The thing about a kid’s birthday is that it is also a mother’s birthing day.
The existence of your child changes you. If a mother is a river, a child is a new stone being laid in a river bed. The mother now courses differently. Sometimes we know their existence within us and never know it outside of us. Maybe those are pebbles others can’t see from the surface. They still change the mother.
Anyways, when we mark the time of our children’s lives, we inevitably mark the time of our own. Separate entities, shaping one another.
We see our waters flowing across our children and we think; I want it to be cleaner, gentler. But we know sometimes it has to rush at them, debris have to crash into them. We pray for sun and for rain, depending.
I don’t know how a river rock becomes a river, but it happens all the time. Maybe there are tiny worlds within each world. Rivers within rocks within rivers.
Anyways, 17 years ago, I became a river.
