The Embrace

Today, no force. Harmful thought and deed, nowhere on the road today. Such is the stillness in these following evening hours.

I cannot speak to how this happened. It’s not mine to know. Perhaps it is in the ceasing to know, the slow putting down of the sword. And you wouldn’t guess that anything has changed. Small shifts, a momentary change of course here and there, just a time or two of going this way instead of that way – and yet the change is notable. You know you have let go when you are no longer trying to let go. You recognize yourself differently only after you didn’t say what you might have always said. Just after you don’t turn down the same familiar road.

Half way through our day, River sits in the middle of an antique Italian couch; blue-green velveteen motifs swirl around her frame. She listens to toddler tunes as I work on the computer. I glance over at her unconsciously and am struck by her gaze. “Mama,” she holds open her arms, “Huggies.” I am silent. I barely recognize her. She is no longer my daughter but I understand, the way trees understand, that I belong to her.

I drop to my knees and crawl across hardwood. Because I know what it is to bow, I become her student. It could be the walk of a lifetime or just ten feet, but I watch miles underfoot disappear and know that we are in another place altogether. Without pause, I rest my head in her lap, a whisper in the mind, why?

She places her hands, small petals, on my head and gently strokes from the crown, down the side, across my cheek. Four times she traces this path; each time I turn further inward. With each rotation of tenderness, we erase many moons of tension since the day she was born. I sigh, full of gratitude.

I have no idea who I will encounter, but I lift my head and look at her. Almond eyes, blue light, a poem to my looking. Softly, “You are extraordinary.” She cups my cheeks in her palms and smiles, “Nose…” and points to her snowman doll. Time collapses and we are back. “Yes, I see, River, the snowman’s nose is red.”

For hours afterwards, she plays and pauses, “Mama…..huggies,” and I go to her. She holds me fiercely, and I embrace that force. I don’t know what it’s all about and I don’t have a need to know. I’m here for it. I’m here for it.

Sundown, in the voting both, I connect lines in ink. An old man shuffles into the cue next to me. I feel him dying, the way I feel winter just around the bend. To my left, a woman sways with her baby, cooing as she casts a vote. I am juxtaposed, a brushstroke, somewhere between waking love and sleeping surrender.