The water before me is dancing with millions of tiny shimmering diamonds. I’ve always believed it is magical. I know some will say it is just – what is it - refracted light, bent light – something scientific. I’ve never had much use for “scientific.” I’ve never seen the world in harsh straight lines or stark blacks and grays or in rules. I’ve always seen the world in soft swirls, in waves, in ebbs and flows, in bright colors, in maybes. In magic.
I prefer the world of diamonds dancing on the water, in Peter Pan and Wendy, in fairy dust, in Jack Frost. Oh, how I still love Jack Frost! I still remember when I first met Jack Frost on one bitterly cold, wintry Kansas morning, when the world was covered in glistening white and everything took on a fairy-tale glow, and he had left his frosted etchings on the window beside my bed. I remember my mother telling me how his artwork was always different, always beautiful. And magical, I thought.
I am almost as old now as my mother was when she died and I am acutely aware that I didn’t really know her at all. I am aware that I am unlike her in so many ways. I have spent my life like a butterfly in a chrysalis, trying to break my way out of the cocoon, always beating my wings furiously in an effort to breath, to stay alive, to overcome, to become, to dream.
This is my brother, Buddy. He is smarter and stronger, though, than I, more disciplined, more forgiving, surer of his place in the world, more grounded.
Buddy was always the leader. He was my best friend, back then, my hero and my greatest tormentor. We had our moments then of comradery, back before the darkness descended that ripped us from each other and forever changed who we would become.
We’ve never relived those dark hours. I’ve never articulated how sorry I am for the beatings he endured and for how helpless I was to protect him, or even to at least endure them alongside him. I know the pain, the hurt, the alienation, the self-doubt it must have cost him. Afterwards, I silently endured slugs from him, thinking it somehow helped to ease the pain he felt. I shared all that inner torturous pain with him, the injustice, the red-hot anger, and the fear. Perhaps our destinies were forged there in those moments in that fiery furnace, burning into our souls. We were the ones who came out on the other side, the ones to see the light, to see the beauty. To see the magic.
Now, I am once again the follower, as I follow my brother, traversing our way along the rocky path that winds around trees and large craggy rocks, climbing up an embankment and then dipping back down again. We hike in the silence and in the shadow of huge chiseled, jagged rock crests and cliffs far above us, populated with pine trees taller than my Kansas upbringing could ever imagine a tree could grow. I feel like I have always been trailing after him, always trying to catch up. But there was a time when he left me to navigate the rocky paths alone. We have not always been as close as we were in the beginning, but today I am once again eager and thankful to be in his shadow.
Up ahead the path crests and I watch as he disappears down the other side. There, he stands beside a small stream, whose water bubbles and churns over rocks and the sun starts the diamonds to dancing on the surface. The sound the water makes as it does its own dance has always made me feel peaceful, settled inside, a catharsis for my soul. Like magic.
Buddy walks now with sandaled feet into the water.
“It’s not cold. Come on in.” He’s trying to trick me. It’s cold, having just coming down from the mountains.
Our dark pasts have bound us together as surely as they have been the wedge that separates us. But I think, now, that the bond of love just maybe goes deeper, straight to the soul.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” I finally say it. It is all I can say.
“You just have to learn to move on,” he says.
“And I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time before you left us. I was trying so hard to get here.”
“I know. I knew you were coming.” To him that was enough, to know that I loved him enough to try to get to his side. It was not enough for me. I will always regret not getting to him in time; he will always just remember I was coming.
Today I have on my traveling hat. To me it just means adventure, the journey, of things yet to come, of the beauty yet to behold.
“I was trying to get here to give you my traveling hat. I thought you could use it for your journey. It’s so you will always remember where home is, where there is always someone waiting for you.”
“It’s not too late,” and he snatched it from my head and puts it on his. He then takes off his faded gray hoodie, the one with paint splotches on it from some of his art projects. He hands it to me. As I wrap it around me, he says, “You can wrap up in it, and it will always keep you warm, and you will always be safe.”
He touches the rim of the hat (his hat, my hat) and I wrap the jacket a little snugger around me and with that he is gone. Like magic.
There are seasons in our lives, seasons when we are young with a full of life, full of dreams. There are seasons when we are lost and have to traverse the path alone. There are seasons when we have losses is so heavy, we have to learn to breathe again, to find our faith, to find our hope.
Just as I know Buddy does not need my hat to continue on his journey or to find his way back home and his jacket will not really protect me, I also know that some people bind themselves to tightly to us and to our hearts that the bond can never be undone, and we are never apart.