Watercourses

(Image of the Genesee River from www.tug44.org)

I was in Rochester this past weekend, helping to bury D., my sister-in-law's father. He was a scientist, with inventions and patents to his name, a long-time college professor, father, active member of his minyan, all the trappings of adulthood. And yet, deep inside, perhaps what most defined him, was his delightful, insatiable, infectious curiosity about the world.

He wanted to know what made things go; where the world kept its secrets and what they were. He loved poking around earth's physics closet, tickling it and prodding it and seeing how it responded, unraveling a code that had not been unraveled before. The sheer act of discovery was a gift to him.

But it would be even better if he could turn this newly-revealed tidbit from the world's satchel of secrets into something that made the world a better place. If he couldn't always do that, at least he could try to make it laugh.

It was a sad visit.

And then, we sat around and talked, four generations of friends and family, remembering, sharing old photographs, telling stories so familiar they were threadbare from use and stories so new they needed to be kicked around and scuffed up a bit to be claimed as our own. The photos and stories made things a bit easier. Still, moments of profound and irreversible loss burrowed themselves deep into us.

At dinner, I got a wonderful email from my daughter-in-law: a copy of a sonogram of my five-month old, gestating, grandchild-to-be. A rapid journey from tomb to womb.

It was a day of over-flowing emotions. And it seemed to be anchored by two water courses.

On the way to the cemetery, we passed over the historic Erie Canal. Twice. Built in only 8 years in the early 1800's, the canal ran 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo (and the other way around), allowing unimpeded water transport from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. It cut transport costs by 95%, enabling Rochester and communities west of the Hudson to thrive. It was the kind of invention and gumption, the copying and harnessing of the world's secrets of water channels to improve the way of life without damaging the earth, that reflected D's passion.

The canal is almost 200 years old, still kept in good shape in the Rochester area at least, still servicing the spiritual and recreational life of its people. And the water still flows.

The hotel we stayed at was neighbor to a second water course. Our room overlooked the meandering Genesee River, a dynamic river with its headwaters in Gold, PA, and waterfalls all along the way, ultimately emptying and exhausting itself in the open arms of the great lakes.

I found the waterways soothing - comforting. Sometimes, as we looked out our window or stood on the bridge crossing the Genesee, it was hard to tell which way the water was flowing: toward the open lake or back towards its source. The surface of the water seemed to be fighting with itself, forward or backward, reaching ever onward or turning back to grab one more piece of the past.

It seemed to capture our quandary.

Of course, it always flowed to the lake. It had to. Physics demanded it, as life demands we move on. And there is something comforting in that.

For we know that like water, we too are never static. Like the untold number of droplets that are the stuff of streams and rivers and lakes, we too are always moving, coursing through the world, bonding to those near us, shaping the banks and beds by our presence as we roll by, ultimately meeting in a grand reunion in life-giving bodies that nurture the world.

And then the story begins all over again. With the clouds that signal the cycle continues, and the vaporous glimpse of the sonogram.