifted me and I have risen, alert and fresh and struck my the delightful sensation of cleanness.

I find my shaky feet and head away from the water toward the bank filled that is covered with rocks and sand and people. In the split second before I reach land, my gaze travels back, and I see nothing but river and sunlight. The river leaves me still waiting, still wanting more.

UNDER CONTSTRUCTION