the river

ben and i are leaving for san diego in a few short days. i cannot wait to drive across this country. my life is on pause for this and it's a hard thing to explain to people. they say you can't live someone else's dream. and i think that's true, but i think you can hold hands with it; just until it feels better about leaving everything its known up till now.

this trip is the hand on the back of the bike. it is the afternoon you trusted enough to pedal long after your sibling let go.

we spend the night before we leave looking at the full moon from the balcony deck of our parent's small apartment. we talk about excitement, about fear, and expectations. i am surprised to find that most of ben's concerns are about mom and dad.
"i'm afraid that, like, i'll come back and i'll feel the same, but mom and dad will have aged and ..."
he trails off and i know his thought.
"i still feel young and i want to do things and what if i come back and they're ... older?"
his ever-optimistic heart keeps him from saying "too old." i am enough of a cynic to add it in my head, but, thank God, am i still not hard enough to be unaffected by it. i assure him that he'll change and slow too, but it is little comfort to him. and i realize he is his mother: eternally thinking and genuinely feeling twenty-one and untouchable. she never admits when she's sick and if and when she finally does, she can't understand it. like when ben broke his collar bone and he couldn't accept the limits it placed on him. it was the first time i think either of us realized he was getting older and things might have to change. things like playing hard, playing rough, and tackling guys younger than him. his body is slowly, but surely failing him. and when you face the breakdown of a twenty-seven year old body, you certainly have to face the breakdown of fifty-five and fifty-seven year old bodies. the creeping mortality of the ones we love most begins to sink and settle like sands in the riverbad we are ever trying to stir with the rapids of youth. rivers, turn streams, turn dry beds. and it is so hard to branch and run when your source is ebbing.