This fall I have taken several trips for work and for my film project. Although I like travel, it comes with other responsibilities, like making sure things are set at home, that my son is in good care, that I have managed my commitments at work. Even with all that to think about, once I am suspended above, leaving the ground behind, I have time to settle into another space. I find that I read a lot on planes, that I think in taxis, and that generally my life is a little suspended when I step into the anonymity of another place. Rather than travel as motion, going somewhere, it becomes for me a time of stillness and reflection. This crossing over a footbridge in Thailand was a similar moment of presence and attention to the time, place, circumstance, and even uncertainty I was experiencing.
To get there,
we crossed a footbridge, the swaying kind,
over a deep ravine. The laughter of
my uncles and aunts was nervous as we
made our way across, holding the ropes on
either side, the bridge swaying back and forth.
While we waited for the food to arrive, I piled
into a hammock with the children, and we
gazed up at the shiny palm leaves, listening
to strange bird and insect sounds and
the laughter of the others. My
father had stayed behind at the hotel,
not well enough to come along. How
would he have managed the stone path,
the swaying bridge anyway? He had made the
journey across the world, but so
often he was not with us. He was leaving
us a little already. Or was it us leaving
him, hurrying on, moving forward?
After lunch, I watched as my family –
the aunties, the uncles, the cousins, my mother –
all walked unsteadily across the bridge,
their heads spinning with spicy food and cold beer.
They were laughing at themselves
swaying back and forth. For just a
short time they were suspended there,
in the uncertainty.
My grandfather, crossed mountains
and oceans to arrive in Thailand, and
my parents came to a new country,
suspended in the air before landing in America.
And my father, was he crossing over
into something else now?
As they hung there for that
brief time, I imagined that
if the bridge gave way, they would all
come to a dramatic, laughter-filled end.
Instead, they stepped off the bridge
on the other side and continued on,
still full of the light that carried
them across. Then I took a turn
crossing over – into
life on the other side.
Amphibious 