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Fighting Destiny
“Graham! Come inside, please! It’s getting dark and dinner’s almost ready!” his mother called out into the deepening twilight. Graham sighed and groaned as his attention was abruptly jerked away from the sound of the rushes dancing in the wind, their roots straining between the rocks in the gravelly creek bed, and the song of the water accompanying them. He had almost heard the rhythm that tied it all together, and his mother had to go and ruin it again. He knew it was futile to try to go back to listening, as she would keep yelling for him if he didn’t get inside soon.
“I will be back tomorrow, “ he whispered to the creek, the gravel, the rushes, and the wind.
“Swishahh, swishasheshewwww,” they replied, wrapping tendrils of sound around his mind and heart, almost drawing him back into reverie for a lingering moment, and then “Bam!” The door slammed as his mother went inside, shocking him back into her agenda.
With another groan, Graham pressed himself up from a deep squat and trailed his hand along the fluffy tops of the rushes as he started walking, then skipping, then running towards the house. After he emerged from the reeds, the wind kept the rhythm of the waves of motion, lifting his outstretched arms, whistling through his hair. His heart, his breath, his foot falls playing the drum beats for the wind’s flutes. He could almost hear the recipe for flying, and would have taken off if it weren’t for his dad stepping in front of him and plucking him out of his rhythm, out of the wind, and twirling him back into his orbit.
“Not so fast, young man. You didn’t finish your chores. I will let your mother know you will be in for dinner right after you finish spreading the pile of gravel onto the garden path. And don’t make an art project of it. Just spread it out and come in for dinner. Do you hear me?” he insisted, holding Graham’s shoulders firmly, demanding that he comply.
“Yes, sir,” Graham replied, and slumped to the gravel pile he had abandoned earlier to answer the call of the wind in the reeds. It was all he could do to resist the urge to make music out of the sounds the rake made flowing through the gravel. “Just get the job done or they will start yelling again,” he told himself, over and over, ignoring the vibrations flowing up the handle of the rake, each piece of gravel calling to him with the voice of a long lost friend.
He managed to make it in for dinner without his parents yelling at him again, and even remembered to go wash his hands and face before joining them at the kitchen table. When he arrived, he was surprised by the presence of another adult-sized person, but one unlike any he had ever seen before. Before his eyes could understand what he was seeing, however, his ears and nostrils introduced him with the scent of wet limestone, moss, morrels, and the sound of water flowing through stone caverns.
The being turned as Graham entered the room and faced him. The sounds and smells converged into thoughts in his mind:
‘Greetings Graham, We are very glad to meet you.’
The being spoke directly into his mind without disturbing the unusual silence in the house. His parents had stunned looks on their faces.
‘We have been hearing your efforts to participate in the music of the world, and we have come to talk with your parents about you. You are welcome to listen to our conversation and add any notes that might arise in you.’
Graham didn’t know how to reply without making a vocal sound, which seemed injurious to the musical quiet filling the room. He simply watched the faces of his parents contorting with the difficulty of understanding how this powerful being was putting words and images directly into their minds. Somehow, he was able to hear the words and images the being was sharing with them. They were first flooded with memories of all of the times they were irritated with him for abandoning his chores, getting distracted, and straying from the regimented routines of their farm life. Each of these memories was followed by empathetic experiences of what Graham himself was feeling during those situations, with tastes of the exquisite music of nature that was distracting him. With each of these memories, Graham could see his parents’ faces contorting further until they were weeping with compassion and groaning with the failure of their efforts to hold onto their limited understanding of the world.
Graham began to feel concern for his parents, and the being turned to him, filling him with calm, and the stream of memories and empathy slowly subsided. Gentle words replaced them.
‘Your son has the gift of hearing the world. But it comes with a price. It can be harmful to him if he is forced to put his attention on that which others deem more important than his listening and participating in this music. I know this will be difficult for you to understand, but if he ever gets gravely ill, this is why. If he doesn’t recover from that illness, we can heal him, but he will become one of us. It is possible to avoid this, but you must allow him space and time to develop his gift. This will be difficult as you might not understand its importance. Regardless of your understanding, it is still true. Just remember, if illness threatens to take him from you, we can save him, but he will become one of us.’
Graham watched in gratitude and awe as the being dissolved into a cloud of sparkling dust that swirled out the window. His parents' strained faces slowly melted back into their usual looks of purpose and agenda as they resumed preparing to sit down for dinner.
Only a slight look of confused contemplation remained, and they occasionally exclaimed,
“What a strange fellow,” and asked him,
“He said he knew you, Graham. Did you know him?” in the tone that clearly meant they did not want to hear his answer.
After this encounter, Graham’s episodes of distraction, or rather deep listening, increased, as he remembered keenly how the being that visited them sounded. He started to hear echoes of those sounds in everything. Everything, that is, except the shrill calls of his parents insisting he return to them, to participate in the activities of their lives that they thought they needed him for. He saw the strange face of the being peering at him in every stone, in the roots of every plant, but more than seeing, he could hear them calling to him, or rather, their music was beckoning, sounding incomplete, waiting for him to take his place within its rhythms and melodies.
This longing to join the music became a deep ache in his chest that grew sharper, angrier, over the following months. His parents were blinded by their rigid routines and the way their family had always done things. They didn’t notice him growing ill until it was too late, and he collapsed in fever. But even with the softening the fever provided, the exemption from participation it granted, Graham still could not listen fully, could not join in the music, because his parents argued vehemently with each other, slicing through the rhythms of the peace he tried to find in his breath and the creaking of the walls. They fought hard against the wisdom the being had given them, they fought with each other, they fought with their destiny of becoming parents of someone uniquely beautiful. They clung to the destiny they imagined for Graham in which he would continue their family traditions, caring for their identities by becoming a replica of them that lived on as they grew old and passed. They clung tightly and loudly until Graham could no longer breathe.
Luckily, one of their family traditions was that Graham’s father would act impulsively in moments of crisis. This rarely produced the entire outcome his father hoped for, and this case was no different. It did produce part of the outcome; Graham did not die, but everything that his father wished for besides that melted away into the melodies of the mountain that he would never understand consciously.
Graham did visit his parents occasionally, rising up in the sound of the gravel in the garden path under his feet, singing up to them from the stone they sat upon for a rare rest out in the fields. His mother started noticing these visits sooner than his father did, for her grief softened her habits. She could hear him calling to her from the creek at dusk, and she would walk there in the rushes and talk with him. But his father only had a small handful of moments, when fatigue dropped his work-chiseled face into caloused hands, and at the bottom of an exhale, he could hear the silence, just for a moment.
“Graham?” he would startle, looking over his shoulders and under his boots.
“Yes, father, I am here,” he would sing back, but it was already too late.
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Fighting Destiny
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