I’ve always felt like I was at home in the water.
I grew up in Arkansas rice country, next to the muddy Black River. Plenty of rain throughout the year made our already hot summers muggy and miserable. The rain always provided temporary relief from the humidity, but as soon as it stopped, misery set in with a new wave of wet heat, mosquitoes, and chiggers. I spent every summer with red, itchy welts up and down my legs, but it never stopped me from celebrating the rain by dancing around in it barefoot, with my face held up to the sky to catch raindrops in my mouth. I loved splashing through the puddles in the driveway, and disrupting the mini-waterfalls created by the rocks in the ditch. By the time I was done, I was always covered in grass clippings and pine needles.
We would go fishing in the river, but you couldn’t swim in it unless you wanted to risk getting bit by a cottonmouth. Best catfish I’ve ever eaten came out of that river. We’d run across the gravel road barefoot, scale the muddy levee, and pull out our fishing poles and snack bags full of dry cereal or baloney sandwiches. We didn’t care if we even caught a fish, we just liked being outside in the shade.
The rice fields surrounding my childhood home were always full of water. We never had a big swimming pool in our yard because the dried pecan husks and leaves would fall into it. I don’t think Dad wanted to add “cleaning the pool” to his already never-ending list of chores. He was a farmer, and he sometimes dug us out a little area in the corner of one of his rice fields near the well pump because the water was too cold for the snakes. That was our swimming pool.
From the beginning of May to the end of August, I really only wore shoes if we were going to church. When we came back inside from playing, we had to wash our feet off with the water hose because running through Mom’s nice clean house with muddy feet was grounds for a whoopin’. That water hose was one of our most favorite things to play with. We’d hose down the carport and porches, and pretend we had an ice-skating rink, falling into a pile of giggles when we messed up our “triple-axel cow deluxe toe spin” like we’d seen on the Olympics. We’d use it to turn some of the dirt at the edge of the garden into mud. We’d sink our little feet up to our knees in the mud, eventually letting the cool mud bake onto our skin under the hot sun, then pretend we were ducks. We’d plug the hose into the sprinkler and spend hours running back and forth through the jets of water. That water hose fueled our balloon and water gun wars, our spray fights, and made rainbows dance in the sky.
As we got older, we were able to go on float trips on Spring River with the cousins. I always enjoyed laying on my back in the cool water, feeling it trickle through my mane of hair while the fish occasionally brushed by. You could see to the bottom of Spring River in most places as it wasn’t very deep or muddy. The water was cool enough to be refreshing in the summer, but warm enough that your skin didn’t go numb. We knew to stay out of the reed-like grass because there were leeches. Once the float trip was over, we’d go up on the bank to the pavilion where the adults had delicious, juicy BBQ cooked. Then we were right back in the river to rinse our sticky hands and ride the 30 ft current like it was our own personal water-slide.
Even through my most difficult times, I turned to the water for comfort and belonging. It always felt like my sins were getting washed away as I drifted half-submerged down the river. Sensory deprivation has a way of making the world feel far away and unimportant. This was a way for me to align my thoughts and feelings, and come to terms with decisions I’ve had to make. As long as I was in the water, I knew it would protect me from the world, even if just for a little while, and I had time to make sense of everything going on.
Every year, right as the summer starts to come around, I get excited about going back into the water. Though I’ve finally found my own place in the world to call home, I still look forward to that feeling the water gives me —
— that feeling of Home.
