Maybe, Probably, Yes
There are certain things you do for family that you wouldn't do for anyone else. Not the big things—those are easier somehow, the showing up for surgeries and funerals, the lending of money you know won't come back. I mean the small, embarrassing things. The things that require you to step outside your carefully maintained sense of self and stand there, exposed, pretending this is perfectly normal. Which is how I found myself, on a Thursday evening when I could have been watching the PBS mystery I'd recorded, walking down the stairs to a church basement to attend something called a "River Meeting."
My sister Alela had been trying to get me to come to one of these things for months. "It's not religious," she kept saying, though the flyer she'd handed me certainly made it sound that way—something about "merging currents" and "sacred circles." But here I was in November, standing in the basement of the church, because Alela's voice had taken on that particular quality it gets when she's about to give up on you entirely.
The room smelled like old coffee and new age incense, that peculiar combination you find in places where spiritual seeking meets practical budgets. Someone had tried to transform the space with amber scarves draped over the fluorescent fixtures, though one fixture kept flickering, creating a strobe effect that nobody seemed willing to acknowledge. About fifteen of us stood in a loose circle—a dentist I recognized from downtown who'd once told me, while drilling my molar, about his divorce; two women who might have been mother and daughter; a man in a business suit who kept checking his phone until the woman beside him gently touched his arm.
The leader, who Alela had told me was named River (of course), stood in the center. She was younger than I'd expected, maybe thirty, wearing a plain linen dress and the kind of sandals that suggested she wore them year-round, even in November. There was a piece of toilet paper stuck to her heel that nobody mentioned. When she began to speak, her voice had that practiced quality of someone who'd learned to make their natural shyness sound like intentional softness.
"We arrive as many currents," she said, and paused. The pause went on long enough that I wondered if she'd forgotten what came next. Upstairs, a toilet ran continuously. "Yet here we merge into one wide water."
She repeated it, softer: "One wide water."
The businessman's phone buzzed. He grabbed for it, then caught himself. Someone's stomach growled—definitely mine, I'd skipped dinner. But something about the way River opened her arms, not dramatically but like she was making room at a table, made me stay in place despite wanting to leave.
"Each of us bears a spark of light," she continued, and somewhere in the walls, a recorded bell chimed—except it cut off mid-ring, technical difficulties. River continued as if nothing had happened. "A remembered path, a circle unbroken."
River repeated these words, like she was tasting them: "A spark of light... a remembered path... a circle unbroken."
I thought about the path that had brought me here—Alela's phone calls, my automatic excuses about the recorded mysteries, then last week her saying, "I just thought, since Markus left, you might want to be around people." She hadn't mentioned Markus's leaving before, though I'd known. He'd been sleeping in his dental office. The receptionist told me when I went for my cleaning.
"We bow to the light, the path, the invocation, the blessed circle you carry." River brought her hands to her heart and bowed her head. Most of us copied her, even the businessman, though he did it quickly, like signing a document he hadn't read.
A humming rose from somewhere—speakers hidden in the corners, definitely pre-recorded because it continued even when River coughed. River's voice had deepened: "The light, the path, the invocation, the blessed circle you carry."
The repetition was starting to annoy me, but the maybe-mother was crying silently, mascara running. Her maybe-daughter handed her a tissue from her pocket, then checked her watch.
"In this meeting, the hidden becomes visible, the distant draws near."
There was a sound like water being touched—just a ripple, clearly artificial. The crying woman blew her nose, loudly. The businessman's phone buzzed again.
"The hidden becomes visible," River repeated, "the distant draws near."
I thought about what was hidden in this room—probably a lot of credit card debt, some drinking problems, at least one affair. The dentist kept touching his wedding ring, which he still wore though his wife had left him for her Pilates instructor—he'd told me this too, mid-drilling, as if my open mouth was a confessional.
"Your presence is a tide that touches every shore of this gathering." A chime rang. "Every shore... every shore."
River's voice had become so soft we all leaned in slightly, except for one man who'd fallen asleep standing up: "Here, no one stands outside; all are woven into the current."
"All are woven... all are woven into the current," she whispered.
"The ground listens," she said, and the drone sound swelled, competing with the running toilet. "The sky leans close." A wind sound entered, though through the basement's one small window I could see it was perfectly still outside. "The air opens its arms."
She repeated this trinity—ground, sky, air—and several people moved their lips along with her, already learning this peculiar script. The sleeping man jerked awake.
"Together we flow onward." The water sounds swelled. "Carrying one another." The humming rose, though someone was definitely humming off-key. "Toward what is yet to be."
The last phrase came as a whisper: "Toward what is yet to be."
The ending was marked by a sustained note and then silence. The amber lights lifted—someone at a dimmer switch—but the flickering fixture chose that moment to die completely, leaving one corner in darkness.
People began to move, gathering coats and bags with relief. The businessman was already on his phone. The mother and daughter were discussing where to eat. The dentist was smiling his desperate smile at no one in particular.
Alela appeared at my elbow. "So?" she said, trying to sound casual but looking anxious.
"It was..." I started, then stopped. What was it? Ridiculous, mostly. Though something about standing in that circle, even with the toilet running and the light dying and River's toilet paper heel accessory, had been oddly... something. "It was fine," I finally said.
She looked disappointed but not surprised. "Same time next week?"
I thought about my PBS mysteries, about my empty refrigerator, about Alela sleeping alone in the house she'd shared with Markus. About how she'd said "we" when talking about the meeting, how that pronoun mattered to her.
"Maybe," I said. "Probably. Yes."
River was across the room, picking the toilet paper off her heel, finally noticing. She looked tired suddenly, just a young woman who probably worked at Whole Foods and was trying to make Thursday nights mean something.
That was three months ago. I've been to seven meetings now, not consecutively—I missed two for legitimate reasons and one because I just couldn't face it. The businessman, Jim, still brings his phone but leaves it in his coat pocket. The mother and daughter are Sonah and Anoushka; Sonah's husband didn't die, he has dementia, which is somehow worse. The dentist is still desperate. River got a better microphone so the water sounds don't cut out anymore.
Alela and Markus are "talking." She told me this last week, which I think means he's still sleeping at the dental office but they text. "It's complicated," she said, which things always are.
Tonight, as River begins—"We arrive as many currents"—I mouth some of the words, the ones I can remember. Not because I believe in the ritual, but because it's easier than standing there feeling foolish. The toilet upstairs has been fixed but now there's a radiator that clangs. Someone new is here, looking mortified, probably someone's sister dragged along. I give her a small smile that says: I know, but here we are.
The hidden is still mostly hidden. The distant is still pretty distant. But we show up, most of us, most Thursdays, flowing toward what is yet to be, even if what's yet to be is just next Thursday, and the Thursday after that, until eventually something shifts or doesn't, until Alela doesn't need me to come anymore or until, unexpectedly, I need to come for myself.
River's toilet paper is gone tonight, but she has a coffee stain on her dress. Nobody mentions it. We're all carrying something we're trying not to show. Maybe that's what the currents are—all our small embarrassments and failures, merging into one wide water of imperfection, which is, when you think about it, the only kind of water there is.
