So here it is, my dear.
My mama was a big believer in the power of water. As an exhausted, stressed-out mother of 5 tight-rope-walking the poverty line and always trying to shield us all from my alcoholic father, my mom knew the one source of magic she had freely available was water. We grew up in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes. We were never far from a lake.
Some of my best memories are of the afternoons my mom would scrape together enough change for gas money, pile us all in the hot navy-blue '52 Ford and head to Bass Lake. I remember being 4 years old and somersaulting off the crooked wooden dock into that cool water. I remember swimming alone under water, thrilled with the deep silence, the freedom, the mysterious wild solitude. I was a fish, a mermaid, a dolphin. I was chasing glimmers in the water, doing a deep water ballet, coming shiveringly face-to-face with a sunfish.
I collected rocks (I still have one of them, 52 years later) and bits of shell. Water was my best friend, a comfort. It both soothed and excited me. It whispered a promise of something special, something more, to come. It washed away more than just sweat and heat and dust. It washed away tears and fears. It washed away the sins of the fathers. It made me believe in life, in love, in magic, in goodness, all over again. It never, ever failed me.
And when the lake wasn't available, my mom found other ways to access the magic of water. She sent us out in the rain to play. When the other mothers were calling their kids in out of the rain, my mom was pushing us out the door. Hell, half the time she was out there with us. When it was a true deluge and the streets in front of our house flooded, a swirling river of brown, muddy water, we swam in the mud puddles.
The nosy neighbor would call my mom on the phone,
"Irene, your kids are out swimming in the MUD PUDDLES!!" And my mom would laugh, "Why yes, I know, I sent them out there."
And then there were the solo night time walks in the rain with mom. She would ask one of us 5 kids to go for a rain walk with her. It was a sacred, mysterious time. I remember the glimmer of street lights on the wet pavement, the intoxicating scent of rain and mud and green, fresh growing things. I loved the feeling of being soaked to the skin, of having my white-blond hair drip raindrops into my eyes. But I also remember a shivery feeling of being too close to a well of deep, deep sadness. I think my mom knew that darkness mixed with raindrops on her face was a good cover for her tears. But I remember feeling them anyway. It may have been my earliest training in picking up on another's feelings intuitively. Which led me eventually to becoming a psychologist. And which is still, in my mind, both a blessing and a curse.
So today, running out in the Texas hill country rain, I carry this history with me.
I let the rain wash away the tears and the fears and the sins of the fathers. I become a leaping dolphin, an impala, a wild, untamed creature.
I breathe in air so fresh I think it has nutrients. I take in the colors, so deeply saturated in the rain that they sometimes seem neon or lit from within. I love being soaked to the skin. And if any tears escape my eyes, I know they hide among the raindrops.
The birds still sing through the rain. And the rain still works it's magic, and I am baptized, washed clean, able to start over, fresh, clean, a new beginning.
It has never, ever failed me.
And I am filled with gratitude.
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