Member-only story
A Child, Found in Ice and Shadow
Rediscovering wonderment and whimsy
The sound of a stone hitting a sheet of frozen water carries something ancient within it. A hollow, reverberating, ringing warble. An otherworldly echo, existing outside time. The kind of sound that makes children pause and listen to it emanate from the ice, eyes and smiles widening alike. It’s a sound that, until just this winter, I had forgotten how to hear.
Recently, I stood with my son at the edge of our neighborhood retention pond, watching him launch stones across the melting February ice. His laughter and excited shouts bounced off the vinyl siding around us, as we speculated about how long the rocks would remain there, balanced in suspended animation, before spring claimed them completely. I marveled at his easy joy, and the ways wonder still lives so naturally in his heart.
I caught myself almost saying “no” again. Almost.
For years, that had been my default response whenever we were driving past and the question arose. The practical reasons always seemed sound enough: it’s slippery, it’s dirty, it’s covered in goose droppings, and we seldom have time. But beneath those sensible parental concerns lurked something else. A forgetting of something so complete I never even recognized its absence. Somewhere along the…
