Is It The Same?

We Never Step Into the Same River Twice

Dear Friend,

Our days repeat. The routines we fall into, we need them don’t we? Ever since we were kids routines soothed us with something familiar, something dependable. Humans, we like to know where we are.

Then there are times when life draws back the curtain just enough so we peek into the vastness of the universe. A peek is enough.

One spring I went to the river with my Dad. He’d bought fishing nets for my brother and me, bamboo poles, with plastic nets, one red, one yellow. A jam jar a piece, we had no idea what we were looking for in the grassy waters of the Derwent.

Thinking of it, our Dad was so young then. Not even thirty, with his two boys. We didn’t know we’d move away. We didn’t know that away existed. All we had then was the moment. Somehow we managed to catch a fish. A tiny brown fish we named Brownie.

Brownie’s day took a turn for the worse when we showed up.

Do fish sleep?

At any rate he woke that morning to sunshine filtering through the trees on the river bank. Wild and free he slipped and wriggled through the reeds and the mud, not much more than a pebble.

I’ve never wanted to catch a fish, or a crab. My heart sank as Dad scooped Brownie out of his freedom into the captivity that would seal his fate. Caught with my net, whisked into my jar, suddenly I found myself responsible for the incarceration of another life.

I wished we could put him back where he belonged, but Dad was so excited and kids back then, we weren’t burdened by choice. Brownie was coming home with us. I didn’t expect him to survive the drive home, but he did.

We put him in an old tupperware biscuit barrel. Mam bought a tiny little stone bridge. That was it for Brownie. Swimming round and round. Sometimes under the bridge. Sometimes touching his nose on the opaque plastic boundary of his new life.

A wild thing entombed in plastic.

One day I came in to my first apology. Brownie has jumped the wall. He drowned on the living room carpet. Mam was teary eyed. She felt guilty. It wasn’t the first time Brownie had jumped, but this time she wasn’t there to lift him back into his plastic prison.

I felt bad the way he’d died, and relieved he was free.

The river, runs to the sea. The sea becomes the clouds. The clouds become the rivers.

How fleeting is our time on this planet.

When I think of Brownie now, I think of the liquid light of the stream where we found him and I leave him there. No plastic nets. I look up at the wavy forms of Kevin and Dad and me and I swim on. Fresh water, sunshine, the green of living things.

Something new.

A smile.

A moment of peace.

A release.

To be held by love.

A wish for good things.

Thinking of you.

Till tomorrow.

Love

Mikey.