Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved. I can prove the law of gravity by dropping a shoe out the window. . . . I cannot prove that life is better than death or love better than hate. I cannot prove the greatness of the great or the beauty of the beautiful.
—Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
People, like celestial bodies, orbit one another, drawn closer and then farther apart by a pull, by a force that cannot be seen but is as real as anything it directs. More real, even, since it is only through the application of this pull that a body, celestial or otherwise, comes into a fuller realization of itself. Europa finds Jupiter, and both become something more. Boy meets girl, and whatever they might learn about themselves in the dance that follows, each will have learned it because of the other. An asteroid joins a belt. A bird-watcher happens upon a colleague or two in the park and compares notes. The pull has come upon them. They have entered a new orbit. Will it outlast a galaxy or be over in the instant it takes for eyes to meet and unmeet? Who can say? Time seems to be the least of the pull’s worries.
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I sit in the dark with the ambient glow of a smartphone screen casting shadows on my face. I have just sent a prodigiously long text message, the purpose of which is to arrest another body in flight. The content of the message, I tell myself, is neither here nor there. Just a bit of trivia I’ve picked up about Charles Dickens. Apparently, the yuletide snow he was so fond of showering upon London Town in his novels was the result of a freak weather event during his childhood that handed that fair city eight white Christmases in a row. Such a thing had never happened to London before and hasn’t since, but it forged a link in Dickens’s heart between snowfall and the birth of Christ which, due to his monumental influence, is now forged in many other hearts as well.
In my message, I have explained all this in spirited detail, gone on a philosophical ramble about literature’s power to shape how we perceive the world, and asked my recipient how all this sounds to him. It’s a lark, really, the sort of thing that any collector of nifty little brainteasers would pass along to another. Assuming our shared orbit, there could hardly be a better invitation to dance—not a cosmic ballet for the ages, but a dance that’s all the more lovely for being easy to miss, the kind that begins with a conspiratorial whisper and ends with a shared laugh or an affectionate nudge, the kind in which heart glances off of heart, weightless.
In the days when I could assume that the two of us shared an orbit, little dances like this would begin without warning or hesitation, with no particular intent or desperate hopes. The pull had come upon us, drawn us together, and I had supposed, madly, that this would always be so, even as time started pummeling away at the life that was ours. Gravity, when it’s got ahold of you, is a tricky thing to escape, but not half so tricky as the trap of believing that the orbit you’re in will last forever. We forget that only the pull is eternal, not the dances it draws us into and out of. When we remember, it’s enough to freeze the marrow. When we carry on in the face of it somehow, we might as well be blasting into space, with all its jaw-slacking beauty and suffocating terror. But blast off we do, I suppose because however foolish it is to take such a journey, to pass it up would be more foolish still.
I’m not ready to look a fool just yet, not until I’ve tried beating the pull at its own game. I’ve marshaled what I’ve got in me tonight—my well-wrought words, the estimable Mr. Dickens, a good question or two—and hurled the lot toward the fellow star-crosser I’m scared to death of losing. Maybe, just maybe, the impact of these shared fondnesses will shift his glance back toward me. I’m not asking for the moon and the stars, I tell myself. I only want to dance with him a moment longer. I want to be again the person I am when he’s there to make me real. I want to go on being able to need him, just a little.
My message is marked as delivered. There is no reply. The pull is still upon us, as it always has been and always will be as far as I know, but we are no longer being drawn together, and it seems that not even Charles Dickens can change that. I concede at last that it is time: time to leave an orbit that hasn’t quite left me.
—Thomas Stubbs
Yorktown Heights, NY
I had nearly reached the hilltop when I turned around to see how well my family was keeping up. My six-year-old daughter was probably ten feet below me, doing her best to keep pace by stepping into the imprints left by my boots in the snow. Farther below, my wife carried our three-year-old in her arms, the little one’s legs already tired out by the steep climb. And there, beyond all of them, lay a panoramic view of downtown Minneapolis aglow in the late afternoon light.
“Look at this view!” I blurted out, as I stepped back to take it all in. And then—just as suddenly as the words had left my lips—I was flat on my back, lying in several inches of snow. I couldn’t help but laugh as I propped myself up again by the elbows. I had stumbled on a hole in the ground, hidden by snow cover, and fallen into a row of grave markers level with the ground. Such are the hazards of walking through a cemetery half buried in snow.
It was my idea to make the trip to the cemetery that day. We went to visit the burial places of my wife’s grandparents, Joyce and Henry. But I didn’t simply want us to drive through the cemetery—I wanted to walk it. I wanted adventure. Just days before, I had learned about a Swedish folk custom called the year walk. It goes back at least to the 1600s. On New Year’s Eve or another night during the Christmas season, you would go out walking alone to divine what the year ahead would bring. The local church or cemetery was a popular destination. Along the way you might be visited by spirits or ancestors. That the veil is thin at this time of year, in these lean months of winter, is a spiritual idea shared widely throughout northern European folk traditions. Some legends hold that it could be revealed to you during a year walk whose graves would be dug in the year to come.
