I broke one of my own rules when I headed out for my walk last evening down what folks where we live call "the Intervale" (a wonderfully archaic word for valley). I had my son, Wyatt, with me. Since Wyatt doesn't talk yet, walking with him is more like walking with a dog than like walking with another person -- a comparison which, as will soon be clear, I mean as a compliment. Wyatt and I are used to being alone together. We've been that way for longer than he's been alive. We are aware of each other -- warmth, heartbeat, movement, the ebb and flow of physical needs -- but our communion is without words, without even the internal chatter we call "thinking." We have a few months left -- 2 or 3 at the most -- of this perfect, wordless companionship, before we will be two separate consciousnesses, two talkers, and we will not be able to be alone together anymore.
Of course, I will celebrate Wyatt's learning to talk. In other moods I stare at him and mouth over and over again the word "Mama," waiting for the magical moment he will name me and we will fall into a whole new relation. But yesterday, I recognized our aloneness-together as its own kind of rare gift.
We made our way down to the Temple Steam, and looked out at the mountains, and I can't tell you what happened then because it happened outside of words: it happened between me and Wyatt and the stream and the mountains and none of us said anything.
I am a literature professor: I am a word person. But sometimes, like yesterday, I want to remember that I am also an animal, a participant in nature, an element in an ecosystem. I want to feel that "infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me." At such moments, I, like Thoreau, have to turn away -- not so much from people as from words.
Later, though, I want to write about it.
This is beautiful. =)
ReplyDelete