3.

When I was a child I sometimes had a very strange sensation when I was in bed falling asleep. It was as though the entire room, the space that it occupied, were compressed into a point directly before my eyes. It was both a visual and a visceral sensation: perspective collapsed onto this one point, so that the corners and the angles of the room all converged, originating and ending on this dot, and at the same time the density which the room normally occupied compressed onto this point so that I felt a very great weight and pressure hovering just beyond my eyeballs. Everything about the room was still there, every detail, I could see, but it all fit on the point of a pin. Sometimes I even imagined that it was all literally on the eye of a needle. But it was the strange density that bothered me. It was an unnatural and unpleasant experience. It was a fascinating sensation, that frightened me, and I remember more than once running to find my mother for comfort, and when I tried to explain to her what was happening, she couldn’t understand me. Eventually the sensation went away and the room would return to normal.

Memory shares this quality. Time is compressed into a single moment. Everything I ever did shares the same place in my mind: what I did this morning, when I remember it, is like what I did as a child long ago. The shape of my experiences, the entirety of my life, like the room in which I used to fall asleep, all originate and end in this same place within me. Some memories are clear, others are in a mist, but they all are right there, somewhere, hovering just behind my eyes, somewhere in here.

Just below the surface of the water, where it is still clear, just above where it darkens and fades into obscurity, a jellyfish is pulsing and moving slowly through space. I watch it from the dock, mesmerized by its rhythmic dance, jerky and smooth, catapulting forward below me. I see my own face reflected in the water, superimposed upon the jellyfish, the sky behind me and the clouds passing by. I was on that dock watching that jellyfish forty years ago; I see it in my mind’s eye, just like I saw my face in the window earlier this morning, as the snow began to fall. Behind the cloudy glass of the dilapidated blue building I see my dad. He waves. I wave back from the dock. The jellyfish has gone. I’m all alone. I untether the dinghy and push off from the dock. I’ll go for a little row around the cove while I wait. I remember what dad told me, don’t row out beyond the point; stay in the cove and you’ll be safe.

There is plenty to explore within the limits dad set for me, and I’m a good rower. I can go fast, and far very quickly. I spent hours pulling the oars through the water, exploring that cove on the eastern edge of Tomales Bay. Today, I live on a different cove in Washington State, on the western edge of the Puget Sound. Looking out at the sunlight as it dances upon the waves I’d like to go rowing here. It calls to me. I’d like to go rowing later today with my dad. He died almost thirty years ago. Maybe he’ll come back. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’d like to have him back, so we could row together today. The beach is quiet. The dock is quiet. I see a seal poke his head above the water not far from shore, and he glides silently past me as I smile. It is a cold day, and windy, but I’ve got a good jacket on, and the sun is shining through the clouds.

We are not far apart, dad and me; separated by thirty-odd years, separated by death. We share a point in memory, in a strange place within: a gateway, like an eye, a place that has always been, perhaps, where the angel with a flaming sword also stands. And Christ draws everything to himself. In Him we originate and come to an end, and a new beginning. This idea doesn’t scare me like it did when I was a child. Now, it is hopeful and light. It doesn’t compress in on itself with a dreadful gravity as it once did; it expands outward like an eternal promise.

~FS