to: the trusting

There’s a creek behind the house where I grew up. In the heat of the summer, sun dries up the bed until there’s a shore of clay and sand for all the neighboring kids to play on. I spent many childhood days scrambling across logs and racing leaves through the rocks without a care in the world. Nowadays, I rarely pause beside it but cross if often when I’m heading out for a run. Right after it rains, the water floods the shores, and the rocks I walk across disappear under mucky water. Even the visible rocks disguise themselves as stable but wobble the minute I try to step on them. I end up in the water with sopping tennis shoes and muddy ankles. 

This flooded creek bed has felt like a metaphor for my summer months. All the rocks I had placed in front of me to step on have been drowned in rain and the meager ones left are wobbly at best. I keep ending up in the water, faltering between crying in defeat or laughing at the mess I’ve become. On the good days, I laugh. On the rough ones, I grunt and curse the air beneath me. But I know, one day when the sun is high and the water level is down I’ll see the rocks again. They’ll always have been there—just underwater for a time—the rain had to come, but so did the sun.