I went every day to see

It started by chance. I stopped the first time only because I was tired. I found an old stump to sit on, one fairly flat, one that wouldn’t turn on me in a few minutes. I stayed long enough to quiet myself, the sweat cooling on my arms, my hair pulled back, my lungs jagged in the cold.

And when I looked up, I noticed the lake as if - there it was! - for the first time ever. After 30-some years.

I was used to coming to this trail for a hike, going, quickly, on to the next thing. But that day I sat and watched. I memorized the lake, picking out details I had never taken the time to see before. I felt better than I had in all my miles.

Every day after that, I came back. But it was no longer to run or hike or bike the trail. Instead, I came to watch the lake. Every day of December, I came and sat on that stump at sunrise. Twice, I turned when I heard footsteps. Twice, I found it was only the huge brown brittle leaves of an oak tree clapping overhead.

In all my life, I had only noticed a frozen lake at some point after it had stilled. But I saw now how the lake transformed in increments. The changes were so small that they took time to see. And, at last, I gave the lake time.

My grief, too.

To take the time to stop was an unsettling luxury at first. But I watched a little each day, longer when the sun shone, shorter when the wind came across the lake. It was in this watching and waiting that I often found the best part of my day, in my careful, quiet study.

And not once did I see another human along the shore; never did I have to forgo my study. Always I found the lake up for a visit.

At first, flakes fell and disappeared into the lake, absorbed at once and gone. Fat flakes melted on my hands and on the water, as if the same. I felt invisible like the flakes; I felt monumental like the lake. I felt certain that no one had sat there before and felt that very thing, of being so much and being so little.

Every day when nothing seemed to change, it was like the lake was resisting the change. As was I.

But the cold had its way a week into December. I arrived at dawn to see the water had turned thin and clear. It was a tentative state. I could see through it. Kerplunk! A made a tiny hole with the tap of my boot.

But in a few days, maybe only two, the ice could bear the weight of a single running shoe and its occupant. This day was the most magical. I stepped onto the lake’s very edge and looked to my right, down to the bog that blurred the edge of the lake, then I looked left, up past the cove. The ice was clear, the lake’s rocks, seaweed and sand lay at my feet, trapped. I stood on a plane of glass and floated, weightless, in another world.

If the lake could transform into a new version of itself, perhaps I could too. However thin.

A heavy snow came four days later, thickening the ice and turning it cloudy. It became the snow-covered lake that I had sailed past a million times, but this time I stopped and sat and waited. And the details presented themselves, as I now knew they would. The storm had its strength, but so did the lake.

My eyes picked up thin streaks, warm spots, the undercurrents, the places ice fishermen would be wary of all season. I recognized these for what they were: memories of what had been, places to handle with care.

Finally near the end of December, the snow feathered white and thick to every edge of the lake. Not one trace of water remained. It happened, even as I stood vigil. I arrived on a Wednesday morning to see that it had been done.

I waited for new details to come that last day in December, but I saw nothing. It was only when I closed my eyes and listened that I heard the final change: silence.

The big clapping leaves of the oak had fallen. The change was complete. The first winter without my mother had arrived.

I did what I often did. I sat and cried for my mother on that stump. But this time, I saw the beauty in those old leaves at my feet. And this time I felt something different: a thin layer of hope. A realization that maybe healing came slowly too. Perhaps so slowly that you couldn’t see it as it was happening, either.

❤️