The River
To me, Mother was like weather, always there, everywhere, in the air I breathed, in my clothes and on my skin. There was no part of me that wasn’t also part of her. She did not mind if I ran through the scrubby woods that lay north and south of our house, if I climbed high trees and made secret hide-outs under the overhanging rocks. I could disappear for an entire day with a sandwich as long as I was home by dark.

But there was one forbidden place: the river.

So I went to the river. Down through the woods past the sliding slope, along a little trail some critters had made, not that I saw critters ever, not a fox, not a deer, not a coon, although I tried to walk like an Indian, pigeon-toed and silent. As far as I knew there were no wild animals anywhere in Connecticut.

The hill sloped down and down until it ended at the edge of the water. The winter river was nothing like the summer river. In January it stretched across half mile of broken, yellowed ice, moving with only a quiet hiss, an occasional splash.

At Middle Haddam, the tides pushed the river up every seven hours, then sucked it back down twenty-five miles to salt water at five or six knots. Great chunks of foot-thick, grimy ice, floes big as a house, shards small enough for a glass of iced tea, all ground and polished the tree roots along the banks.

Busted tree trunks and broken timbers raised their dead, black arms for a moment and disappeared under the surface in the inexorable current. The river was so huge, such a force that I watched it the way I watched the moon and stars. The river carried winter downstream according to some planetary laws I barely recognized, nothing to do with humans. I imagined the Arctic Sea, I imagined explorers with dogsleds.

The grinding flow moved on relentlessly and I, my cozy house, the village with its connected lives, its quarrels and summer picnics, my mother in the golden light of her kitchen, my dog wolfing his kibble, were all tiny, irrelevant.

Sometimes a tempting, flat, solid sheet of ice formed in a shallow cove . What about a crossing? Courageous people had crossed icy rivers, I had read that in books. Slaves. Yes, sometimes they died. Sometimes they made it to the other side, freedom, a new life.

I edged out onto the ice a few feet from the bank and stamped hard to test it. Sploosh, cold water filled my boot and I felt no bottom. I jerked back as if my mother had yanked me, found a dry spot to sit and pour the river out. The wind was cold on a wet sock on a dying afternoon. The evening settled on the river in a fine mist.

I headed back uphill, a blister forming on my wet heel. Back through the tangle of scrubby woods, barely able to find the little path. It didn’t matter, really, I just had to walk up and sooner or later I’d come to the two-lane road that paralleled the river. My house, which I had left behind on my great exploration, was rooted securely on that road, either to the right or left, so I could not get lost.

Would my mother know I had put my foot on the ice? I would tell her something else. I would tell her I had found another hide-away, one with vines. No, not vines, this was the wrong season for vines.

I would tell her I looked for an adventure but I hadn’t found it. Although I had. And I would find it again.