Speaking of once in a lifetime events... I was thinking about my family and how these are the only pictures of everyone together. Both sets of my grandparents. My parents. Us kids and our spouses, our children. It's nothing short of miraculous, all things considered.
I find it personally poignant that we are photographed in front of the river that is so integral to all of our lives. My grandparents have lived on the riverbank for nearly a century, the river a steady backdrop to their daily lives. My mother learned to swim in the river, in places most would avoid for fear of drowning. Kent barely escaped drowning in the river while whitewater rafting. As kids, we all loved learning to fish from our parents and grandparents, roasting hot dogs in the river bottoms as the firelight tinged our faces.
As an adult, when I am most troubled or stressed, I seek out the shores of the waterfall. I've heard that some cultures believe that the sound of a rushing river mimics the sound of the voice of God. It is for me as well. It is only here that the beauty can drown out my thoughts, the raging water making my human troubles insignificant.
If you mull over the similarities, between what it means to belong to a family and the condition of a river slipping through the Snake River Plain, there are parallels. On some level--constant, meandering and reassuring, both rivers and families can be a haven.
They can also be tumultuous, treacherous and unpredictable--the river overflows its banks and boundaries, swollen with water--destroying and renewing in the same deluge. There are casualties. Sometimes people are lost in the undertows, the floods. More often there are moments of water encrusted by an azure Idaho sunset, lush beauty so rare that your heart breaks to look at it.
My family is like this river. We laugh, cry and love. We hurt, break and forgive. Thankfully, blessedly, despite our inevitable imperfections and all-too-human ability to wound, we are bound by a this timeless inertia, a living entity making its way, the best way it can.
