Mother River

My mother is a river. Not a calm, deep river, lush with fish and plants, flowing by gently and powerfully...but a thick, white rapids, furiously polishing the jagged rocks into marbles. There is no room for rest in her arms. You have to work for every ounce of her attention...or she will drown you. She is untamable, unstoppable, and will solve any problem you put before her...and I can show you how to ride her waters, how to survive her depths, how to channel her into someone helpful and useful. But I can't show you how to live within her, because I don't know how. She is a wild ride, a good time, a barrel of fun, a powerful tool that generates enough electricity to fuel a small city. But she is not your resting place. She is not your warm tidepool, your cool lagoon, your cute bubbling creek, or your placid lake. She will challenge you, scare you to death, hide her power from you, flip your stupid plastic inflatable kayak over, and pull you seven miles down her banks in a hot second. She birthed me from these waters, The Water Bearer, balancer, lightning rod. I was carried by her current. The vibrations of her waves still lull me to sleep. She birthed my sister, The Sea Goat, nimble on her hooves, she navigated the slippery rocks of our mother's spine. While we were babies, she diverted some of her waters and built a moat around us to keep us safe. But she had to run, she could not keep still, she moved, bucked, and writhed until we broke free. And our vacancy freed her and she bounced off to polish more rocks. We were born of this River Mother. We sucked nourishment from the little vegetation she grew and the foamy dampness of her sweat. We found our own ways to survive. Our mother is a river. She is awesome and amazing. She is terrible and callous. She is fantastic and brutal. She is truthful and sharp. She is brilliantly blinding and as opaque as a noose made from this sheet. I am from her, but cannot contain her. I am of her, but nothing like her. She is invaluable to me, yet I must escape her clutches. She suffocates me and keeps me alive to breathe again.