If Swans Could Speak

Abstract

If Swans Could Speak Julie Riddle (bio) On the half-mile walk to meet the bus my senior year of high school, I encountered two swans. Swans here, in the northwestern Montana wilderness populated with hawks, grouse, eagles, and seasonal mallard ducks and Canada geese. I had never seen a swan before. The swans floated on Lake Creek, at the swimming hole where a low bridge crossed the stream. The late autumn, early morning scene was a study in grayscale: the ashen Cabinet Mountains, peaked with snow, commanded the backdrop; along the stream stood a phalanx of smoky trees, limbs bared; bursts of brush, silvered and sparkling, tangled the streambanks; Lake Creek flowed glassy black, pearly mist rising from the black. The swans glowed white. What can I say? The birds rested side by side, imposing and serene, their long necks curved with slender grace. I stopped midstride and exhaled a soft "Ohhhhh." Perhaps half a minute passed. This vision could not last. I wanted to capture it forever, and thought of running home for my camera. But by the time I could have gotten the camera and returned, the mystical moment surely would have ended. So I stood and stared, committing the moment to memory. The picture began to fade as the morning light climbed, dissolving frost and mist, and the swans allowed the current to drift them downstream. The rumble of the bus spurred me into a run. I looked over my shoulder: the swans, gone. ________ "Did it happen many times?" Mom asked during those new days of crisis, when I was twenty-three and memories I had suppressed since childhood erupted. Fear and dread tensed her face. I could not speak the truth. Instead, I said, "No … not many times." This response rinsed her with relief, and I felt a bit better too. (As if just a few times would be manageable, any damage minimal, bearable, temporary.) [End Page 79] But then I felt worse than before, having lied so smoothly, assuming certainty with such ease, gliding right over the honest answer. ________ I didn't speak of the swans for some time, perhaps a year or two; I wanted to cradle the memory as mine, alone. Eventually, though, I told Mom about seeing them. "Are you sure they weren't geese?" she said. "Yes, I'm sure." But after that I faltered. How could I be certain of what I saw? As a child I had seen photos of swans, and I'd owned and had read E. B. White's classic The Trumpet of the Swan, about a young trumpeter swan born without a voice who eventually finds a new way to communicate. But no one else had stood on that bridge with me to confirm the scene or affirm my experience. No one in my family or community had mentioned seeing swans or declared them a possible inhabitant or visitor. Who was I to say those magical birds that morning had been swans? ________ Later—years later—in a rare, hesitant discussion, Mom said, "You told me once that it didn't happen often." "Mhmmmm," I nodded. Her eyes cleared, her shoulders softened. But this time I did not feel better. I know why I repeated my lie. But why did I lie the first time? My duty since early childhood, not articulated but intuited, was to protect Mom from pain. After my revelation of the abuse, in early adulthood, my responsibilities increased: Protect Mom from my own pain. I lied, too, because I did not want the burden of comforting my mother when I could not cope, myself. And it seemed, somehow, that fewer instances of abuse would mean I could better retain certainty of who I needed my mother to be. Who she, herself, needed to be. ________ Trumpeter swans are the largest of all North American waterfowl. They can weigh more than twenty-five pounds and have a wingspan up to eight feet. The pure-white birds with the black bill are named for their trumpet-like call, which they use to locate each other or to sound an alarm. In my memory, the birds floating on Lake Creek that...