And so my family found itself traipsing through the snow on a hillside cemetery in northeast Minneapolis a couple of days before Christmas. Hannah’s grandparents were both of Swedish stock; it seemed especially fitting to be visiting them. Of course our walk was not at midnight but in the light of day. Still, because of the snowfall we had a hard enough time finding what we were looking for. Our tracks in the snow went this way and that as we tried to locate the flat grave markers with our feet. Eventually we found them.
With heavy mittens, we brushed away the snow to reveal the small plaque embossed with Joyce’s name and dates of birth and death. A devoted member of her church choir, at this time of year she had often hosted the group’s annual Christmas party. She would want us to sing, I thought to myself, and so I sang. “Joy to the world!” I began belting out, as a lone groundskeeper buzzed by in a small utility vehicle. My wife quickly joined in for the hymn’s first stanza. Nine years earlier, on my first trip to this cemetery, Joyce’s children and grandchildren had stood here and passed around a shovel to fill the hole and return her to the earth from which she had come.
Death has its own gravity. Inevitably we fall. Inevitably we die. That can be a hard thing to accept. Yet both death and gravity are forces that ground us; their pull is also a kind of embrace. We ritualize death with ceremony and song. We do this to honor its gravity, to give it shape, meaning, and purpose. To be held by it.
From Joyce’s marker, we wandered again through the snow, across the lane and past the large and leafless maple tree, to find Henry’s name buried there in white. Then it was back down the hillside to our car parked below, gravity pulling at us the whole way.
—Craig Simenson
Minneapolis, MN
“It isn’t the emergency button, it is the up button for the elevator,” I explained. “Step over here—let’s wait to see if someone else is exiting the elevator before we step on.” I hugged my child as we waited outside the bustling elevator. Their senses were overloaded in the crowded building. They were doing incredibly well, considering the anxiety that can stem from overcrowded places with loud noises and the potential of alarms or other high-pitched sounds. I tried to talk through the potentially triggering moments, along with giving instructions that many neurotypical children might have intuited but that my autistic child needed to have spelled out.
We boarded the elevator. A woman who had patiently waited behind us, likely witnessing my detailed instructions, kindly asked, “Can I join you?” I nodded, and she stepped on beside us.
“What floor?” my child asked politely, a little less on edge in the smaller, quieter space.
“Three, please,” she smiled.
“That’s where we’re going, too!” my child replied.
This lovely woman had no idea how delighted I was by this unprompted conversation, how we once thought our child would never speak. She didn’t know that, earlier in the day, someone had noticed the absolute joy my child exhibited and responded by taking a few steps back with a furrowed brow, as if autism might be contagious. The simple act of this woman wanting to enter the elevator had an impact on me that I doubt she would understand. She wouldn’t know the gravity of her kindness amid the ongoing stress of a world that doesn’t take time to understand.
On the second floor, the door opened and a man stepped on. My child asked him which button to push, and the man replied, “Four.” Eagerly, my child said, “Yes, sir!” and pushed the button. Up we went, defying gravity, defying the shoulds and stares and assumptions made each day, pressing upward until we break through the ceiling.
—Katrina Pekich-Bundy
Alma, MI
It’s December 27—six months after Grandma Eunice died. I sit at a card table in the den of her house, doing a jigsaw puzzle of a Dagwood sandwich with my cousin-in-law. Chocolate, pizza, greens, french fries, cheese puffs, and a smorgasbord of cold cuts line each layer. I chuckle at the absurdity of this sandwich—how can the pillowy bread hold this monstrosity? PBS News Hour is on the television. My husband’s uncle has come into the den to watch the program; I believe it’s his third news outlet of the night. He sits on the couch, feet up, watching and listening intently to the stories of the day.
The first story is about the rising number of unhoused people and families across the United States. Next, the uncertainty and instability in Syria amid the crisis within the government. Then increased fire risks in homes during the holiday season. I wince at each headline. I don’t want to hear this, I think to myself. I just want to sit in here and be quiet and do this puzzle. Every piece has its place. It all works out in the end.
My cousin-in-law laughs because my face betrays my feelings. I stop putting the pieces together to see and hear what is going on, even though I don’t want to know. I can’t not know, though. Be informed, not consumed, I remind myself as I feel my hands starting to clench and my face turning red. Political turmoil in South Korea. A plane from Azerbaijan has been shot down. One of the last remaining hospitals in northern Gaza has been raided and burned. A woman was set on fire at a subway station in New York.
