When we knew for certain

Remember when we knew for certain that the moon would always follow us if we kept looking at it through the side window of the car? “Keep looking,” Mom said, “and it will always be there.” How did it know, we wondered, where we were. And why was it looking at us in the first place?

Of course, the moon looks at everyone wherever we are, wherever we are going. How it does that to all the billions of people in the world is a mystery, all the billions on the move staring through car windows to keep the moon in sight. How sad it would be to lose it, or to do something to make it stop looking back.

We knew for certain about Santa Claus too, that he would leave the toys we asked for under the tree on Christmas morning even if we did have to wait for the kerosene stove to fire up and make the living room warm enough to enter. We wondered about all those department store Santas but believed the grownups when they told us they were just the real Santa’s helpers. We knew for certain that Santa was real until we didn’t.

When we were old enough to start exploring our corner of the world on our own, we knew for certain that there was danger in the marshland along the creek. It was the danger that drew us there where we had the opportunity to test our skills and our courage against malevolent forces lurking just a short walk from the safety of home.

There where the reeds towered above our heads blocking out our everyday world, we kept our eyes open for quicksand, breaking ice, and the fearsome boys from up the hill.

We knew for certain that a patch of quicksand could swallow us whole, that flailing our arms in terror would only hasten our descent, and that without someone nearby to throw us a rope, we didn’t have a chance. And so we trod carefully on paths made by boys like us who had plowed the tall reeds down under their own feet. Stepping off the trail, we touched watery brown earth and knew in a blessed instant it was only mud.

Television’s Sergeant Preston of the Yukon told us what to do if we ever found ourselves on a frozen lake and the ice began to crack. We knew for certain that lying spread eagle on the surface would distribute our weight and prevent the ice from breaking and sending us down to a watery death.

Confident in this knowledge, we tested it on a large expanse of ice in the winter marsh and came away with our clothes soaked in three inches of water. Now we knew for certain that survival skills for frozen Yukon lakes did not apply to the thin ice of puddles in the marshy grass of our little creek.

As for the boys from up the hill, we knew for certain that they roamed the marsh and saw evidence of their passing in discarded soda cans and candy wrappers. Big John was their leader, the same kid who sprung out from around the corner of the rec center to threaten us on the way to school. We knew for certain that if we ever met them here among the reeds, there would be trouble.

Then one day it happened. Turning a corner on the trail, we saw them in the middle distance heading our way, Big John in the lead. There was nothing to do but to keep moving until we were head-to-head. When we met, we squeezed over to the right to give them room to pass. They moved to their right, and walking with our heads down, we mumbled “Hi.” “Hi” they mumbled as they passed, and we knew for certain that there was nothing so fearsome as the power of our imaginations.

We knew for certain that we were loved even when the house groaned with anger, and when doubt crept in, we knew for certain that we would make a better life for ourselves when we were on our own. We would live like our TV role models, never imagining that they were flawed until we learned for certain that they were.

We knew for certain that it was important to follow the rules, and if we didn’t, we would be punished. We didn’t always, and we never were. The losses and disappointments that we all endure, innocent or guilty, were enough to bear.

We watched our brothers and sisters grasping for certainty, proclaiming they were right and we were wrong, clinging to old ways of looking or claiming to have secret knowledge that gave them the truth while the rest of us followed the herd. There were times when we did the same only to see the fabric of our certainty shredded by experience and reason.

We had stopped looking at the moon from the car window long ago. Now, when we do look, we stand still and take the time to appreciate its glow, the light it casts over sea or land and, through a telescope, the features that mark its face.

We have no need for the moon’s cold regard because we know the tender gaze of love that was there from the beginning even when we were not looking back. We know that in that gaze, we can bear anything. When all the other certainties of life crumble under the wheels of time, love alone is in our power to give and receive. It is the only certainty we ever needed.