Cataract Falls
by Anissa Mumford
Summer at Cataract Falls meant everything was green: oaks and maples and tall grasses and moss. The falls were full of water, which was also green, but an ugly shade of it that reminded me of my childhood home, of army fatigues, of snacks molded over in the pantry. Green-spotted bread and green-glazed Twinkies. People would swim or canoe in the lake below rushing water. Families would picnic and those annoying little swarms of gnats would fly around everywhere, resistant to any attempts to smack them away. Though the park was busy, it was still quiet, probably because the sound of water slowly carving out limestone homes would deafen any child’s squeals or couple’s picnic conversation. It was surrounding, that quietness. One could be lulled to sleep by the constant hum of falling water, if only the mosquitoes and beetles would leave you be.
Wildflowers grew: alfalfa, avens, bluebells, japanese honeysuckle. The tall trees cast shadows on stone and, coupled with the soft mist of splashing water and the gentle breeze, the breath of early fall, made the park feel cool: a much needed reprieve from the searing summer
heat. Suntanned rocks pebbled the banks of the river, most of them small and fragile and explosive when stepped on: little land mines that released plumes of mineral. Finches bathed in puddles far enough away from people and currents. It was easy for me to get messy and climb all over the rocks and pick wildflowers and get shoes wet in the ugly green water.
It was in July that my father began to die. Going to Cataract Falls for the first time, that summer, made me feel hopeful. I recognize now that I was grabbed by that jade-colored water, that I myself became green. That I let briar strangle me, falling water drown me in naivety. Sunshine misled me, made me think things would get better, made me believe fathers could love again and could live forever.
I drove down the winding path to the falls again in autumn, when things began to die and all things green turned an awful brown color. Leaves on the oak trees and the hickories lost their vibrancy seemingly overnight: they skipped that lonely period of losing color, of turning red or orange or yellow, of becoming points of flame on slowly extinguishing branches. Instead, they camouflaged themselves, immediately chameleoned into the brown background shade of fall bark. The falls were dryer, browner, too. Summer green melded with impending darkness to create a shade of carob-colored water. I spent Thanksgiving with my father. He couldn’t eat turkey or chew bread or have stuffing. Just mashed potatoes. I watched as he changed with the seasons. I watched as he began to familiarize himself with death. I watched him prepare for the unknowable.
A few days after he died in late December, I drove to the falls one last time. They were frozen in some parts. It looked strange, to see something so powerful stopped in its tracks by the cold. I wondered how they froze and pictured them suddenly cementing into ice blocks all at once, in an instant. Like they were in fall, things were monotone: the sky matched the ground which matched the ice, all monochromatic shades of a wintry gray. I kept wishing the silence in the air would break to give me answers.
I wondered what species of grass it was that had withstood the cold and begun to sprout between unmelted patches of snow. Was there anything to learn from it? I wondered what had become of the child whose missing shoe had been seemingly gently placed on a rock by the water, the small red Croc unsuited to the winter temperatures. How old was that kid now? Did he cry when he lost his shoe to the rapids, or did he not notice? What else had that baby lost by now? I wondered what kinds of flowers would bloom in the wake of all this grief. I wondered if I should jump into the unfrozen water and let myself drown and be enveloped by an ice cube coffin. If I should sink and then bob up to the surface, dead and iced over, lungs full of barely
unfrozen liquid.
In the white snow I saw my father’s hospital bed sheets, and in the dead, yellow grasses I saw locks of hair falling out of his head. The leathery bark on the river birch trees, all peely and thin, looked like his dry, cracked, flaking skin. The stillness of the frozen falls was the same stillness that overtook my father the moment he died, that moment he was finally able to stop shaking, stop buzzing, stop dancing that two-step of involuntary movements. In the mossy, frozen limestone I saw the same gold-green color of his pupil, and the water below it, mixed with the distant shine of the useless sun, cast shimmering shapes onto the rock, formed tears in hazel eyes.
