Carol takes a Step
Outside is Autumn as Carol takes a step, splashing a handful of water aside, emptying a puddle. She walks to school in her favorite coat and boots. This is gentle rain, no need for an umbrella, and she happily lets heaven course down her jacket. What a perfect first day of kindergarten. Today Carol learns about shapes, vowels, and a spattering of numbers. This would be the day Carol decides to become a teacher, but for now she remains blissfully unaware. Or at least, she should, and yet something here feels familiar, something...benign. There’s not enough there to prompt her notice as she walks home across the cobblestones in the park, her boot scattering the same puddle she arrived in. She feels it sinking this time, her foot suddenly cold.
Outside is Winter as Carol takes a step, her entire foot plunging into a patch of snow. She’s been visiting her grandmother for the week in a woodland cottage built by their ancestors. The landscape echoes with her grandmother’s voice; the taxi will be arriving soon. For their last conversation, Carol explains that she’s nervous about 6th grade, about going to a new school in a new city. She’s afraid of not making friends, and hates losing her old ones. Her grandmother warmly brushes a strand of hair and tells her that every new encounter is a blessing, and that we never lose friends and family as long as we keep them in memory. This is the last conversation they have today, the last conversation anyone has with her grandmother. It seems odd, impossible even, that Carol would know that and yet. The taxi arrives, they say their goodbyes and Carol feels something here is wrong. She can’t see it or know it, but she feels it; there is certainly wrong here. What she knows is now is the time to go home, so she enters the yellow cab, the ride home a blur of grays and light blues. An abrupt arrival, she opens the taxi door. She’s inside a library.
Outside is Spring as Carol takes a step, her entire body moving into his lips. The moment is too much, her heart skips every other beat. They met in the Klementinum Library in Prague, both studying abroad from different colleges. She’ll never understand his fascination with science and its lack of romanticism; he’ll never understand her fascination with language studies, after all isn’t one good enough? Well, perhaps they simply agree to disagree, and there is so much more than a playful argument waiting for them, Carol is certain. Far too certain, almost inescapable from fact. They would be young, they would travel, adventure, and back here at the Klementinum he would pop the question. Carol takes it in; she was speechless once but this time. There’s something clearly here, something off. She turns and strides through the door of the library, and finds herself back at the college.
Outside is Summer as Carol takes a step, discovering some new faces in the classroom. Today is her first college course from the other side of the desk. She settles in, lays out her roster and syllabus, greets the 9 people in her class and gets on with it. The board of directors are allowing this trial run of “The Worldly Presence of Language” from Carol’s insistence of its value in the curriculum. On this first day, filled with trepidation, Carol stumbles only twice: once on the way in, and mispronouncing one student’s last name. She remembers this moment too, the day she realizes not everyone has passion to equal her own, as one student nods off and several others try desperately to hide phones under their desks. Part of her is trying to change the moment, but the moment won’t budge. She knows that awaiting her is 12 weeks of doubt in this trial by fire. How can she know, and why can’t she change it? Her mind is racing, searching for this sense of wrongness when it hits her, a drop of water, sniping the back of her neck. The splash muddles the thought, followed in succession by more drops. This is a gentle rain, no need for an umbrella.
Outside is Autumn as Carol takes a step, splashing a handful of water aside, emptying. Emptying again. She’s walking to her first day of kindergarten. Carol freezes, her child self stands helplessly on the wet cobblestone path. Today will be beautiful, like always. She needs to leave. She struggles to pull her foot from the puddle, and at the first sign of freedom sprints toward the park, a wail of exhilarating fear thrumming through her chest. She keeps running, deeper and deeper, the trees are getting thicker, the rain turning to snow. Until there’s nothing but trees in the winter, yet she keeps running. And then, finally, there appears a clearance and a cabin.
Outside is Winter as Carol takes a step, emerging from the wood to a grandmother she misses dearly. In the distance she sees the taxi, in front she sees her grandmother looking for her. She nearly forgot, she did try to run away last time. Or, was that another time? She runs towards the backdoor of the cabin, every step submerging her boots in snow. She’s so close, just a few more steps. So close now, she can almost taste her grandmother’s cooking. One step away, her foot plunges deep. Carol’s boot sinks, pulling the rest of her under, like falling through thin ice into a frozen river. The snow completely engulfs her in white as she continues to sink through the ground, until she drops through, like passing through a cloud. Above her, the world of the snowbound cottage and the taxi floats above in a nimbus diorama. She continues to fall, slow as a snowflake, until she hits nothing and stands upon it. She watches as the snow anchored by her descent has evaporated, desperate to rise back to the cottage scene.
