Falling Water

My middle school principal came out of his condo in jeans and a tucked-in blue polo shirt. He carried his rolling suitcase down the front stoop stairs and then rolled it the rest of the way to the car, where Mrs. McDaniel, our seventh-grade science teacher, was in the driver’s seat. My friend Bridget sat in the back seat with me. We were quiet, and excited, and a little nervous. Everyday norms were being broken so rapidly, I could hardly keep up.

”He lives in a house,” I thought. And then, “He’s going to ride in a car with us.” It’s one wild thing to run into your principal buying breakfast cereal at the grocery store; It’s an entirely different and wilder thing to watch him walk out of his own front door, through which he must carry those groceries.

Mrs. McDaniel popped the trunk for Mr. Bumgartner and then got out of the car to help make room for his suitcase. Bridget and I held our backpacks on our laps. Our own suitcases were under our feet. This was already an extraordinary summer day—what with my principal’s civilian life being laid bare before my eyes—and we hadn’t even boarded the plane yet.

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At the beginning of seventh-grade, Mrs. McDaniel had recruited Bridget and me onto the middle school science team. It seems to be a recurring theme of my life to be pulled into worlds in which I do not belong, and science competitions were definitely one of the places I had no business occupying. I did fine in science class, but that was only because I was a people-pleaser and could parrot back memorized information. It was not at all because I truly understood cell structures, or biospheres, or the mysteries of convection, for goodness sake. I didn’t even really understand hydroelectric power, but that didn’t stop me from standing in front of a tri-fold poster board and pretending I did. I pretended to understand hydropower for a whole year, at science fairs all over western Kentucky.

“When the water flows through this pipe, it turns these blades to produce electricity,” I would tell a gathered group of third-graders, pointing to the chart I had drawn with my own hands.

”How do the blades make electricity?” a kid might ask, rightfully, since he was under the impression that he stood before someone who could answer such questions.

I hated the interrogation. I would exhale audibly and look back at my poster board, hoping it held the answer. Hoping my own work was smarter than I.

“Because, as you see here, the blades turn and shoot the power up to the transformer.” I would place emphasis on the word up, and I would point to the little yellow lightening bolts which appeared to be moving from the generator to the transformer— as if all the mechanics of energy transfer were made apparent by the zig-zags of a yellow Crayola marker. I would plead with God that no further explanation would be requested, since we had arrived at the border of my understanding.

The kids would squint and tilt their heads.

“Hey,” I would shout, before they had time to string together any more words, “Want to learn a song?” I had prepared one with hand motions. It went something like: “Fall-ing wa-ter… hydropower, hydropower. Fall-ing wa-ter… hydropower, hydropower.”

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

This sort of jazz-hands theatrics might have distracted some third-graders from my lack of qualification, but it did not impresses the judges of the science fairs. Mrs. McDaniel soon realized she had made a grave mistake by prioritizing enthusiasm over intelligence in her team members. And Mrs. McDaniel had her eye on the prize: an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. for the national science fair.

One day during lunch, she pulled Bridget and me into her classroom. “Okay girls, new plan,” she clapped her hands together and smiled. “Scrapbooking!”

After some careful research, Mrs. McDaniel discovered a hidden category of the national middle school science competition in which even simpletons like me stood a chance: scrapbooking one’s year on the science team. From then on, it didn’t matter if I could answer the judge’s questions about what a transformer actually does, so long as I could smile and take a nice picture at the end of the day. So long as I could write a little note about what a good time I had at the science fair.

Bridget and I spent our days after school cutting and gluing, and adding stickers to colorful and patterned papers. I printed off the lyrics to my hydropower song and glued them beside a picture that Bridget had taken of me singing it— with a group of young students gathered around me, mimicking my hand motions.

I can’t tell you how many other science teams used their after school hours cutting paper with scalloped-blade scissors instead of studying the periodic table, but I can tell you that Bridget and I produced the best science team scrapbook in the state of Kentucky in the year of 1997. And when we walked across the marble floors of the Kentucky State Capitol building to receive our certificate from Governor Patton, perhaps there was a whispered confusion amongst the other science teams: “Scrapbooking? Are they at the right awards ceremony?” But what did we care? Mrs. McDaniel held her head high, and so did we. We had earned our ticket to D.C. same as them.

We are the champions.

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It occurs to me now that one of the reasons I have always struggled with science is that I am comfortable with mystery. How does the rushing energy of water falling over a dam turn on the lights in my house? There is no angst in my heart to know. There is only: Wow.

There was only wow that summer day of 1997, when I boarded an airplane for the very first flight of my life, beside my best friend and with Mr. Bumgartner across the aisle—who usually read the morning announcements over the school intercom, but who was now handing me a piece of gum to chew so that my ears wouldn’t pop. There was only wow when I got to press my face against the glass in the Smithsonian to see the Hope Diamond, and only wow when I stood shrinkingly before the Lincoln Memorial. There was only wow at the hushed silence when the guards changed at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

And when we took a river cruise on the Potomac, with the rest of the science fair winners from all over the United States, Bridget and I threw our heads back in laughter when we jumped into a conga line. We wove in and out of the rooms of the riverboat dancing—out into the quiet darkness of the deck where we could see the lights of the city sparkling on the water, back into the bright and humming dining hall where our teachers laughed loudly with other adults. It was only wow. There was no chart to explain how we got there—these two scrapbookers in a conga line with young scientists—and I wouldn’t have wanted to see it if there were.

And I suppose that’s why I was better at scrapbooking. And I suppose that’s why I write, and why I keep writing these stories of my life. I don’t know how the energy transfers. I can’t explain how these cells are structured. I don’t understand why we keep on moving forward in life— weaving through time like a conga line. I don’t know why sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s terrible. Sometimes the kindness of God sparkles like lights on the water; Sometimes the lights go out and He seems quiet and so far away. I come to the border of my understanding too often. All I know is that I exist; You exist; We exist. And it is wow, wow, wow to me. All I know is that beyond the borders is one who understands things too lofty for me, and that His glory comes down on us like the roar of rushing waters.

Once, someone told me that my writing was very “this-happened-then-that-happened.” She meant this at a compliment, but I found myself embarrassed at my lack of think pieces or hot takes that seem to get the most traction in the writing world. I felt like that seventh-grader all over again, looking back at my tri-fold poster and exhaling, “Well, this is all I’ve got.” But it’s enough, isn’t it? This exceedingly beautiful glory of a life lived. I don’t think I need to distract you with any jazz hands. Because this happened. And that happened. This is all I’ve got: This scrapbook of my life; This falling water of glory that turns things in me and pushes the words out.

And I just hope the energy transfers. I just hope it turns on something in your soul and makes you say, Wow.

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And what about you, Reader? Are you comfortable with mystery? Did you ever get pulled into worlds in which you didn’t belong? Have you ever ridden in an airplane with your middle school principal? I would love to hear about your “this-happened”s and “that-happened”s in the comment section.