Once, when I was little

      Once, when I was little, I climbed off the swing at Holland State Park and climbed up the hill that I knew led to where my parents were waiting for me. I remember walking down that hill and up the next, over and over again, certain as I reached the peak of each ascent that I would see my parents just over the crest. Each time I made it to the top and I didn’t see them, I simply kept moving to the next until finally, I decided to rest upon a different swing and wait for them to find me. I was there, kicking my feet up into the clouds, my back flat as I tried to reach the sky, when I heard my mother’s voice, breaking as she called my name. I still remember the terror and relief washing across her features as she ran and scooped me off my swing. I don’t remember how long I was lost to them. It didn’t seem long to me, but must have been an eternity to my Mother. 

      As I sat at the table last night, after enjoying a delicious birthday dinner of grilled steak and corn on the cob with my parents and husband, it occurred to me that nothing has changed, even as it seems everything has changed. Fifty-five years of my life have flowed like a river of memories and things yet to be, fraught with sections of calm slow moving currents, more than my fair share of deadly rapids and debris that did its best to tear holes in the tippy kayak of everyday existence. Still, I keep moving forward. I am no longer the little girl who stops and waits to be found. I have had to fight to find myself; to ward off those who meant me harm, who harmed so deeply I wasn’t sure I could make it up the next hill. Now, I don’t wait for my parents, but instead, feel like I am calling to them, guiding them to keep trudging uphill as grief tries to tear them apart, steal their will to keep moving.

     My life is not what I imagined it would be, as we all do when we are young and foolishly believe we have control over a plan for our futures. I never became a big cat veterinarian, living on a rolling Kentucky horse farm with my southern charmed husband sitting beside me sipping juleps. Those were the dreams of a child. The rocks and overhanging branches in my river of existence sent me down different forks of the water I paddled in, bringing me to a present I could never have imagined. Yet, I can’t say I would change my past, aside from one day, because it has all made me who I am now. All the painful days, the worst of the rapids if you will, have let me reach the gentle curves and winding waterways of the latter portion of my lifetime. I wouldn’t bet against there being a set or more of rapids somewhere further down the line, but I know that I can handle it. My past has taught me that much, from as far back as that day, when I was lost, but now remember not the lost part, but instead, see the fields of tulips spread all around me as I stood on the top of each hill, and how it felt to be wrapped in my mother’s embrace.