Outside is Nothing as Carol takes a step, stumbling and catching herself. Carol looks hard at the world. Here is a blank canvas of murky white gray background with a sea of such diorama’s scattered throughout. Carol reaches to wipe her eyes in disbelief, noticing her childlike hands. She must certainly be an adult by now, Carol thought, as she pulls her now mature hands away from her eyes. Above her floats the cloud of snow, flush with color where the cabin sits. Around her are similar places in the distance: a cobblestone path, a warmly lit library, a dark auditorium. There are smaller places too, moments she hasn’t traveled to in ages. A movie theater with her father, the earliest family outing she remembers. The sound of a sorority, rank with beer and old acquaintances. Her grandmother’s kitchen, baking cinnamon rolls for the last time. Carol walks down memory lane leaving a collage of footprints and wonders why she’s here. It’s too real to be a dream, but it must be. As if by proximity, the memories are blending together. She can still feel the kiss of raindrops in her hair, still reeling from the classroom wishing her grandmother had been there for her. More memories in the clouds: the tanbark pit where she was bullied during recess, the hospital room where she finally holds her newborn child, the sight of fireworks over the sea and the sensation of falling overboard. Carol begins running, more and more passing her by: the backyard where her son’s first word roared out, the closet of her friend’s going away party hiding in shame. Deeper and deeper she travels not knowing what to look for, every step yielding a tear, a cry, a flutter of the heart. Then she arrived.
Outside is Eternity as Carol takes a step, finding the only memory incomplete, frozen in time. Parts of this moment have fallen, like ripe meat lightly pulled off the bone. Like a line of water being used to tear paper. Like something taken forcibly and left in disrepair. How long has it been like this? Carol looks to see the rest of the memory, a sad and damaged blanket of nimbus struggling simply to be. She tries to grab it and finds it surprisingly heavy, heavier than anything she’s ever grabbed. It takes all of her strength, all of her being to force it up, unfolding the scene as it threatens to pour out, struggling to create the illusion of something whole. Ripples followed by stillness; the gesture suffices, the memory mends together. Carol sees a car accident, watching the scene trudge through in still frames often fractured, more like an album of photos than something living and breathing. She approaches the end of the memory and finally hears the voice of her doctor. Only a couple words survived: “coma”, “wake”, and “sorry”. In the memory’s last moments it collapses into a tattered sheet of broken glass and hospital lights. In it’s failing, it reveals something to Carol. Beyond the soured cloud lies not another memory, but a solid. Beyond lies a door. Carol walks across the fragment of memory and twists the knob. On the other side is blackness, pure abyss stretching across infinity. It strikes Carol with fear, enough to push her to the ground and leave her reeling for a moment.
Outside is The Deeper Question as Carol hesitates. Why not stay? Behind her is every moment, every single significant memory, for better and for worse but never not either. Ahead is a tomorrow untrodden, an unknown too great to fathom. It may even be the death of her. It would be much easier to remain in the moment, but it also unsettles Carol to remain still, like it always has. For a moment, she drifts through the scenes, considering her dilemma in the stillness of the auditorium, in the silence of the library. In her musing, Carol finds herself in the cabin again, watching one of her favorite memories on repeat. For their last conversation, Carol explains that she's afraid of leaving everything behind, scared that she may lose everything and everyone she holds dear in the face of an uncertain future. This time she gets a choice, but how can she make such a decision? Her thoughts are brought to a halt, calmly, as her grandmother brushes a strand of disheveled hair and tells her what she already knew and must’ve forgotten. Every new encounter is a blessing, and we never lose friends and family so long as we keep them in memory. The moment is enough. Carol hugs her grandmother one last time. Tears pour down her face, but she leaves them; after all, this is a gentle rain. She approaches the door, twists the knob and stares into the void.
Outside is the Future as Carol takes a step, and another, until at last she can close the door behind her, leaving nothing but darkness. As uncertain as things have been, Carol’s life has been a series of important steps, the most beautiful and imperfect collection of steps, and before the realm of anything what choice does Carol have, but to walk?
