Cool Water, Rushing

Cold water in the egg bowl. Use the cold water not the warm. Warm will curdle it, hot will stick it to the bowl in that godawful mess you can’t scrub off so you just end up throwing the damn bowl out.

Cold water. Cool water.

I fell in cool water this year, tipped a canoe after only seeing a rock at the last moment, so last minute I only had a moment to blurt out “the fuck! A rock!” and SLAM we were in the cold and down went the canoe and my feet kept slipping without purchase on something so accurately named rock snot and the water just kept moving past and over me. Time held still and moved away into that space where it stops doing much of anything at all. When I find my footing and stand, finally, against the snot and the earnest current I just stand breathing, shocked into stillness and awe.

Something so cold, and seeming so small and low, it had the power to rock me on my ass and leave me there, at it’s will and whim.

There’s a lesson there in that cold water, in the cold water of my sink, in the egg bowl, in the rocking canoe.

It’s the same lesson the eyes of my babies taught me, long ago.

Be patient. Let it pass. Go with it. Bear up babe.

You can do this.

***

Sometimes you’re the rock, sometimes you’re the canoe. If you’re lucky, you’re the cool water rushing.