He calls from across the ocean at 2 AM and there’s a spark in my chest at his voice on the line, a twitch like that small butterfly I felt in my womb before he was born. Lately (say, the last four years), we have not been close except for hugs at the holidays, and though I understand the normal growth curve, how late adolescence requires separation, I sometimes worry the distance will expand beyond retrieval, despite our long-ago moments together, bedtime stories, favorite books. Is there some natural law of reversal in response to disuse, an atrophy of heart?
But never mind, he’s on the line, spending expensive minutes pouring out an argument with his dad, to which he knows I won’t respond. And with this call I realize that if I am a sailboat crossing the ocean, he is the wind; and if I climb a mountain, he is a flower in the field; and if I am a fish in the stream, he is the fisherman, his line sure, his lure at my mouth, spinning and spinning again.