Speaking of Creeks
by Sara Simon

The other day I was trying to figure out how many school days made up my sophomore year of high school. I went to an all-girls' Catholic high school where we all wore the same polyester uniform skirt, a shade right between cranberry and maroon, with a white shirt and either white socks or tights, depending on the weather. I wore the same skirt for the whole four years. I would take it off in the afternoon and leave it by my bed and then throw myself into it somewhere around Mandy Weber's dad's second car-horn honk from the driveway. He and Mandy picked me up every day that year. All the other years I was part of a whole gang of a carpool where my dad had to drive our '65 Impala once every dreaded fifth week. That car was the basis for probably 90% of my total prayer time—just to get it to start, then start back up from stalling midway to school with a bunch of uniformed girls in the backseat. That's a lot of prayer, more remarkable still because it took place in the mornings before I even set foot in that nun-rich school. Anyway, I remember my sophomore year as my best one.

I was almost invariably late getting out the door, my shirttail out and hair either pulled back or sopping wet, stomach empty, and eyes puffy. Mr. Weber never harrumphed or made much fuss from what I recall. He did, however, insist that no matter what kind of morning I seemed to be having, I must fulfill my daily duty.

We went the same way every day. We left my neighborhood and cut across a busy intersection to enter Seneca Park. We followed the park road that sat about twenty feet off the side of this creek, which ran for maybe a quarter- to a half-mile before we went over a tiny bridge across it and then up the hill through the golf course. In the time between my first sighting of the creek and the time we crossed that bridge every day I had to come up with a new word to describe it. Mr. Weber's rules were clear: No repeats. Accuracy matters. Creativity counts. Humor counts extra.

Usually my descriptions had to do with the volume of the creek, as that was what seemed to change most. After a good rain it would run high and I'd call it something like "elevated," or "stimulated," or "effervescent." Sometimes I'd relate the way the creek appeared to how I happened to be feeling, and call it "sunken," or "recoiled," or "dwindled." The game was more fun that way, and it was like I was taking the opportunity to voice my woes, almost as a therapeutic ritual, to Mandy and her dad on the way to school each day. By the time I got to school just a few minutes later I'd often feel better, even if the creek was dried up or frozen still for the day. It was fun just to notice it and make a remark accordingly.

Mandy's dad was the one who insisted we do this exercise, and it was like a big game for us. Mandy's part was to provide input pertaining to rule adherence, though usually she just found the oft-obscure humor in whatever I came up with and supplied lots of her booming laughter. She was such a good friend that way.

***

I go by that creek whenever I get back home and no matter what, my mind rushes to come up with a fitting and hopefully clever description for it, despite the missing judges' panel. How many words did I come up with in that one year? Five days a week for nine months of the year—it had to be around 180 adjectives.

***

I found Jim, my biological father, about five years ago. I flew from L.A. to Kentucky to meet him for the first time. My daughter and I stayed with his family out at their house in Campbellsburg for a while. I was overwhelmed with the odd joy of getting to know a whole group of people, all part of a big and loving family, with all of them acting like they've been waiting so long for me to finally show up. They lived on a big chunk of land, probably fifty acres or so, I can't remember exactly anymore. Jim told me he found it a year or so after he and his wife got married and started looking to stop wandering around so much. He said he fell in love with it because of the woods and the wildflowers, but mostly because of the creek.

He built the house close enough so they could hear it running. I pictured him and Michele up at night with their then-infant son, Joe, hearing it and rocking him back to sleep when the house was still a one-roomer.

It was autumn when I first walked along that creek with my little girl, Breanna, just exploring. There were leaves and greenish-brown sludge obvious on its surface but its flow was still hanging on before the winter slowdown. We didn't go too far in because it was packed with sharp rocks and I was scared she'd get hurt. Jim said it was a lot cleaner when his kids were little. He told me all about their swimming holes and how Joe almost drowned one time. He said it was deceptively deep in places, that it might surprise me.

Breanna and I went back for another visit in the winter. The creek was frozen over and quiet. The whole place was strikingly quiet without that sound. I could hear twigs cracking and the fire popping, and when I spoke, my own voice was clear and purposeful.

I told Jim about my impending divorce and about how I planned to move east to Louisville rather than stay in LA when the time came. He seemed to understand and wished to help in whatever way he could. He said he was secretly glad I'd be closer to him and all my "new family members." I was too.

