Collisions

One day in July, by the side of a river it all changed. It was the river of my youth, even before my youth… the river of my childhood and the river of my birth. It was the river I used to walk to on warm summer days. Through the corn field with the sharp blades, husks that cut my skin. Through the fields of wild grass and hay. Through the over brush and through the mulberry bushes, barefoot and stumbling, chubby fingers grasping slender hand. The grasshoppers shared those fields with us. They guarded the ripening fruit where the grasses hung heavy with seed. They leaped from blade to blade… occasionally colliding with me determined to get to the river. They leaped with faith and leaped with spontaneity. one grazes my face; wings and legs in a flutter of panic. And for a moment that creature and I, that exoskeleton green flying insect and I share a common experience, emotion, terror at colliding with another creature. But then he falls into the woven mesh of long billowing grasses that scratch my cherub legs and he is off again and with sand and wisps of tall grass squirming between my toes and sandals that I will surely grow out of; I trudge. The water always seems so far away. On the other side of the corn. On the other side of the field. On the other side of the brambles and the bushes… and the chorus of the wind and the bugs and the approaching river. The chorus thunders in my mind to this day. Wind rustles the grass. I can hear nothing but the grasses parting over my mothers slender legs. Her skirt whipping, and dancing with the grass. I have to guard my face as to not get the blades of grass in my eyes. There is no better way to ruin a trip to the river than by cutting an eye on a blade of grass.
Over the rushing of grass is the night guard. It is still too early for them to be playing their strings, but the chirping the ruckus of a million crickets in a field the size of the world is enough to deafen young eardrums. I want to take off my shoes. The sand is itchy and there is more grass stuck between my big toe and the strap of the sandal than there is in the entire field. But I have my bight flower bathing suit on and to stop now is unbearable, not when we are so close. I have hear the rising gallop of the river. And smell the sun on the sand. The leaves on the brambles make excellent rafts and provide endless entertainment. They, too, give off an odor that I can not describe or place except to say it is the smell of my childhood. It is the odor of the river. It is the essence of my first chance at life. And I think it must have been summer for the first six years of my life because I don’t recall one snowy day or a bundled up sled ride, a hard freeze or a snow day. It must have been summer in Vermont for most of that decade, but cause when I think of my childhood, my early childhood, I think of the river.
The sand and the pebbles. The river-worn wood that would get stuck in the bend. The smell of the field and the bushes… the sun on the sand. The sound of the water arguing with the field. The grasshoppers flying into the nothingness, flying into the hope of another wisp of grass to land on. It was the sounds and the smells that I remember from the river and the pebbles, tiny and black, pressing into my soft skin and sticking to me.

On each side of the bridge there was a spot. I had my favorite, but sometimes we went to the other one. And then there was the year that the sandy bit wasn’t there at all. The winter snows must have been heavy that year and the melt must have surged the river, because there was nothing left of my sandy beach. There was nothing left of my summer paradise. I think that might have the beginning of the end of my first chance at life. It was after that that we spent our days on the other side of the bridge where the sun could barely warm the rocks. Where the trees covered the shore and even most of the water. It was there in the darkness and the shade that the river turned. Under the overhanging pines and cedar trees. The smells erupted here too, but they were cold smells. Not my sunny, sandy, bush smells. These were cold, dark water and decaying cedar needle smells. These were fall smells, winter smells. Where the river curved a deep pool had formed, at the bottom of which the water was the coldest. It was dark from the shade of the trees, soft from the layers of melting leaves and cold from the bowels of change. It was cold.

My mom took me to the river. She used to be the one. We would lie in the sun… in the summer it is where we would bathe. Soap and shampoo, towel and shoes. These were our river toys. But when the beach was eaten by the winter melt things started to change. Things got cold. It was after that that I recall my first winter.

But it was on the banks of this river that I sat this summer. Over twenty years later when this is no longer my home and I haven’t been on these banks with my mother in several life times; I have another chance to live this life. The years’ winter and spring melt still have not returned the sand to my beach and the bushes have overgrown to impassible levels. The only way to the river is to the right. To the cold side. To the shady side.

I am no longer the only living sole who knows this river. There are tire tracks in the field to the line of trees that shades the curve. The grass is pushed down, but trying to right itself. There are scattered aluminum beer cans of the lowest common denominator. And this sacred place of my childhood, even the cold side seems strangely befouled. I feel a strong affinity to it. A protective streak, because it was here that I had my chance. How could it be driven over and trashed.