Personal Essays

Water is alive with a mix of emotions. Emotions are tricky things. You can have the same emotion at several points in your life, and no two experiences of that emotion will ever be the same. Just as with water. Always the same and yet never so. An ebb and flow as the tide comes in and goes out. Cycling though the phases of the moon and the seasons of the year. This mermaid reminds me of the fluidity of water and emotions. A redhead like me, you can never tell what her feelings will be from one moment to the next. Just as with the water. Every day, driving down the highway to work, I drive along the Niagara River to where it starts at Lake Erie. Every morning it is a delight to see just how sparkly, or not, the river is as I come around the bend. Or as I come over the hill and the length of Lake Erie opens up in front of me. What color will it be today? Clear and blue-green, highlighting the structures I've come to love out in the middle of the water? Or silver and shimmery so that I can't see where the lake ends and where the sky begins? And of course by the time I'm going home, all the shades and sparkles have changed again. Using the power of Water and the emotions reminds me that nothing can stay the same, and teaches me to live in the moment as this power changes from one moment to the next, to the next, to the next.