That day, no ethereal voice boomed from the heavens to tell me that my father did in fact love me, no cardinal whistled a tune my father knew to let me know he was there. No fish leaped out of the unfrozen water to remind me of the black bass, carp, and catfish he used to catch and let go. No kind soul spoke to me, reassured me that things would be okay. Nothing reminded me that though it was winter, spring would eventually come. Even though he did not die at the falls—he died in a cold, small hospice bed—I know the water there has memorized the contours of his face, has felt the clicking and humming of his invaded brain. The falls remember better than I do, forever carrying his name on raindrops, on falling leaves, on snowfall, on soft breeze.
by Anissa Mumford
Summer at Cataract Falls meant everything was green: oaks and maples and tall grasses and moss. The falls were full of water, which was also green, but an ugly shade of it that reminded me of my childhood home, of army fatigues, of snacks molded over in the pantry. Green-spotted bread and green-glazed Twinkies. People would swim or canoe in the lake below rushing water. Families would picnic and those annoying little swarms of gnats would fly around everywhere, resistant to any attempts to smack them away. Though the park was busy, it was still quiet, probably because the sound of water slowly carving out limestone homes would deafen any child’s squeals or couple’s picnic conversation. It was surrounding, that quietness. One could be lulled to sleep by the constant hum of falling water, if only the mosquitoes and beetles would leave you be.
Wildflowers grew: alfalfa, avens, bluebells, japanese honeysuckle. The tall trees cast shadows on stone and, coupled with the soft mist of splashing water and the gentle breeze, the breath of early fall, made the park feel cool: a much needed reprieve from the searing summer
heat. Suntanned rocks pebbled the banks of the river, most of them small and fragile and explosive when stepped on: little land mines that released plumes of mineral. Finches bathed in puddles far enough away from people and currents. It was easy for me to get messy and climb all over the rocks and pick wildflowers and get shoes wet in the ugly green water.
It was in July that my father began to die. Going to Cataract Falls for the first time, that summer, made me feel hopeful. I recognize now that I was grabbed by that jade-colored water, that I myself became green. That I let briar strangle me, falling water drown me in naivety. Sunshine misled me, made me think things would get better, made me believe fathers could love again and could live forever.
I drove down the winding path to the falls again in autumn, when things began to die and all things green turned an awful brown color. Leaves on the oak trees and the hickories lost their vibrancy seemingly overnight: they skipped that lonely period of losing color, of turning red or orange or yellow, of becoming points of flame on slowly extinguishing branches. Instead, they camouflaged themselves, immediately chameleoned into the brown background shade of fall bark. The falls were dryer, browner, too. Summer green melded with impending darkness to create a shade of carob-colored water. I spent Thanksgiving with my father. He couldn’t eat turkey or chew bread or have stuffing. Just mashed potatoes. I watched as he changed with the seasons. I watched as he began to familiarize himself with death. I watched him prepare for the unknowable.
A few days after he died in late December, I drove to the falls one last time. They were frozen in some parts. It looked strange, to see something so powerful stopped in its tracks by the cold. I wondered how they froze and pictured them suddenly cementing into ice blocks all at once, in an instant. Like they were in fall, things were monotone: the sky matched the ground which matched the ice, all monochromatic shades of a wintry gray. I kept wishing the silence in the air would break to give me answers.
I wondered what species of grass it was that had withstood the cold and begun to sprout between unmelted patches of snow. Was there anything to learn from it? I wondered what had become of the child whose missing shoe had been seemingly gently placed on a rock by the water, the small red Croc unsuited to the winter temperatures. How old was that kid now? Did he cry when he lost his shoe to the rapids, or did he not notice? What else had that baby lost by now? I wondered what kinds of flowers would bloom in the wake of all this grief. I wondered if I should jump into the unfrozen water and let myself drown and be enveloped by an ice cube coffin. If I should sink and then bob up to the surface, dead and iced over, lungs full of barely
unfrozen liquid.
In the white snow I saw my father’s hospital bed sheets, and in the dead, yellow grasses I saw locks of hair falling out of his head. The leathery bark on the river birch trees, all peely and thin, looked like his dry, cracked, flaking skin. The stillness of the frozen falls was the same stillness that overtook my father the moment he died, that moment he was finally able to stop shaking, stop buzzing, stop dancing that two-step of involuntary movements. In the mossy, frozen limestone I saw the same gold-green color of his pupil, and the water below it, mixed with the distant shine of the useless sun, cast shimmering shapes onto the rock, formed tears in hazel eyes.
That day, no ethereal voice boomed from the heavens to tell me that my father did in fact love me, no cardinal whistled a tune my father knew to let me know he was there. No fish leaped out of the unfrozen water to remind me of the black bass, carp, and catfish he used to catch and let go. No kind soul spoke to me, reassured me that things would be okay. Nothing reminded me that though it was winter, spring would eventually come. Even though he did not die at the falls—he died in a cold, small hospice bed—I know the water there has memorized the contours of his face, has felt the clicking and humming of his invaded brain. The falls remember better than I do, forever carrying his name on raindrops, on falling leaves, on snowfall, on soft breeze.