By the time spring rolled around Breanna and I had moved and we drove out to Jim's every other weekend or so. I drove Breanna, my two huskies, and my '72 VW bus across the country (a whole other story of wild adventure), yet getting down Jim's driveway proved a challenge for all of us at that time of the year. The driveway from the road to the house was generally unrecognizable, especially for someone so recently introduced to its quirks, because the creek had washed away the gravel again. Michele said it happened all the time and sometimes they got trapped when the rain loaded the creek high enough. Their daughter, Rosalie, told me one day she'd pave that driveway once she got out and made her own way in the world. She'd fix it for them.

Secretly, I think Jim liked having nature take over like that once in a while. The women of his house cursed him and made a big deal out of their hick straits, while he'd have to go out and tow them in, rescue them with his big ol' truck.

I saw a turtle in the middle of the road one day when we were on our way out to Jim's place. I stopped, put the bus in reverse and backed up to it. I got out and picked it up, showed it to Breanna in the backseat and told her it was nothing to be afraid of—it was just a cute turtle. I knew just where to bring it, and got back in my own seat and resumed driving. We got to Jim's house and I carried the turtle to the creek.

I talked to Breanna at length about her new little pet. She wanted to keep it; so did I. I explained that he (she?) would have a much better chance of finding its family if we put it by the creek and let it go ahead and look for them. We went through the whole "Ohana means family…family means no one gets left behind or forgotten" motto we'd just learned from Lilo and Stitch, and together decided we were doing the right thing for the little creature.

I told her there was no way we could go down the road looking because only the turtle would recognize its family. "I don't know what they look like, you know." I was hoping I hadn't blown its chances by plucking it from the road, yet that hardly seemed a safe place for a turtle. She bought my logic, and we said our good-byes to our new friend at the side of the creek.

The following summer "the choices we make for the good of others" was a subject I heard a lot about within earshot of that creek. Jim and I went round and round in a sort of up-and-down-fast-and-slow creek dance where he rationalized and justified and rolled around in guilt and wielded blame while I listened and wished none of it mattered.

I thought, and very deeply hoped and kept hoping, that we could start from a place where the water was fresh and sludge-free, where the story about my mother trying to trap him and his escaping premature fatherhood for his very survival could be relegated to mere theory and old news. I thought I could forget the past enough for both of us. I wanted the here and now, which was all I'd ever had of him.

Like Jim's creek with its deceptively deep spots, Jim's heart and the depths of old and painful feelings were drowning him, and in a way they drowned me too. He was right—those deep spots could really surprise me. No matter how hard I tried, eventually the sludge that he couldn't seem to wax-on-wax-off the rocks and the water itself finally overtook us both. I was indeed surprised, over and over again, and still feel a little drowned by it.

I never saw that creek, or Jim, again.

***

Fortunately, the experience left me with an even sharper recognition of who my family was. I hadn't forgotten, and my Dad sure hadn't forgotten me, even for a minute. I always knew that for sure. He was there for me, not about to leave me behind, despite the wandering away I was determined to do, and despite how far apart we'd grown in all the many ways that had nothing to do with Jim or anyone else that might have come between us.

***

My Dad's emptied-out body laid in a big box under a canopy on a rolling thing that lowers caskets down into their neatly-cut-out dirt rectangle. We said prayers and laid roses on top of the box. It was so quiet. The spot he was suspended over was maybe 20 feet from a creek. Mom said he'd picked that spot a while ago. Did he know how that would make me smile? Or did he have special creek memories of his own? I sure wish I had bothered to find out.

Just last week, before he was lowered down, there was no sound, no flowing water, just some shallow ice in that creek. There were rocks that looked planted there, all uniformly light gray and neatly stacked like they had yet to be pummeled by any substantial flow at all. (Sort of like all those neatly-arranged headstones, now that I think about it.) Over the years maybe I'll come to see them seasoned and occasionally covered in leaves and knocked around, creating deep spots and slippery rocks, and the comforting displacement the seasons bring.

I'm hoping when I go visit my Dad's grave he'll appreciate my descriptive utterances about his most mobile neighbor. I'll try to follow the ground rules. No repeats. Accuracy matters. Creativity counts. Humor counts extra. And I'll imagine his booming laughter and the way he looked at me like I was so totally ridiculous, rolling his eyes yet unable to keep from smiling.

One day soon I'll be sitting there next to him and that creek. I imagine I'll turn my head and instead of thinking of a word for it, I could come up with 180 adjectives to describe what it was that made me love him so much.