by John Holliger
Just one huge boulder, that’s all I needed; a ton or so of white granite with black sparkles and smooth, rounded edges between me and my mother. She was compulsively setting the picnic table out of her L. L. Bean wicker basket. It was filled with hundreds of perfect red this’s and that’s.
But at the Chimney Tops picnic area in the Great Smokie Mountains there were hundreds of my granite buddies five and seven feet high, granite brothers to climb up and slide down, up and down, catch my breath, then up again and down hard this time. The air was filled with boisterous white music. Most was from the thunderous water racing to the sea. But in some places the waters were meandering, or creating little dance-like moves, swishes, flips, double dips, twists and summersaults. Other waters were quietly sneaking by as silently as trout.
I just needed one boulder and I would be free. On the far side of just one boulder I could leave behind all time except this “Eternal Now.” All it took was one boulder to disappear from the sight of the time keeper, the master scheduler, the perfect table setter.
The chaotic music of water racing around a thousand boulders gave me my defense: “But I couldn’t hear you call me.” That worked only once.
My Dad sat on a high boulder facing away from the table setter. Now he could safely smile beneath his floppy hat without being detected. He loved to gaze at the mass of boulders and listen to the music.
When the table was properly, perfectly set, my Dad was sent forth post haste to find me. If asked, he would have told her that he moved slowly because his balance never properly returned after the polio. But I saw him grinning at me and I knew differently. He managed to play tennis pretty well.
I longed for this freedom on the other side of just one boulder, freedom from the parent who was tied up in knots, trying to make everything impossibly perfect; the red, wrinkle-free table cloth over the rough hewn forest table, the perfectly spaced red handled knives and forks and spoons and tumblers and napkins over the large table slots beneath, and absolutely, positively, not one fallen needle from the Hemlock tree over the forest table.
Her lifelong desire was for an impossibly perfect, errorless son, like that cut glass Waterford crystal bowl on her shiny cherry coffee table. My deepest longing was born on the far side of just one boulder; to join in the dance of the water, the swirls and flips and dips, letting my hand float in the flow of life. Every time the water jumps over several rocks, it leaps wholeheartedly and differently. Every single time. I want to dance wholeheartedly, so I return and return and return to this place where the water sings and dances, where the song and the dance are always new, never having been seen or heard before this swirl or that flip.
When I feel like I am dying, I know I need to return to the dancing waters… and just sit… and listen… and join in the dance that is… always. When I feel like I am dying, I turn to the ones I trust, and they say with loving amusement, in such pointed ways that I can’t help but laugh. “John, that river, that dance of tenderness and gentleness you long for, that’s you. It has always been flowing through you. When you feel you are dying, return and return and return to where the dance is, and sit and listen.” As long as the water speaks I want to listen and as long as it dances I want to be in its flow.
My mother never found contentment in the drama and fantasy of her perfect life. Just as she compulsively set a perfect table in a forest, she did not recognize the tender love and gentle touch of her son in all her 85 years. And I, later in life, realized her tornado of fear and worry was three generations old. One day, decades later, I had become separate enough to see this tornado of fear beside me as I drove the car, and there, I saw for the first time, a glimpse of how small she was and how huge the fears were that held her hostage.
As she carefully picked each tiny hemlock needle from the red cloth, I was coming alive outside of time, in the most beautiful chaos I have ever seen and touched and loved, jumping, leaping, laughing, swirling, gurgling. And all I needed was one huge boulder.
Copyright John Holliger 2013