Water

I am deeply in need of water tonight. An evening when you hear waves calling from your kitchen window and you wipe your hands on the towel by the sink and go down by the lake. No one knows you are gone and everything seems clear or unclear-- it really doesn’t matter because it is night and you’re alone and peace is following you.

I grew up in a place like that.

I grew up in place where the night was never frightening, where you baited your hook before you slept and believed that everything which was beautiful came alive with the moon.

Weird things happen when you grow old. People tell you about your body changing, that you may marry, have children, even the possibly that you may grow fat or unsatisfied but people never mention the size of the world, how it shrinks with age. All the colors fade, their intensity grows mute.

I find my self less and less looking at blades of grass or actually even really seeing anyone’s eyes when they are speaking. I am like the little prince who can no longer find the boa constrictor in a box.

My grandmother once said the most painful thing about being an old woman was that there was no one alive who remembered her as a child. How her hair looked in the sun or how she ran when she was ten and I never believed I would grow old, even as a child, even as a mother, I felt somehow immune to this shrinking world.

But the world does grows small and it does not need you to notice; things seem unimportant, like all the books you wanted to write or the places you wanted to see and all that matters is the people you have loved and loved well and even then you realize it is such a small thing---your love. It is such a small imperfect thing indeed.

I do not know what you do now.

It is possible you find god. Or maybe you go to the place in your childhood where you wiped your hand on the yellow dish towel and walked out the door.