The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [83]
With his head against my heart I suddenly felt his lifeforce - not the lifeforce of babies-a lifeforce bigger than a night sky. It was almost like thunder coming through us, just like the night I went into labor during a thunder storm. It was the exact opposite of the heart implosion I felt the day my daughter was born and died. The two of us in the water, thunderhearted.
At some point that night I walked out onto our little Holiday Inn balcony and Virginia was smoking a cigarette on hers. I looked over at her. My god. This person I had watched go from young woman to warrior beauty. It took my breath away. I never told her this, but what I thought … daughter. I almost couldn’t breathe with the wonder.
“Those are death sticks, you know,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I love you, you know.”
“Yeah. I do. Me too.” Her eyes filling with tears across the distance.
We were driving to a house Andy had found and rented on the internet. Such a risky move - finding the next chapter of your life in cyberspace. But so gloriously risky. Because this was a hacker. A guy who had cybersquatted Bill Gates. When he was at the computer, whole geographies emerged you’d never thought of.
The house looked filled with light and space when I looked at the internet photos. I knew the value of light and space. And there were trees in the photos. Everywhere. The house was inside something called the Bull Run Wilderness near Sandy, Oregon. When I asked Andy “Why this house? Is it near my job?”
He said, “No, it’s not near your job. But it is sanctuary.” At the time, I didn’t know exactly what he meant. But something in my skin trusted him.
The road to the house off of I-84 wound around forests and snuck alongside the Sandy River. I saw a few people riding the river on inner tubes. I saw fly fishermen. Kayakers. I saw the land rise and fall like it does in Oregon wilderness. Alders. Oaks. Maples. Douglas Firs. Everything it seemed, evergreen. I thought briefly of my father - how he loved the Northwest. I thought how maybe that feeling he had was something yet good between us. Then the word father left altogether, since it was nothing about my future. Up we drove. When we arrived at the house I began crying. Gut wrenching crying. A crying that must have taken years, pulled up from the depths.
The house was made from two octagonals. The first octagonal had the main room and wooden stairs made by a master carpenter leading up to a sleeping loft. The sleeping loft had 360 degree windows so that if you were, say, in bed, all you saw was trees. The second octagonal had a kitchen with cabinets you’d pay a fortune for in the city - the deep cherry and blond wood like inside trees.
Outside the house there was nothing but forest. The Bull Run Wilderness hid elk and deer and bobcat. Wild pheasants and coyote and eagles and great blue herons. A freshwater creek trickled at the base of our property - water that ran for miles. To the side of the house, a giant warehouse loomed that the owner had been using as a woodworking studio. The owner made wooden marimbas as beautiful as music sounds. He showed them to us. They smelled like life. The owner had built the house. Crafted the woodwork with the passion of an artist. Inside the warehouse was an enormous woodstove. Inside the warehouse I felt something stirring in me. Something about a self. Something about the freedom to make. The feeling felt older than me. Inside the house, I felt safety. All those trees protecting us. A river curling around us. Something up until that point in my life I’d only felt in water.
When Andy and I and Virginia and Miles sat down in front of the house, butterflies and dragonflies and a hummingbird accompanied our distance.