Distinctly Montana Magazine

Sawyer stands in the center of the circle. The four of us take up rough compass directions, just inside the ring. I hold a rock, representing earth. Ruby has an eagle feather in her hand, for air. Eli holds a candle, shielding the flame with his free hand. Marypat holds a container of water. Sawyer stands self- consciously, fidgeting a little, looking back at us. The sand is warm and yielding underfoot. The river mutters in the background. A slight downriver breeze ruffles the feather in Ruby's grasp . . . Sawyer stands at the center of his ceremony. "By the earth that is her body," I say, feeling the smooth weight of stone in my hand. "By the air that is her breath," Ruby adds, looking down at the feather. "By the fire that is her bright spirit," Eli intones. "By the waters of her living womb," Marypat says, looking right at Sawyer. "The circle is cast," we chorus together. We stand silently, focused on Sawyer, then I drop my rock at my feet. Ruby bends to plant the feather upright. Eli puts the candle down. Marypat stains the sand with water. We all look at Sawyer. He stands with his hands at his side, smiling back at us. Marypat steps forward. She pulls a silver bracelet out of her pocket. It has a wave pattern on the outside. Inside, it's engraved with Sawyer Kesselheim —Yellowstone River '06. Sawyer holds out his wrist. Marypat slips the shiny bracelet onto his brown arm. It gleams in the sun. She holds his face in her hands, looks at him intently, kisses her boy. He is several inches taller than she is. I see, watching them, that this business of coming of age has as much to do with our accepting change as Sawyer. We have to acknowledge our son for who he is busy becoming, growing inexorably away from us. As much as we welcomed him as our child, held him and nourished him and worried about him as our baby, the product of our marriage, it is now our challenge to ap- preciate his singularity and let him be—something undeniably of us, but also irrefutably his own. Sure. Easy enough to say. Almost cliché. But hard to do. All of that—the acceptance, the warmth, the history, the sweet pain, the leaving—is in Marypat's face, in her glistening eyes. We all move in. Our arms grapple into a messy, sensuous knot of embrace. Warm skin, smiling faces, blue eyes, sand shifting under our bare feet. We linger there, a constellation loosely held together by the gravitational forces of birth and history. "Let's go swim," Sawyer says . . . A shadow passes over us. We all stop to look up. There, less than 20 feet overhead, flies a mature bald eagle. Its wings are set, six feet across. The white head is cocked. A yellow eye stares down at us. The eagle flies directly over the circle drawn in the sand, then over us, gliding silently. The bird continues upriver, diminishing in the distance. "That was cool," Sawyer says. "That was auspicious as all hell," I say. "Or just coincidence," Eli adds. Thanks to Fulcrum Publishing for permission to excerpt this book. 22 DISTINCTLY MONTANA • FALL 2012

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