Prompt Entry Two

Constancy

We moved to upstate New York when I was twelve. I thought the move would be our last. My older brother, mother, and new step-dad left Maryland, and said good-bye to relatives that I loved. It was the first and only time I lived near mountains. I felt invigorated about my new surroundings, and my new step-dad, Jerry, was enthusiastic. He was usually very quiet, Apollonian in his ways, and spoke with brevity. Jerry’s words were concise from clear thoughts, and he never wasted speech. Conversations with him were like our time living in New York—brief, punctuated with calm silence, and profound.
I had cried too much at their wedding – each guest who lingered and hugged in the receiving line had to witness my tears. My sorrow has been immortalized in the wedding photographs. I had longed for my father who had moved to California years before, never to return. My tears flowed like the water I later saw trickling in crevices of the gorges near New York’s Finger Lakes. My cheeks glistened with wetness like the slate walls of the deep canyon, although my eyes in New York were now dry. Jerry had lived in this area with his first family years before. He knew of secretive and beautiful places to explore. In Maryland, he spent free time at the driving range or methodically cleaned the car and house windows so that we always had a clear view. In New York, however, he took us on car rides on unnamed roads through Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains, to each of the five Finger Lakes, or along the Susquehannah River. My first visit to a gorge at Watkins Glen is carved into my memory. A slate grey path meandered around steep, cavernous cliffs. No protective railing divided visitors on the path from the two-hundred foot drop that led to the bottom. A stone, mock railing, which stood lower than my knee, didn’t prevent the feeling of being on the edge of cliff. Jerry walked between me and the drop, which allowed me to look down into the subterranean stream that formed the cavern or look ahead at the jagged slate wall that increased in size around the corner. He didn’t hold my hand, but every once in a while he’d ask, “’ya okay?” with a small smile and with a hand on my shoulder. I felt I was dropped inside the earth, to view something ancient and solid. The consistent flow of water over soft rock had created this beautiful place, and where harder rocks lay over softer ones, waterfalls flowed, decorating the gorge like sheer window curtains. Jerry’s silent presence didn’t distract from the sound of falling water, but seemed to highlight the dramatic effect. I sensed that day he would be as constant and steady as that stream and that our family would be solid with his presence. Thirty years later, I hear my children calling him Grampy. We often talk about those two years in New York, and we both still dream out loud to each other about living near mountains.