Finding Silk

Silk. Comfort to me has always meant a feeling of security, a lack of things to poke and harm. I've always found contentment in the soft puddle of a cat in my lap, so soft, so boneless and at ease. Silken smoothness has always meant security from pain as a persian rug is security from rocks and sticks. Much of my life has been a search for that comfort, be it mental or physical.

I still recall comfort in my father's arms. As an infant and toddler, I would fall asleep as my father read to me. I'd sit on his lap, my head against his chest, and I would listen as much to him as to his story. His warm voice would surround me, reaching my ears through the air and through the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Slowly my will would weaken, my eyes grow heavy, and I would fall asleep.

As I grew older, and began to set out on my own, I lost the security of the infant. The world became a swirling landscape of unforgiving surfaces: pavement to play hockey on with my friends, worn-out grass and hard-packed dirt for soccer, and the cold, hard tile and concrete of the school. Our Elementary School was a veritable badlands of dangerous places. Half of our play area at recess was "the blacktop". Stretched between a curve of our h-shaped school, the blacktop lay rough and cracked between the canyon walls of the classrooms. I never enjoyed playing there because it was too easy to fall or be pushed, and you were certain to scrape something. At one end of the building was "the pit", a sloping driveway into the basement. It was littered with stones and bits of asphalt as the pit grew, slowly swallowing the blacktop. Throughout elementary school these things reached at me, but didn't hurt me mentally.

Soon I was stumbling about, trying to cope with arms and legs unfamiliar to me. The world I thought I'd mastered became confusing from a taller view. Even the ski slopes I'd known since I was three loomed strange as I tried to learn longer skis.

Whenever I despaired, though, memories of more comfortable times would come to me. In particular I recall a scene from before school days. The picture surprises me with its clarity, and I can see myself running out the back of our house. The doors are all open to let the breezes through, and I charge out our back door with a small plastic kool-aid dispenser in hand. It's full of the red flavor I still like best. Later I am running through the grass, a warm, thick carpet to a little boy. I zoom under our clothesline amid bright orange sheets, smelling the clean detergent smell, and then flash back out into the sunlight again. Memories like that keep me warm in the winter.

By the time I regained control of my extremities, the world had changed again. No longer did corners reach at me, eager to hit. The floors of the middle school were carpeted. This time, the turmoil was inside. Inner security as "friends" switched sides, deciding they were too cool to associate with someone who read, liked to hike, and got along with his family. Middle school brought as many dangers to my emotions as elementary had to my body. Throughout middle school I searched for my inner silk, that mental half of the calm security I'd felt before in my father's lap.

One evening, remembering the comfort of that summer scene running outside, I walked out to my front porch. I closed the door behind me on my sister, now in middle school and arguing with my parents. I looked at the moon, tired, and asked it why, as I had passed from middle school to high school nothing had changed. I stepped off my concrete porch, arms spread like wings to catch the cool night wind as I had caught the summer breeze before. I sat in the dew-damp grass and laid down. The night closed around me like a blanket of silk, the grass beneath my head the pillow.

That night inspired me to look elsewhere for comfort.

The night is a comfort to me, the moon someone to talk to. I see solace in the softness of the grass, and the gentle buffeting of the wind is a friendly challenge. With some of this new self-confidence, that comfort was everywhere I looked. I found my friends.

Darkness fills the auditorium as several classmates and I walk across the cavernous space to a couch at the edge of the stage. There we flop down to have dinner before play rehearsal begins. We finish, setting the food aside, and lean back in the soft silence, staring at the ceiling.

"God I'm tired," the girl next to me says, "mind if I use you as a pillow?"

"A what?" I ask

"A pillow." She repeats, a smirk playing with the edge of her mouth. I'm not sure I like the idea.

"That's all men are good for, you know. Pillows." She declares and lays down, her head in my lap. Her eyes closed, and I laid my hand on her head. We are good friends, and she looks tired. Her smile faded as she relaxed, grateful for the peace. Her smooth hair flowed off her head onto the couch, soft as silk. As she fell asleep I continued admiring her hair, smoothing it.

This must be comfort, I realized. Falling asleep by someone is the ultimate form of trust. She'd trusted her safety to me, one of the greatest compliments I've ever been given. I realized that she'd fallen asleep on me as I had fallen asleep in my father's lap.

And I've found comfort.