Captivated

The light is something special and the children know it. My daughter dances down the short dock in complete delight, captivated by the sparkling water. Her fingers spread wide as she waves her arms through the air, as if to take flight, as if to take hold of the water and sunlight, as if it were possible to wrap that energy into her slight frame. 

My son’s enchantment is characterized by a more measured, focused energy, as is so often the case. He explores along the edge of the water, hunting for treasure, as if one specimen could capture the glory of it all, as if the whole, glistening world could echo in one smooth stone. 

I watch them. Witnessing their love affair with the world is joy entwined right up alongside grief. If my writing returns to this complexity time and again, it’s in a desire to make sense of it all, to capture something that cannot be fully grasped, to communicate an emotional dance that continuously evades words. What could suffice to relay the enormity of it all, what it is to watch a love affair unfold on the most tenuous of ground?

“Mom, we saw a video of a river flooding in North Carolina,” my daughter says on the car ride home. We have finished swimming, gliding through the chilly water between sparkles, our skin tingling as we attempt to submerge ourselves in the particular beauty of a fall day at the lake’s edge. 

My brain floods with the images and videos I have seen, of towns and roads under water, washing away, communities devastated. We talk about it, our words winding their way around something our brains struggle to grasp. We consider the way communities come together across divides in times like these, how helpers are everywhere and care can characterize response. 

We don’t try to describe what it means to see familiar, beloved places rendered into something completely new. 

They are falling in love with the world, with life, my two children, and I tumble alongside them daily. It’s such a gift, this world. The trees are bursting into flame-like color. The mist rises off the pond in the early morning hours, and some days I run through the trees, leaving behind the house and family still dark, quiet, and asleep, chasing the sun as it just crests the hills and forest at the far edge of the water. I drop a towel, shed layers, and slip my body in, swimming along the beam of light. The mist rises all around me. The water is cold. My brain stops. All I can do is feel. Submersion in senses. 

It’s indescribable, the particular nuance of loving the world right now. It is not for the faint of heart. And I can’t stop trying to put words to the dance, no more easily than I could stop falling in love, over and over again, with all of it: the young, wide eyes; the arching, aching call of the loons; the bright leaves that will soon drop, composting to feed new growth in a new year, an utterly hopeful gesture in the most uncertain of times.