Jumping Into the Green
“The river will teach you your name.” Bella Webber, Riverstar.
Six Mile, Illinois River.
The second week of July, in the White Whale, my daughters and I travel south to my parents’ home in southern Oregon. It’s been a hard year. A quiet year. A year I no longer remembered how to sing along to the radio. But we made it through. And the sun remains. The trees are as green. The Oregon sky is the same blue. The river waits for us.
On the way, somewhere south of Olympia, I sing to the radio. Quiet.
A few days later, we dress in our swimsuits and go to one of the deepest holes on the Illinois River called Six Mile. The skinny, winding road, built into the side of the mountain, is paved now. Years ago, when I was a child, it was a one-lane dirt road, so thin if you met another car along the way you had to drive backwards until you found a spot wide enough to pull over and let the other pass.
There are several things a good river hole must have, I tell the girls on the way. Deep water. Rocks to jump from. A sandy beach. Six Mile has all three. I point to the canyon below where the Illinois River twists and turns. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
They crane their necks to look. They agree but without my fervor. I want to explain to them that the smell of the sun on rock, the feel of sand between my toes, the rush of river water on my skin, formed who I am. I want them to know me. But they are children, destined only to see their mother as a mommy not person. So I remain silent.
Once there, I wade into the water. My feet have grown tender in the decades I’ve lived in the city. I slip walking on the rocks and fall, stubbing my toe. The cold water is shocking on my hot skin.
There is a photo of me taken by my Aunt Mary when I was eight or nine, leaping into the air from a rock a foot under the surface of the river. My aunt captured the exact moment between jump and plunge, my knees curled, my body clenched as I sailed through the air.
Now, I look for the rock but cannot locate it. There are more rocks under the surface of the water than I remember. Perhaps the landscape has changed over the years? Everything changes, I think. Even the river. The river’s currents continue their destiny, molding rocks and banks and foliage until it empties into the ocean. It’s inevitable, these changes. My Aunt Mary is no longer my aunt. She and my uncle divorced years ago. She’s an old lady now. And I’m a middle-aged woman with two little girls.
Emerson plays in the sand, building a dam where Six Mile Creek enters the Illinois River. Ella plunges in and swims across the river to a large rock covering the opposite bank. I take in a deep breath and swim to her. We tread water, looking up at thirty-foot rock jutting from the riverbank.
“I want to jump from there,” says Ella, pointing to a point half way up.
Of course you do, I think. Out loud I say, “Let’s do it.”
We begin to climb. It’s slippery. I tell myself not to look down. I remind myself I jumped from this rock hundreds of times as a child and teenager. Still, I call out to Ella to make her way with care. As I work my way to the top, fear makes my heart beat a little faster than it should. But I grow more confident as my muscle memory remembers how to grasp the nooks and ridges with my fingers and toes, until I reach the top.
When we reach the top, like lizards sunning in the afternoon heat, we sprawl on the rock. The sun is a healing balm, like memories that remind you who you are. The rock is hot through my new swimsuit.
I think of the famous southern writer Pat Conroy. He says he cannot stop writing about his family. I cannot stop writing about the river. Perhaps it’s because it taught me my name, or that all my best memories are beside it or in it. It’s part of who I am. Regardless of the years, I’m still the girl who stood on this same rock and let my eyes wander up and down the river as far as I could see, dreaming dreams of the unscathed.
The river haunts me. All these years later I knit words together to tell stories, my story, all the stories of the river.
A few minutes later, I stand in a curve of the rock that’s like a small seat, looking into the water. Like a little bear cub, on all fours, Ella makes her way to me.
We peer into the water together, so deep it’s the color of an emerald. “I’m afraid to jump,” says Ella.
“Me too.”
If you’re afraid, it means you should to it. I think this but do not say it. She’s heard it before. She might roll her eyes and say, “I know, Mom.” I don’t need to say it again because she does know it, way down deep in her muscle memory, where it counts.
“Let’s do it,” I say.
“Let’s do it,” she answers back.
We jump into the green.
I remember how.
The river reminds me of my name.
Ella knows the rush of the water now, the smell of sun on rock. She’s looked up and down the river as far as she can see and dreamed the dreams of the unscathed. Might this day be something of me to take with her when she’s grown? This I cannot know, cannot dictate. This isn’t even mine to say. She will have landscapes of her own that will remind her of her name.
On the way home to my parents’, smelling of the river, I sing along to the radio. Loud.
