BIG FEELS ABOUT HOLY WATER:
This summer I felt a desperate call to the water. Impulsive. Insatiable. I have to be in it. I must be submerged. I need to feel covered and carried.
I have jumped into water that is layered green with floating algae, water that is grabbing at my feet with soppy, silty bottoms, and water that is cold, ice cold. In October, we went canoeing to see the fall colours at a favourite lake. I didn’t plan to jump in, but like all the other times, I couldn’t help myself. We banked the canoe to cook our sausages and before the fire was cracking, I had stripped to my t-shirt, dunked my head, and was floating belly up looking at blurred prairie sky (speckled with falling leaves coloured yellow, coloured orange).
As a kid, I failed the same level of swimming lessons three years in a row. Each report card home said something to the effect of, “You tried so hard, Natahna! Maybe next year you’ll learn how to float!”
I’ve been working on floating ever since. I even went to the famous salty lake in Saskatchewan and sank to the bottom.
This is the first year that I have ever floated easily.
I visited a friend in July at her family’s cabin set on the edge of a northern lake (found at the end of broken highways and dirt roads). We floated all afternoon. Now I tell anyone who will listen, “One day I will live in a cabin on a lake and swim every morning and every night.”
I think the earth is asking me to be a baby again; calling me into the bodies of water, the womb of the earth.
I think I need to be a baby again.
To be comforted and cared for like my life depends on it.
I’ve been contemplating the difference between depression and grief lately. I’m not sure which comes first—chicken or egg—but I think the part of me that has been explaining away this feeling as depression is denying the part of me that has lost a lot of people all at once for reasons equally simple and perplexing.
The people I have lost are the same ones who whisper and worry amongst themselves that I have lost god too.
This is confusing to me. How can I be lost if god is everywhere? How can god be missed if they are in everything?
Still, there is a part of me that wants to play along. Fine. Take what you want. Keep your idea of the divine that has never left the shallow end.
They forget that holy water cannot be contained to small bowls guarded by the solemn few.
Even now, as I am tucked away for winter in my home that is perched on a landlocked iceberg, the water seeks me out by finding its way into my bathtub on hair washing days. In between shampoo and conditioner, I feel the steady beating of my baby heart and pay attention to how I am being cradled by water that came from somewhere real.
Talk soon,
Natahna
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The Recommends: The collection of short stories, Salt Slow by Julia Armfield.