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I was walking across the Kaw River Bridge. The rain was
coming steadily down, stippling the surface of the water below me. The trees
along the gray river were distant and shadowy. There was a soggy sameness to
everything around me, but, in truth, I wasn’t discontent.
It was just a steady rain. More than welcome in August. My
umbrella had kept me mostly dry as I walked, but by the time I got to the
bridge, my shoes were pretty wet. I turned to look over the railing and I saw a
great blue heron standing on a rock in the shallow water near the bank of the
Kaw River. The heron was near enough to where I stood up on the bridge that I
could see that its gray feathers were completely soaked. But the heron simply stood
there, motionless, just staring out at the river.
And then I thought of Audrey.
Audrey is a barista I know. Our separate paths will cross at a coffee shop
as we both head in different directions. Our actual time together will not be
much more than a bit of conversation and a glass of iced tea passed from her
hand to mine.
And so I had seen her once again, not that many steps ago. It
had been just another forgettable Sunday afternoon at Aimee’s. I had been
sitting at the counter with a couple of other older guys. I could see that it
was beginning to rain as I stared out through the front plate glass windows. There was a little idle conversation
in the air. I sipped my iced tea. Just passing a little time.
Audrey and another barista, Riley, were putting paper trays
of eggs into the refrigerator in the kitchen area below where we were sitting,
stocking up for the next day. There were jokes bantered back and forth from one
side of the counter to the other about what might happen if someone dropped a
whole tray of eggs on the floor.
And then Audrey picked up an egg from one of the trays and
held it in her hand. Standing just a few feet away from three not very wise men
sitting on the other side of the counter, she looked over and said, “Did you
know that you can squeeze an egg in the palm of your hand as hard as you want
and it won’t break?” She squeezed and a blur of yellow yolk arced just past
Riley’s head. We all laughed.
“It wasn’t supposed to work like that,” Audrey said with a
rueful look on her face. And indeed the egg
trick had worked a couple of Sunday’s earlier. Several of us had passed around a raw
egg and had squeezed it as hard as we could. The egg hadn’t broken - then. We
speculated that it had something to do with the shape of the hand and the shape
of the egg. Physics.
But on this Sunday afternoon it was hard for me to stop
laughing at the failed egg trick. It wasn’t just the egg breaking, squirting its
insides across the room. It was the look on Audrey’s face. The look was very nearly
indescribable. Surprise doesn’t begin to cover it. And rueful is just another
word. It was one of those times when you just had to be there.
After a few moments I was still laughing as Audrey cleaned
up the mess. “This is the high point of my day,” I said. And then then after a
pause I reflected: “But then, the day isn’t over yet, so who knows?”
Audrey and I had talked about what each other’s high points
over the last day or week had been.
And then I had realized that I had been asking the wrong
question. I changed it. “What was the most memorable thing that happened to you
recently?” But that question was really no easier to answer.
And then it was closing time. The baristas had their real
lives to get back to and I had a slow, easy walk in the rain ahead of me. I really had
nothing in particular in mind. I walked towards the river as I often do. The
rain came down. The sidewalks were wet. Not very many people out. Cars
splashing through puddles. Sometimes one day seems to blur into the next, but I
still enjoy the walking, seeing what I will see.
And so, eventually, there I was, walking across the Kaw
River Bridge in the rain. I saw the heron standing. And then it turned its head
to one side and stabbed its long beak into the water. And then, almost like
magic, a small white wriggling fish appeared in its beak.
And that is when I thought of Audrey.
That is how memory works. I don’t quite understand it. What
we remember seems to slip in and out of our minds faster that we can grasp our
forgotten moments. And even our more memorable moments quickly fade as we move
from one place and time to the next.
And so then, on that rainy afternoon on the bridge, a moment
of life popped into my mind. This time it was Audrey’s face. Her smooth, freckled
cheeks. Her brown curly hair. Her hand, dripping with broken shells and
slippery egg goo. And I could almost see it all in my mind. And especially, for
just a moment, I had quite memorably seen Audrey’s eyes as she glanced with
surprise into mine. And in those few moments as I watched the heron, I wondered
what Audrey might have seen in my eyes.
But it was the rain was coming down, steadily. I continued
walking, circling around until finally I was below the bridge. I imagined that
the heron might still be standing on the rock just below the bank. I walked
carefully towards the river in the wet grass - but not carefully enough.
Suddenly the heron was flying away from me over the river, its outstretched great
gray wings pulling through the rain with strong easy strokes. And in no time at
all, it was just me and the river. I stood there watching the rain, my memories
slipping in and out of my grasp.
I suppose that the memory thing is all a kind of trick. We
see. We forget. And then, sometimes, we remember again. And then we forget all
over again.
Life seems to happen in unexpected moments. And if we are
lucky, we can laugh at each other and at ourselves. How indeed could we ever forget
that life is full of surprises? And
laughter. If we are looking, we can see our lives in each other’s eyes. And
then we move on.
