Down By the River

Down By the River

A river has long been like a living creature to me, ever since I was a child. It moves constantly, changing over time, deeper and wider in rain, more shallow and thinner in long periods of dry weather.

I grew up in the countryside, far from town and distant from school, driven to and from the place by one of my parents whose turn it was. I never had friends come over to my house, and I lived too far from schoolmates to visit them when school was out. But I could visit my river friend every day. I told it my secret joys and pains, and knew it would not respond with negative judgement. We would flow together. It’s ripples were like words of encouragement to me. And I always have five pebbles from the river bed in my left pocket wherever I go. In that way the two of us, human and river are always together.

I sometimes make decisions based on what I called ‘river choices.’ I put a stick in the water upstream from a small island in the middle of the river. I would make up alternative decisions, one that would be followed if the stick floated past the left side, another if it floated past the right side. I was careful to put the stick in the exact middle of the river, or I would be cheating. This practice helped me decide when I was in grade six whether I would go for a tryout for the school’s soccer or baseball team. The soccer option was the left side, and baseball was on the right side. I became one of the leading scorers on our soccer team, and our baseball team seriously sucked. The river had chosen well, as usual. I thanked it at the end of the soccer season. Neither family nor people on the team knew why I chose soccer. It was not something that I wanted to talk about. I knew that my parents would just shake their heads if I gave them an honest answer. As I heard one night when I got up to take a pee, my mom said to my dad, “Sometimes I worry about Jason. He spends so much time down by the river, not with friends I really don’t think that he has.”I stood outside the bathroom door, waiting to hear what dad would say in reply. He said nothing, which was typical. He did not like to speak criticism out loud even when he opposed something. You could only see it on his face.

In my first year of high school we took “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. Of course, that led some of the smart asses, both male and female to begin calling me “Huck”, as my time by the river was well-known to kids who had been in class with me the year before. Our teacher that year had made us make a presentation concerning what we like to do when we were not at school.

Now I am working fulltime. It means that I am at the river less often from Monday to Friday, particularly in the winter months. I make up for it on weekends. When there is a surface of ice and snow, there are no more river decisions with floating wooden sticks. But I still enjoy the company of the frozen river. It is a little scary testing the ice for walking on, but it also is something of a challenge filled with excitement.

I still live with my parents and have no future wife in sight. Where I work almost everyone is a male. I know that my parents are concerned about my single nature. I once heard my father say in what he believed was his ‘quiet voice’, “Why doesn’t he just marry the river.” His one channel of criticism was sarcasm. He wouldn’t have said what he did if he knew I could hear his words. I can imagine the look on his face

Two Strangers By the River

When I approached the river I saw two strangers by the river, one a woman and the second was obviously her dog, a rather large labradoodole. The dog was standing on the island that determines my decisions. The woman smiled when she saw me. She asked me “Can you help me with my dog, Pathfinder? He seems to be afraid to cross the river back to the shore. I am afraid to cross the rive as I believe that we both would sink into the river and maybe freeze ourselves to death.”

I said that I would certainly help her. I first told her that it was fortunate that Pathfinder was standing where he was, as it was an island under the ice and snow. He could not possibly sink into the river there”. I received a big smile in reply.

Then I asked her:

“Do you have any treats to tempt him with?”

“No, unfortunately I gave all of them to him before we got here.”

“Okay, then I am going to try to cross the river to the island. Neither side of the island is very wide. I know this river very well. We are like friends who have grown up together.”

So I walked very carefully to the island and patted Pathfinder on the head. He wagged his tail, and when I turned around to head back to where I came from, he followed me there. The woman gave both me and the dog a big hug. I received the first one, the longest I had ever received from anyone who was not my mother.

She spoke up and said, ‘I think that we went to the same school at the same time. I just remembered hearing our fellow students calling you “Huck. It was short for Huckleberry Finn, I was told, because you and Huckleberry both spent a long time by a river.”

“Guilty as charged”

We walked together to her apartment building only a mile or so away from the river. She told me that it was the only one in town that allowed dogs for renters. She asked me to come into her apartment for some coffee and doughnuts. I, of course, said ‘yes’ with great enthusiasm, and not just because of the food. As I went to leave, I gave her one of the river stones that travelled with me everywhere. I believe that she knew what that meant.

When I returned home some time past supper, my parents were very glad to hear my story. When dad asked me whether this was the beginning of a first ‘serious relationship’. I smiled and said ‘yes, definitely, except for the river’. All three of us smiled at the same time. It had been a long time since that had last happened.