Navigating the Current

Anna Poon '21

UNTITLED, EMILY YOUNG '24

Navigating the Current

Anna Poon '21

Fish zigzagging around her bare ankles, my mother wades through a mossy stream and splashes nearby willow roots with each step. She plunges a blue plastic bucket into the water to scoop up a minnow, its shiny scales flashing under the fading sunlight. After planting her feet back on the stream bank, she sidesteps her way around the poison ivy scaling the nearby oaks. The two ends of her fishtail braids dip into the water when she bends down to free the fish into the stream, which trickles at a steady pace below.

As soon as my mother returned home from middle school each afternoon, she would dash to the creek to see what new discoveries awaited her. She dug through the thick mulch on the floor to look for pillbugs and scavenged for salamanders in the water, losing herself in the robust forest air for hours and exploring the trees. When the sun set, she would hurry back to her house on the edge of the woods. Later, she would adopt this same exploratory attitude in her career. From medicine to psychology to programming, my mother has navigated her way through several different industries, yet lack of certainty never overwhelmed her.

As I look ahead to my future, I dread burnout; I dread losing the feeling of monarch butterflies dancing on my nectar-soaked fingertips at the local safari park, the feeling of when I realized I could ride a bicycle without training wheels, when I raced through the sky on my first roller coaster at Disneyland (eyes closed, knuckles white), when I learned how to maneuver chopsticks to catch every last grain of rice. I dread that I’ll make the wrong decisions about my career and live forever with cold mornings spent in gray office buildings. But when I see how my mother’s path has taken shape, I understand how the various pieces in our lives have a way of sorting themselves out. Each day, she alternates between flour-filled experiments in the kitchen and conference calls with colleagues, and she makes her way through the sunny backyard with the dog at her heels. In the mornings, she wakes up when shadows still whisper in the eaves of the house, and she smiles as the sunrise coats her home with a blanket of marigold warmth.

“Life isn’t a straight path,” my mother tells me. I keep these words in mind when resignation tempts me with its greedy claws, but my mother’s story offers me the reassurance I need. I think of the young girl exploring her backyard, absorbed in the moment as she searches for caterpillars and frogs. Behind my mother’s old Nashville home, the creek winds through the woods, snaking its way through neighbors’ yards and along a path of overgrown oak roots. The occasional dip in its path or short waterfall does not deter the water as it continues to flow north, up toward the city where bright lights shine from every window, every house filled with the laughter of families.