Somewhere there were two cliffs on either side of a waterfall that looked like a woman giving birth. But this was a waterfall that had either passed its prime or had not yet reached it, for its falling water was a stream that made little more noise and carried barely the same amount of water than your average shower. The woman looked like she was just beginning to give birth.
There was a family particularly fascinated by this woman giving birth. They came at the beginning of every season of every year and every season they were enchanted and mildly disappointed at the stream which threatened but never burst forth into the fullness of life.
This family was made up of a father, a mother and a daughter. All three liked this little place of wilderness within walking distance for different reasons.
The father liked it for the briskness of air that fortified his spirit and was slightly narcotic.
The mother liked the imagery of a woman giving birth and was deeply moved at the never ending struggle of birthing life.
The daughter liked it because of the exhilaration that rushed through her when she looked at the opposite cliff. Sometimes she would actually jump...and land one metre in front of her on the same cliff.
For some reason she thought that if she really did jump off the cliff, she would land on the other side, hundreds of metres away, with no trouble or adversity. The idea possessed her and though she had no intention of jumping, she felt that as she was standing near the edge of the cliff that she was surging mid air towards the other side of the woman forever giving birth.
One day the father made a little quip. He said that the woman was not forever giving birth, but that she had already given birth - to a baby waterfall. The two girls loved the idea. One because she was happy the woman didn't struggle anymore and had finally succeeded in giving birth. The other because she was pleased at the idea of a baby waterfall.
And a curious little baby waterfall it was that would not swell in the warm rains of spring or cold showers of autumn; nor shrivel up in the heat of summer or the dryness of winter. It seemed to be a perpetual stream that was unchangeable. But though the scenery didn't change, the people did.
The daughter grew up and when she did, she started bringing her own daughter to the baby waterfall. And when she was old enough to appreciate the baby waterfall, she also became enchanted. The mother however had a greater imagination than the daughter and planted a seed in the child's mind.
'I used to jump from one cliff to the other when I was your age,' the mother told the daughter mischievously, smiling at her memory and her jest.
The daughter's eyes swelled bigger in a way the baby waterfall never would. The mother started laughing and then the daughter laughed but for different reasons. One because it was an obvious joke, the other because the person she looked up to laughed and so she laughed too.
The family didn't live too far from the baby waterfall and walked to it at the start of every season.
In the spring they watched birds diving into the baby waterfall in a show of bravery even if the baby waterfall didn't have the force to bend creatures to the earth.
In the summer they watched the sun glisten in the errant drops the baby waterfall threw towards it like a lover's playfight.
In the autumn they watched the sky in its pitiful attempts to break the baby waterfall's obstinacy in remaining an infant by trying to make it grow.
In the winter they shivered in delight at the ice crystals the baby waterfall created and broke before it hit the lake at the bottom of her stream.
The same feverish possession that had once enraptured her mother had captured the daughter. One day, mid winter, she went to the baby waterfall by herself, and watched the crystals crackle and snap in mid air.
'If my mother did it, then so can I !' she said firmly. 'Maybe I can grab a couple crystals before they break and bring it home to decorate the house with,' she added, swayed by the idea of delighting her family.
She didn't brace herself as she was convinced that it was a cinch. She just took a long run and leapt towards the other side.
To her joy she saw a crystal right before her and reached for it. She strained her muscles, harder and harder when it should have been a simple matter of deftness rather than effort. She should have been getting closer to the crystal because she was the one that jumped towards it and she knew her flight would not stop until she reached the opposite cliff. But it started moving away from her. Then she realised it was her that was moving away from the crystal, moving away from the other side of the cliff, moving away from the joy she had so recently experienced.
As the seasons changed and picked up where they once had left off, the baby waterfall remained constant. It had stayed the same and fought the same fight: to forever stay a baby.
At the beginning of spring the mother returned - alone. The enchantment of the baby waterfall never changed or diminished and nor would it in her eyes, though the sadness deepened every season. She could never blame or despise the place, the waterfall that took her child. Whatever a baby that hurts you, you forgive. How could you hate a baby? She even saw an affinity between the baby waterfall and her own baby. Both would never reach maturity. Or would they ?
One season a new thought entered her mind, darkened by mourning.
'If I can't help my baby grow, I can help this baby waterfall grow.'
And she knew the perfect way. She took a deep breath, the type her father used to take on the same cliff. She looked at the woman giving birth, moved, as her mother once was at a woman forever giving birth. Then she took the leap that her imagination used to exhort her to take, that in her childish imagination she had taken many times before.
As she surged closer and closer to the waterfall, her body was thrilled to see it grow bigger and bigger. The noise that was baby like before, was now the roar of maturity, thundering in her ears. She became suspended in mid air for a fraction of a second right in front of the waterfall and no longer saw a baby waterfall or a woman giving birth. She saw a mirror and in the mirror she saw herself, a reflection she had hated. But so beautiful did the image now look, her face was flushed by the joy of seeing a baby grow, that she embraced it. And when she did, the waterfall, for it was a baby no longer, returned her embrace as she plummeted to the surface of the lake.
