I can hear my brother moving around downstairs in the kitchen. The dogs toenails are making clicking sounds on the tiles, and the cats are meowing for their breakfast. My brother’s deep voice murmurs softly to them. It’s early, still dark outside. I’m sitting at my nephew’s desk, writing these words. Through the window I can see the water shining in the blackness. The same water where my brother took me paddle boarding yesterday. I had followed him down to the dock, the dogs whining behind us. The invisible fence stopped them from following. We lifted the boards from their stands and placed them in the water alongside the dock. My brother handed me a paddle. “You’ve paddled before?” He asked me.
“Once, on the lake with Maude,” I said. But this was Puget Sound.
“Strap that thing on your ankle,” he instructed. Then he stepped lightly onto his board and paddled around the other side of the dock, out of sight. I gingerly stepped on my board with knees bent, the transfer of my weight rocking it slightly from side to side. My toes gripped the board and my body felt tense, uncertain. I slowly straightened up, exhaling as if doing a yoga pose, until the board quieted. Then I paddled slowly around the dock. My brother was close to shore, uncharacteristically waiting for me. “Turn your paddle around,” he said. And with that his only correction, he pulled silently away. Watching his tall frame hardly move as he paddled, his head cocked slightly to one side, I was suddenly transported back to childhood. To the listening. When we would move slowly through the forest so as not to startle woodland creatures. My brother was always in front of me then too, as elder, if only by two years. We explored together often, by default as much as anything else. Neither of us had friends that understood our need for solitude. We could be alone, together. The natural world was a blanket around us.
But here on the water, my brother had waited. He didn’t ever look back at me, he didn’t need to, he was listening to the sound of my paddle displacing water. Maybe he used to listen for me in the forest too, to the sound of twigs snapping under my small feet. I was many paddle lengths behind him now, and still he hadn’t turned. But he knew exactly where I was.
We passed several docks, some with boats up on blocks for the winter. Gulls screeched and dove. “Look there, ten o’clock,” my brother called back to me, finally breaking the silence. A young seal popped its head up, gazing at us curiously. My brother whistled softly, reassuring the creature. I could feel the same magic, that rush of wonder bursting through me, as when we stumbled upon a fawn in the forest as children. We paddled by a man on the end of his dock, stowing gear. “Rick,” my brother nodded at the man.
“Whitney,” Rick replied.
“Any fish today?” My brother asked.
“Not many. But we saw four whales,” Rick said in a more animated voice. “One big one.” That caught my brother’s attention and he turned his board toward Rick’s dock, finally allowing me a chance to catch up. My bare feet stung from the cold water dripping from my paddle as I crossed it from side to side. I didn’t dare move my head to look at Rick, focused on keeping my balance.
“You have fifteen minutes in this water before dying of exposure,” my brother had reminded me before we set out. “Try not to get wet.”
I floated up near him while he spoke with Rick. He didn’t introduce me. He would have felt no need. My brother saved his words for situations that required them. I could feel Rick’s eyes, curious, on my back as we paddled away. We were crossing the lagoon at the shortest point, heading towards the shore of Tanglewood Island. I could tell my brother didn’t want me in open water, despite the easy paddling, and barely a ripple on the surface. I would have scoffed at him as a girl. But we’re both approaching 60 now. We’d lost our father, and our mother was declining. Children of the forest, of the lakes and rivers, feel wild things die in their hands. We knew how fragile life could be. How brief.
As we rounded the island, past the lighthouse, my brother pointed at the channel with his paddle.
“That’s where we see whales,” he said. We were a few hundred yards from his dock, his house. And then I understood why he stayed. There’s no running from grief. Like these trees, this water, and these creatures, it will be part of us forever. No matter how far I run, this landscape will always be home.
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