A Walk in The Woods

A Mother's Trail

Kinzua Bridge State Park, PA. August, 2020.

“I’ve become a nihilist,” my son explains while we hike through the woods. He thinks he knows everything, but doesn’t a nihilist know nothing?

“No, Mommy. You can’t prove what you know has any meaning. Either way.”

Leaves crunch loudly beneath my feet, a frozen carpet of swatches made of withered leaves and fallen twigs. We are in a forest, away from noise, in a place we hear each other best.

The boy who made me a mother is right often enough to make him dangerous. He’s also wrong the same way. Dancing foliage clings to naked branches overhead as new ice patches seek and repel like oppositely charged ions along the bank of a marshy river.

At eight, he would say, “This one is rated easy and is 2.3 miles but goes past a beach and you like the waves, Mommy.” He is the keeper of everyone’s likes. And a lover of different routes. He has been my constant push to do more.

When I was close to 300 pounds, his earnest, intrepid self made me slog through terrain this city girl didn’t think possible. Always, he wanted the hike. He’d study a trail map and explain the route to me slowly, in an echo of my own annoyingly patient pitch.

“Come on, Mommy,” he says now. No matter how deep his voice is, his version of ‘Mommy’ can fill my heart with radiant warmth. And also, abject dread.

He believed me when I told him to lean into every challenge, and his life hasn’t proved me wrong. Yet. If love was a light, mine for him would be wider than dozens of suns.

So despite Hebrew school, my son is a nihilist.

“It’s nihilist,” he informs me using the long vowel sound, thrilled to find a correction about my English to make. I resist the urge to check for myself. Prove him wrong back. Either way it doesn’t matter because it makes me secretly happy. I taught him well. He is poised to unleash my family’s exacting brand of grammatical tyranny onto the next generation.

“You’re Jewish,” I tell him.

“Culturally,” he says.

I hope he doesn’t see me roll my eyes. “You’re not a bagel and passover Jew just celebrating holidays,” I remind him. All those endless Jewish holy days he wanted to know and understand from the inside out. Every one of them distilled into an occasion to mourn and then to eat. And now, he’s going to go nuclear on the religion front?

“It just makes sense. There’s no proof of god. Only people. Morals too. We keep what works for us. And you can’t prove it either way.”

I don’t tell him that I’ve been having that exact same thought. That life is just a random spark of consciousness. In the end, either you’re mourning for them or they’re mourning for you. Is that nihilist or stoic? Is there a difference?

I’d ask my son, he’s the philosophy major. But he’d definitely answer. In exquisite detail.

“Why not do whatever you want then?” I ask him. He turns around to make sure I got over the log bridge without taking an unintended dive. “Go ahead. Hurt some people. Pyramid scheme your way into tons of bitcoin from old folks on social security.”

“It doesn’t feel good,” he said. “The true nihilist is only trying to feel good.”

It takes everything I have not to whoop with joy. This is all I’ve ever really wanted to leave behind. A human being who doesn’t take pleasure in hurting someone else. It is a goal many don’t and can’t claim. Tromping away in worn out sneakers and a dirty shirt is a solid man of conscience with a good dose of curiosity. I’ll take the win on that.

When he was young, he carried a map everywhere we went, always asking if I could make it a little longer, always ready to turn around when he sensed I’d had enough.

His maps aren’t paper anymore. They’re on his phone. I am happy to let him take the lead again, his intrepid mother, following right behind him, grateful every moment and standing in utter awe.

*** Author’s note: This was published with said son’s express permission, though he did suggest several corrections.

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***Doo***Doo***Do***

This story was originally posted in March of 2022.

I was in the woods thinking about him and his map on the road, traveling solo all over the world on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. He amazes me. Constantly. And I miss him.

Also, as an update, the nihilist went to the Jewish High Holiday services in both Australia and Taipei, so those ancient strings are still stirring somewhere.

He’ll be back soon, full of stories. He won’t tell everything, but he will also thankfully misjudge the NSFM (not safe for Mom) stories and I’ll smile instead of looking horrified, our gears in each other’s lives shifting, but still essential to us both.