How to Save a Life(89)

Jo and I stop at our favorite lookout spot. A family is there: father, mother and son. The boy looks to be about three years old. He’s sitting on the father's shoulders. The father is gripping the boy’s legs as they take in the gorge. The mother has her arm around the man’s waist and she’s looking up at her son. Smiling and laughing and talking about the Canyon. Telling him how big it is, how wide, how pretty and how old.

Her voice makes something flash through my brain.

A little tear in the fog of time.

I was up high once. I had a perch on a tall man’s shoulders and his hands held my legs tightly so I wouldn’t fall. My little index finger pointed at the tremendous chasm that opened the earth wide and deep. More breathtaking than a picture book, more exciting than an adventure story. A woman’s voice, rich and full, told me amazing things about what I saw.

I can’t make out the words. They’re muffled and soft, as if coming from a great distance. But I know, with absolute certainty, that I was loved once. No matter what came after, what tragedy or desperate calamity tore me from my family, I was here at the Grand Canyon once. And the people who lifted me up and shared this moment with me loved me.

As quick as it came on, the memory slips away, back into the fog. The little family moves on and it’s just Jo and me on the ledge.

I wrap her in my arms and rest my chin on her head. She holds me tightly and we watch the slow play of sunlight across the purples and oranges of the canyon rock.

“You ever get tired of coming here?” I ask.

“Never,” she says. “And after this weekend, we might not get as many chances to come.” Her hands give mine a warm squeeze. “You’ll be busy saving lives and putting out fires.”

“We’ll make time,” I say.

A chill wind whistles up and I move to hold her tighter. My hand slides across her sweater, over her belly. I linger there, but only for a moment.

She doesn’t know yet but I do.

He’s a speck of light in a safe, dark place. Not holding his breath in the water but breathing the water itself until it’s time.

Instead of yearning for more memories of my lost childhood, I vow to make memories for our son. Someday he’ll sit on my shoulders, here at the edge of the world. I’ll hold his little legs tight while his mother tells him amazing things.

And he’ll know he is loved.