Black Ice

Its always there, the black ice. Not the kind that lies beneath the pretty illusion of a fresh, white snowfall, but the kind seen from below, the kind that grows above the unwitting swimmer and traps her beneath its unyielding, opaque weight. I swim for months, in this case for years on the warm, buoyant current of illusions and small consolations and then look up to see that there is no way to surface. There is really no way to break through and breathe, no point in battering my head against the wall above my head. I am down, staying down, unable even to feel the tears that leak and become cheap as they mix with the surrounding salt water of despair, self-pity, and resignation. I am down.

 

I ruminate now, grasping onto a scrap of poetry or a song lyric and repeating it to myself like a mantra, as if turning it over in my brain will trigger some shift of neurons and make me happy, capable, and powerful again. I have no power at the moment, no charm, nothing much to offer. I have become a ghost as transparent as the water of misery that surrounds me, moving unseen through the world and hoping for nothing more than the ability to maintain, compensate, appear to be swimming vigorously and purposefully. I don’t want to be seen like this, and I keep thinking that in a day or so it will end. I will feel a rush of interest in some snippet of life – the comfort of a purring cat, the beauty of a strain of Brahms, the domestic siren song of freshly washed sheets or a loaf of bread. Now I feel nothing; I am down.

 

I want someone to save me, fix me, and show me the night sky with no obscuring scrim of ice. I know, though, that there is really nothing but the beating of my own heart, and the broken machine that is my brain. There is no rescuer, no outside source of warmth and safety once a person is an adult. There is no one with me as I float below the surface unseen, unmoored, submitting to the motion of the dark, cold water. There is no one standing on the shore calling to me, chartering a boat to find me, or bending down to peer through the ice to catch a glimpse of my pale skin and the hair that floats free from gravity in oddly beautiful patterns. Connection, compassion, community are all illusions. The people of the world, of my life, are thinking about work, and supper, vacations and television shows. I remember, keenly, living among them and navigating sure-footed across dry land.

 

I am going to stop fighting for a bit, use no more energy kicking up towards the ice to see if I am strong enough to make a hole and crawl to safety. I will float, merely noting the salt tears, the heart that beats too fast, and the emotions muted to near silence by the enveloping water. I will let myself float gently to the bottom and rest there, noting the sand beneath me, and the roots of the graceful, waving flora. I will conserve, not resist, make only the smallest movements and try to slow even the flow of my blood until the time I am ready to kick hard, push up, through, and out into the world above the ice. For now, still, small and invisible, I am down.

 

Down From The Curb

We are walking out of the restaurant into the dark, arctic chill of a Michigan night. My parents, each holding a cane in one hand, join hands to support each other as they step up onto the curb, cross the sidewalk island separating restaurant from parking lot, and then step off onto the lower ground of the lot. He is on his way to the hospital for tests; a recent course of antibiotic treatments has not cleared up the infection in his leg, and there is pain where there should not be, and swelling. There is talk of cellulitis, osteomyelitis, amputation. Terrible things. I will drive my mother home to spend a rare night in the house alone, and he will sleep in a narrow bed in a room with too much light, too much noise, strange smells and air thick with anxiety and imbalance.

 

Absurdly, as the three of us stand on the curb before stepping down, I remember when I was little and they would swing me down from other curbs in other places, one on each side of me, each holding one of my small hands in theirs. “One, two three, wheeeeeeeeeeee!” they would say as they lifted me up, and out, and down to safety. I was safe, I was their little girl. I wanted, as they lowered themselves gingerly and wobbling, to push time back, thrust myself in the middle and demand that they “wheeee” me to the icy black asphalt. I am not ready for this night, this reality as cold and unyielding as the air rushing under my coat. I am not ready to be outside their protection, to be the protector, to be the one with the steady hand and strong arms. I still need them to be my parents.

 

Earlier, in the restaurant, my father had given my son custody of his cane until he was out of the hospital. He explained that it had been his uncle’s trench cane in World War I, and that it had at one time had a spike on the bottom to find the wooden planks beneath the mud of the trenches. Maybe it was World War II. What mattered was Sam’s rapt attention, the passing of the story, and the sense that my father was not just making a temporary gift, but believed he might not be coming home. I couldn’t speak after that, holding myself together with the kind of brutal self-talk that is the duct tape fix of open emotional wounds.

 

They hugged goodbye, and my father gave my mother his wallet for safekeeping, and his keys. He told her he’d call as soon as he was settled in his room at the hospital. He helped her into the front seat of my car, then walked slowly and haltingly, without the help of his cane, to his car. We drove apart from each other and I began to cry, silently, blinking hard so that I could make out the edges of the road and the colors of the lights. I will work hard to make it all fit, the goodness of being, for so long, their beloved child, and the understanding that a change in form does not mean the loss of that goodness. I may weep, and ache and feel a cold wind blow through my center, but I will always have everything that they have given me; a “wheeeeee” of life’s inherent wonder that comes no longer from their hands, but from my soul.