I am in a hole in the ground. I can see the sky—gray, like mixing watercolors in the water cup to clean your brush. It’s soft and warm, the dirt around me. I sift it through my hands, trying to plant myself firmly. I hear the shovel break through the topsoil, scooping up the earth to bury me. “There’s political unrest in multiple countries,” the gravedigger shouts, as he pours the first layer on me. I welcome it. I was ready for this one, I think. It doesn’t surprise me. “On average, you have three to four minutes to get out of your house if it’s on fire,” the gravedigger continues. Another shovel full of dirt. I’ve got this, I say to myself. I can handle this. He continues telling me things that are happening in the country and in the world and shovels more dirt on top of me. It’s starting to be too much. The gravity of it all—the pain, the suffering, the ache, the terror. I start to panic. I can’t do this. I know too much. I don’t want to know. I dig and crawl my way out. Dirt all under my fingernails, like the crescent moon dipped in ink.
I resurface in the den of Grandma’s house, where the orange and brown velvet floral couch grounds me. The needlepoint on her wall reads, “To love and be loved is the greatest joy on earth.” I’ve made it back.
I would be okay with being crushed by the weight of love, underneath layers and layers of flowers and kisses and puppy dogs and handwritten cards and handmade quilts. I want archaeologists in hundreds of years to excavate and dig and search for love. “Here lies Sarah: Crushed under the immense weight of care and love,” my gravestone would read. I want to lie on the soft white bread of the Dagwood sandwich, nestled under blankets of dark chocolate, arugula, and muenster cheese. Under stories about a mom and daughter who filmed TikTok line dances to a Beyoncé song. Under photos from the Paris Olympics of incredible athletes, the best in the world, winning and smiling and celebrating. To end with a story about a dog who keeps escaping his foster homes—maybe he just wants to be free? Let him go. Let him live.
I want to live.
—Sarah Fryman
Bayonne, NJ
In July 1994, one month before I turned 21, I found myself on a biplane flying above the Brooks Range of mountains in Alaska. It was a birthday present from my dad. The plan was to land the plane by the Hula Hula River and then float toward the Beaufort Sea. The Hula Hula is an arctic river with more than 80 miles of navigable water. Travelers should be wary, according to Alaska.org: “Solid planning is required to cover all the bases of getting to and from the river.” This trip usually takes ten days to complete. We set aside 14 days to float on the river and then additional time to hike and rest.
I had just finished my fourth year in college, where I was studying social work. The focus of my studies was on the therapeutic support of those who experienced violent crime, and my field placement was at the Sexual Assault Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. So, while this trip may not have been a typical gift for a nascent 21-year-old woman, it was a welcome escape from the gravity of working day in and day out in a world that can burden a person’s spirit.
When the plane landed it was 60 degrees in the tundra. We unloaded our gear and set up camp. In the morning, as I stepped out of the tent to begin my ritual of coffee prep, I discovered that overnight the low clouds and a surprise snowstorm had been knitted into a white blanket that gently covered the valley in which we slept. I walked 500 feet to the Hula Hula’s edge and saw that the water’s flow had ceased due to recent freezing temperatures. Suddenly our “solid plan” to travel the 80 miles to the Beaufort Sea in nine days had become meaningless scribble on a piece of yellow paper. For the entire 14 days, my dad and I were grounded in the middle of the tundra, with no way to communicate and a limited food supply.
As we waited in hopeful anticipation of being rescued, we took a lot of walks. We sang loudly and clapped our hands to ward off the grizzly bears fishing at the river’s edge. We read and wrote in our journals. We grew comfortable in the silence and the cold. There was no option other than to accept the river’s unwillingness to flow. In that acceptance I discovered a peace that surpassed understanding. The weight of fear gave way to a consciousness of connection—to one another, to nature, and to God.
On day 14 we heard the plane’s propellers long before it emerged into view. Small and steady, it greeted the gravel path cut out of the valley’s plain and opened its arms to receive us. After loading our gear, my dad and I, with the help of the brave pilot, resisted gravity and ascended. In midflight we suddenly found ourselves drenched in a full-circle rainbow. The multicolored light radiated from the plane in all directions and seemed to expand infinitely around us.
This particular type of rainbow, called a glory, is a rare atmospheric phenomenon. It occurs when water droplets backscatter light, creating a fog or mist, and then a set of rings of colored light surround the observer’s shadow. To see a glory, you must be positioned at a high vantage point above the clouds with the sun at your back. The light, reflected off your shadow (or your airplane’s), transforms what your eyes perceive.
When I flew through that glory, nothing changed but my perception. I saw clearly that there was so much more to living than being safe or protecting myself from the world. I suddenly realized that the trip, while not what we had expected, was worth it. In the light of the glory I saw that the risk of living wild and free, of being vulnerable and surrendering to reality, makes way for transformation.
Thirty years since that trip to Alaska, and eight years since my dad’s death, I am living as a mother and an Episcopal priest. The weight of burdens still threatens to hold me down, but I know the two ways to receive glory. We must climb the highest mountains, or we must fly.
—Milly Morrow
Asheville, NC
