Sep 24, 2015 Daily Life, Writing 101

Sorry, I had no time to re-create a day today — so I cheated (sorry!) and am re-posting an old “day-in-the-life” post of mine) for this assignment

Meditations Upon Walking on Solid Water

(Reposted an earlier post from my other blog, which is now private)

©By Vijaya Sundaram

January 25, 2014

 I had never walked on water in my entire life.  Today, with quaking heart, I did.

It wasn’t too bad.  It was lovely, in fact.

To think that there was a pond filled with water which teemed with possible life, which would, in springtime and summertime, have ducks and geese, and frogs and fish, which now supported my weight, and sang it’s safe, it’s safe to my internally trembling self!

(I was fine on the outside, although I wanted to get on it, go across and back as quickly as possible.  For, despite all the assurances and reassurances by my husband, who said, “I grew up near a lake, don’t worry, this pond is frozen solid, look!” and jumped on it, all my cells shrieked, No!  It isn’t.  Don’t!)

My daughter, intrepid and impatient with me, said, “Come on, Mom!  It’s great!  See?  And she walked on ahead of me, following my husband.

I knew that she was anxious for me to enjoy it like she did.  So, I put on my brave face, and squared my timid shoulders, and did.

Something interesting happened then.  I wasn’t afraid, anymore.  I put my trust in my husband and my child, and walked on solid water.  Ice is interesting.  It has personality.  It has stillness.  It is mysterious, a presence that could be either kind or cruel.  It was kind to us today.  No betrayals lurked beneath its opacity.

Then, we went back to the main trails in the woods where we were walking.  We walked in companionable silence punctured by occasional inconsequential chatter in the dark stillness of the night-time woods, lit by snow.  We heard the creaking of an occasional tree, as we wound our way up to the very top of the hill in the woods.

There we stood on snow-covered rocks, and looked down on the intermittent shoals of cars, exotic fish of gold and red streaming towards us and shimmering away from us on the highways far below.  The lights of the city gleamed jewelline in the winter night.  A faraway airplane took off, glittering into the sky, from the distant airport.

Our daughter is a child of winter, and a child of these woods.  The woods are hers, that hilltop and its tower belong to her alone (also to us, by extension), and that pond we walked on has been part of her consciousness since she was about twenty-two months.  She gazed around and exclaimed over and over, “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it?”  And she sighed and sat on a snow-covered rock, gazing into the night.  My husband and I murmured in agreement, as we stood and gazed out, eyes saturated with the lights of the night.

Permanence is an illusion, I know, but I like to think that these words and that pond are part of the permanence of her memories.  I want for us to build a universe of memories.  These will sustain her (and us) through what is sure to come in the future, because the future is always jealous of the present.

And the present is our gift from the Lords of Time.

____________________________The End___________________________________

Tags: A Day in the life of ..., Family time, walking in the woods in the winter, Walking on ice