This is one of my favorite, favorite places. I am walking in what I call Stone House Park. I think its actually called Wadsworth Park on the map but no one calls it that.
As I walk, I see in my mind's eye two little kids running around. The two little humans I "helped" bring into this world. Sweet memories are flooding my brain. At this bend in the river where I am walking, there used to be a large beaver dam. For a number if years it got so big that it flooded this section of the trail. My daughter, as a 4 or 5 year old, would look at it in wonder. Maybe she was imagining what the inside looked like. Maybe she was trying to figure out the engineering. How does that dam stay upright against the constant pressure of the water? "The beaver dam!" her voice would sing out as I or her mom pushed the stroller with her little brother cradled inside.
I loved that stage of life. I was nervous about being a dad. About having a family. About raising these little miraculous human beings. We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't have a large family or community to mentor us. We didn't have an abundance of cash. We had each other though and we walked along the trail, enjoying the outdoors and all that it was that day. And every day it was different.
Now I am walking here 15 years later. It's the same trail but yet very different. It's a little wider and maybe a little more worn. The beaver dam is gone, torn up by the city maintenance crew. There is a new one a little further upstream, bigger and stronger than the one we used to see. It's flooding a new section of the trail. Those little kids are gone. They are big, beautiful teenagers now. Tackling the world as they see it. We did really well. To get it done, we just kept walking. Building on each experience.
I am in a different stage now. And today, I have a complex, tangle of nerves in my gut. In a few hours I will be closing on my new home. The first one I am closing on alone. I am not nervous about whether or not the closing will go well because it will. But more nervous about what the future holds. Nervous about where my path is going. Nervous about whether or not I will see and embrace the opportunities that arise. Nervous about who I am going to become. I see that it would be so easy to allow the nervousness to cripple my efforts and to lie down and hide. But I won't do this because holding hands with my nervous energy are a number of other feelings that will keep me going. Excitement. Relief. Fear. Joy. Anticipation. It's these that will encourage me to keep walking.
Just as it did 15 years ago
