Awake, Sleeper: A Childhood Memory of Crossing a River in South Africa My first memory is not a face or a house—it is a river. This childhood memory from South Africa begins with a night river crossing—where fear, trust, and awakening meet for the first time. It must have been 1954, during the season of the spring rains, in the Northern Transvaal of South Africa. I woke to the steady drone of a Chevrolet pickup, the engine carrying me through the African night. I lay at my mother’s feet on the floor of the vehicle, held in that strange, secure half-sleep where the world feels distant and safe. Then something changed. The engine slowed. A gear shifted. The rhythm broke. I rose unsteadily, my mother’s hand steadying me—and then I saw it. A River in the African Night Moonlight caught the river’s surface, turning it into something alive and moving. Beyond it stood the dark silhouettes of acacia trees, and thick bush pressed in along the banks. From somewhere across the water came t...