What the Water Remembers

At eighty-two, Margaret still walks to the creek every morning, just as she did when she was twelve. The water moves slower now, just as she does, but it holds the same gentle music that played through her childhood summers.

She remembers Buster, the old farm dog whose white hair around his muzzle made him look like a kindly grandfather. He wasn't much to look at — part this, part that, mostly heart — but he possessed a wisdom that only certain dogs seem to acquire.

The summer of 1952, Margaret had fallen asleep on the creek bank. She woke to find her long hair floating in the current like dark silk ribbons. Buster was standing over her, barking at empty air, nudging her insistently toward higher ground.

Only later did she learn that a flash flood had swept through the upper valley that afternoon. The water rose around the bend minutes after she'd moved to safety.

Her grandchildren roll their eyes when she tells this story — there goes Nana with her magical dog tales again — but Margaret knows what she knows. Some gifts come wrapped in unlikely packages.

Now she runs her fingers through silver hair that has seen eight decades of sun and sorrow. She still skips stones sometimes, though not as far. And she still thanks Buster in her prayers, that scruffy guardian who saved her without understanding why.

The water keeps flowing. The lessons keep returning. Love, she has learned, rarely announces itself before it arrives — it simply appears, like a loyal dog or a merciful current, and carries us safely home.