The Woman Who Walks on Water

The woman realized, half way through her life, that she could walk on water. At first, it was a puddle. The puddle was brilliant white, reflecting the sky on a summer day, and when she walked over the puddle, she did not even notice what she had done. But her son, who was very observant, said, Mom, you just walked on the puddle. You didn't walk through it, you walked on it!

And the woman, who secretly knew it was possible, only grinned.

The next time she walked on water, it was after a storm, and there was a small river running through the driveway. She walked on it, and her son, following after her, laughed and pointed and jumped around because it was so fun.

She spent many months wondering when it would happen next. She didn't seek it out, this water-walking, but it seemed to seek her.

It so happened that on her birthday, it rained torrents, and the little stream that went by her house turned into a river. When she went to put her toes in the river, she found that her toes went over the water, as if carried on air.

So she walked over the river, but no one was around to see. She kept this secret in her heart, because who would she tell, after all? And would her son believe her this time?

When she was a very old woman, she sat by a lake in the sunshine, and since no one was around but her son, she got up from where she sat on a bench, and put her feet on the lake. When her feet carried her across, she began to dance. She danced so fearlessly and with such immense delight, that the lake itself began to dance, and soon it was if a storm spun over the lake, the woman dancing in its center.

Her son stood with mouth agape. He had only seen his mother walk on a thin stream of water, and now...what was this!? He stepped into the storm, and promptly sank. Some strange arm pulled him up. It wasn't his mother's arm. It was as if a stream of water had taken a human form and lifted him.

And so he danced in the storm with his mother, until they both grew tired, and their dancing slowed, and the storm grew quiet, and they were once again sitting by the lake on a sunshiny day. Neither of them spoke of it afterward. It was as if it were a dream.

Except that the lake remembered, and even after the mother and the son had passed beyond this life into the next, on some sunshiny afternoons, the lake would get up and dance. People would come from far and wide to watch it.

And once in a while, when no one was looking, some child or adult who held a secret knowledge of things, would climb onto the lake and join in.

So this is why, to this day, sometimes storms come quickly over lakes. And why, when they pass, the sun shines as if nothing at all has happened.

This is also why, when people say something is as hard as walking on water, they are really saying that it is time to dance and kick up a storm.