Soapbox

Rip Tide

A true story, actually.

Her hands resemble wind-gnarled branches now,
or claws, clutching at the past
unable any longer  to grasp even self.
Mouth without words or teeth,
nonsense syllables are the only story she has left to tell.
She does not interact with the world around her,
just sits by the door at the end of the hall and rocks and rocks
hooded eyes gazing already into the abyss that most of us fear more than death.

She does not seem to see the young woman who is visiting,
just mutters and occasionally waves bent, twisted arms purposelessly
seems incapable of recognition or contact.
She has already left behind her life and her tasks,
her body and even her name.
But for all this indignity and terrible loss,
she will never leave behind the one thing that truly makes her human.

Look, Grandma. Look who I brought to see you.
The woman lifts a tiny, wiggling bundle from a basket
and holds it forward towards the wizened figure rocking, rocking in her wheelchair.

Perhaps it makes a sound the rest of us are too far away to hear
or maybe the old woman catches that distinct newborn smell
which I believe every creature instinctively recognizes.
Whatver the reason, the rocking stops,
ancient head on bird neck rises, turns,
frail, twisted arms raise in a beckoning
and light pours from her creased face as if a candle has been lit within.
The beautiful arc of her cheekbones is visible again for a moment as a mouth
that can no longer speak her own name
frames a single word, a most important word
possibly even a last word,
breathes it like a prayer:
Baby!

Trusting  the love that shines before her
the mother gently sets her child into its great-grandmothers arms
while its tiny clutched  fists wave purposelessly.
The frail body curls protectively now around this new, old thing
and though she can no longer hold a spoon, we all know
that she will not drop this child.
She does not know who it is, but she knows what it is
and what she needs to do.
Perhaps she simply recognizes someone at the other end
of the same journey.
She coos and mutters and resumes her rocking
but now it does not seem  a slipping away so much a motion that complete the circle.

Of all the things we fear to lose in life
the thing that we will never lose is the one that really makes us human
more surely than creativity or language or even self-awareness.
For love is not a thing we learn or acquire,
but are simply made out of,
a thing which we breathe as surely as air, that anchors us more firmly than gravity,
that fills our sails and carries us inexorably homeward.
It is the blood that flows, however weakly,
and the bones that shape us, however brittle they become.
It is the tiny fists that quest out to meet the world
and the crippled ones that draw in to protect and cherish.

Love is an ocean and we are creatures of the mysterious deep.
It is endlessly circulating, flowing in invisible, inexorable patterns
connecting everyone.
All of the ocean is contained in each single drop of water,
and  we can only drown if we refuse to open our hearts and breathe.