He is five, a hooded smudge of color trudging through the deep, vast white. I watch from the window, watch the golden lab spring behind him, ahead of him, beside. Malakai turns sharp to the north, tromping out into the field’s markerless sea of white. His hood turns to see: is Boaz following? Then a sharp turn to the west, and a glance to see if canine is tracking. Together the two zigzag across winter and I am happily mesmerized, warm inside, watching my boy with his dog out in the quiet wonder of it all.
Life flushes his nose, cheeks, with flaming warmth when he slips back inside, to rub his hands by the fire. Words, fragments of stories, tumble out of him, and I nod, trying to etch him in my mind like this (do all mothers do this? Memorize moments?) For some reason, I don’t trust ink and paper, computerized sensors of cameras. I carve it down in synapses and neurons— in heart fibers– – before he, who he is now, is gone, mellow voice turned deep, untried hands grown long and deeply lined, trenched with days.
I wrap up this flashing instant in knitted afghan, he and his little sister with her cloud of blonde, and pull them close to read Richard Scary before the flickering hearth. On illustrated page, Huckle the Cat, is dreaming of what he will be when he grows up: a pilot? A farmer? An apple-pie tester? Malakai thumps my arm, words surging, “Mom, Mom, I’d like to be an apple-pie tester when I grow up. But I can’t, because I am going to be a farmer. But I am not going to be a farmer, because know what? I am not going to get any bigger ‘cause I just want to be your little kid, and you can be the big Mama. Shalom, will you stay the baby for Mama?”
The sweet pain of love wells, a smile breaking through its aching blur. How did he know how time stings a mother’s heart? How I keep reaching through its relentless current to pluck out a moment, to hold, to own, now, bringing it close to lips, to breathe life into it, to keep the now forever alive, refusing to let it become but a memory, stiff and lifeless. But all is wet, slippery, elusive….gone and carried on. Malakai and Shalom slide off the couch and chatter away into imaginary places. I catch nothing. Ever. Foaming, roaring, racing, the torrent sweeps all away, and I am left with river stones, memorials worn smooth by all that once rushed by.
Come night, embryonic man growing in little boy’s body lays head on pillow, pulling quilts tight under chin. I press lips and heart to his forehead, and Malakai whispers, “Remember, I am not going to get much bigger? Just a bit, but I am staying little, so I can be your boy. And you can be my big Mama.” He snuggles into night and dreams.
I sit in the dark, watching him breathe, and how a whorl wisps at his temple, a tendril of his initial halo of curls. Out his window, the moon bulges like a luminous woman, full with child. I wonder if I can forever stay Big Mama, netting, capturing time.
In the gray blue of next dawn, we rouse boys for barn chores, turning on lights, gently calling names. Like disoriented moths drawn to light, they stumble into the kitchen, eyes squinting, hands stuffed in jean pockets. I tousle a sleepyhead, teasing, “I think you grew an inch in the night, Levi. And your brother caught it too—look how long and lean he is.” Darryl playfully pokes Caleb, Joshua, handing them their coats for the run to the barn.
And I grab a river stone.
“Remember, Darryl? When we’d wake up those babies and prop them beside the heat register, bundle them up in snowsuits, pulling their boots and hats on? Then make that dash through the drifts and cold to the barn, to begin. And you’d set those two little boys in a feed cart, to play, while we chored?” Their figures stretch in the doorway. “Just look at them now.”
Caleb extends to Darryl’s shoulder, Joshua up to his chest. That baby and toddler are molting, emerging, growing into near men. Darryl shakes his head, chuckling dismay. I feel his worn workhand rest on my shoulder, steadying me in the rushing current.
I ease down into the water. And let go. Malakai can grow up. Big Mama can become Old Mama. God who is the spring of the river of life, He has plans, places, purposes that time’s current will carry these young persons to — off to destinations, to new skin, to kingdom dreams. The water cycle streams: from Him, through Him and to Him are all things. If I dammed up the river, froze time solid, wouldn’t these becoming people become mortuary specimens, icy, petrified, set?
Malakai wanders sleepily from the dark hallway into the kitchen light. I embrace his slender frame, feeling ribs, warm skin, little chest pressed close. Am I dreaming or does he smell aquatic, like a newborn wrinkled from the waters?
And I whisper…
Run with the river, son. She’s flowing us Home.
Father? I let go. Flow us Home.
