A Difference of Degree

A Difference of Degree

Midsummer heat stirred thick moisture into the air and watched it blow about, whipped by an artless wind until it fell back to earth in fits and starts—leaping in mad frenzies, then gushing without warning. The river bank began to give way; a saturated chunk the size of a watermelon broke free. By the time murky swirls ate the clod of mud, five more jagged lengths of root- and worm-threaded soil had fallen. The curve of the river’s bend deepened. Tall grass on the bank lay flat. The air pressure dropped, settled into ravines that snuck through the mountains, pushing more wet warmth upward, feeding the storm. A clutch of aspens quickened. The rain was not gentle.

Every living thing and each inanimate soul knew, and the woman knew—at this rate, flooding was a possibility. Water would move the land. Pathways would shift. Trees would fall, making bridges that crisscross rivers. This night was not a frolic or a dream. Thunder snaked through the sky. The solstice crowned itself in lightning, illuminating answers to questions no one asked.

The woman picked her way forward on an ancient log that angled, over swelling water, from a shelf of rock to the collapsing bank on the other side. When her bridge fell into the current, she turned, forced back, and her life changed. Questions she had tried to ignore glowed beneath her bare feet; the smoothly worn tree trunk, with its knotty eyes, stared up at her. The lightning flared.

What would the man say? Would he see the change in her and feel her dizzy mix? Joy… Wonder… A fearsome thump of inevitability. Would he be lured into tingling curiosity or turn away? The lightning ceased. The sky went dark. Uncertainty crushed her answers and she felt the blur—midnight tossed her human feels with tricky magic. Shakespeare’s words hit hard. “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

She wanted this, didn’t she? Had she invited it? That thought vanished with a clap of thunder that felt so close it might have come from deep within the river that slapped her toes. No. There had been no invitation. It was like the flood racing to be born. There had been rain. Too much rain; droplets as big as goose eggs had clung to one another, formed a deluge. There had been joy. Too much joy; two bodies had clung to one another, becoming three. That’s how it happened. Like the weather. Lightning struck again and burned her questions into cinders.

The heartbeat that she barely felt grew stronger. Her left bank caved, dropping a shard of the dream that was her private land into the roaring river. The water accepted it, loosening mud from her roots so that they floated freely in the current, tearing at the structure that bound together her sense of self, deepening her bend and changing her path. She settled, then, on the right bank, where the vines make softer, fruitier wine. She would be a mother.

Like a thousand generations of mothers before her, she was excited and amazed—a new heartbeat tapped on the part of her own heart that she hadn’t known was there—and she surrendered her body to fate.

Without invitation, it had happened, and she tiptoed her way through it, barefoot, until the baby’s eyes fixed on hers and their fingers touched. In the sometimes-churn of resignation, the woman felt the mix whittle at her banks; she feared the floods, a deluge that might overwhelm her weak shores and fail to keep the river in its banks.

Until, on another singularly starlit night, after the longest day of the year, she took her growing child by the hand to wander the woods under the peachy glow of a sinking sun, and she felt it again. The quickening. The beating of another heart. She heard the rain sing in a sweet drizzle, tamping down the heat. Sheet lightning brightened the horizon. A rumble barely whispered. A siren’s call.

She had no question except one wordless ask: How am I so lucky? The mother and child crossed the river on a log that had enormous girth and limbs for gripping. Its eyes followed the two and it bent branches along the way into handholds at a height that the child could reach.

Like a thousand generations of mothers before her, she knew instantly. It had not happened to her—it had happened each to the other. The seed in her belly had answered an invitation as old as life itself. She picked her child up by the arms and dipped splayed toes into the river to be anointed. The water warmed to send comfort to them as they crossed the log together, little feet planting just inside the deft steps of its mother.

Scientific theories speak to the difference between humans and the rest of the world, but when lightning illuminates a massive tree-bridge, there are simpler answers. Water never stops rushing to the sea. Grass reaches, always, for sky and throws its seeds to the wind. Each aspen sends itself under the soil to manifest as a throng in a grove. Humans nest scenarios to envision every possibility, and just so all creatures, the mud and rocks, the water and wind have their own kind of knowing. There is only a difference of degree.

The woman put a hand on her belly and gripped her child’s small hand. She anticipated the outcome. She knew the man would be filled with joy, and fear. The confusion would move the air in miraculous ways to paint midsummer sunsets and send quenching rains. Floods would forge new pathways, free their roots, and lay fertile silt in the valleys of their minds.

She knew he loved her in each moment while her voice merged with those of a thousand generations of mothers and with the wet pattering stillness of the woods, singing in exultation, in these mad moments on the longest midnights of every year, when magic answers.