Untitled
Simon Edelman
3 is a magic number. The trifecta; the holy trinity; the riddle of the Sphinx and the 3 stages of life: four legs in the morning, two legs in the day, three legs in the evening. The power of three extends to the core of our very survival, best put in the form of a saying my parents taught me when it was just us three. It starts like this:
You can survive 3 minutes without air. In the third grade I had my birthday party at our local pool, in the dead of midsummer heat. Daring as I was, I took the plunge into the deep end from the bright yellow slide that crowned the final threshold of childhood. Bravery over safety. I scooped and pawed at the water, doggy paddling in the only way I knew how, and it burned. Chlorine stung as my already foggy vision from goggles a size too small showed the world split in half by cacophonous blue. My throat gurgled. My desperation evident. Small hands clung to the new found edge of the pool, feet resting on a sunken ledge, as a lifeguard stood over me with a sharp, disappointed glare. I’m still plastering bandages over the cutting words she dealt. At the time, I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t ride a bike—still can’t. I couldn’t even tie my own shoes. But I could recite the three little bears—no, not that one. What to do when face to face with one befitting of the name ursa major. A triple warning. Brown lie down, black fight back, and white goodnight.
Speaking of three’s, you can survive 3 hours without shelter. A home is not invincible, nor is a person, but for all those years we lived in bear country, the gap was never breached between outside and in. Shelter and vulnerability. A tree collapsed with a crack in our yard from the vicious winds of the early hurricane season, lying straight across the lengthy driveway, leaves stopping a few feet short of the splitting wooden steps to our front door. We were lucky it wasn’t 3 feet closer, or 3 feet taller, and that we had two cars, not 3, that were out of the line of fire. Yet still, three little bears (mother, father, and baby—just like us) would climb atop my father’s hood and roof, reaching up to munch on freshly ripened apples. And I was 3 when I saw through our bedside window a black bear on its hind legs, with one hand raised in a wave, staring at me. One clawed foot scratched against the plastic of my kiddie pool. Dipping his toes in its puddle.
You can survive 3 days without water. When Sandy ransacked us, our home sat without power for fourteen days, and without water for sixteen. Every time we needed to flush our toilet, my father would have to make the journey down the road and through now-decimated corn fields to small lakes and ponds hidden by branch and brush. We saw bears there sometimes. Surely the sign posted warning of them was a reminder of that. And like the bear stooped at the water’s edge to sip from the murky pools, my dad took his fill with a bucket and returned home.
You can survive 3 weeks without food. An overzealous desire to reach wild berries further into the thicket than the unripe ones at its edge caused an insatiable itch to spread across my arms. I knew the rhyme: 3 leaves let it be, 5 let it thrive. Poison ivy was one son of a bitch in the summer heat. I suffered it enough times that now it can’t bother me anymore. I bet they don’t have a saying about that one. Nor do they have instructions to life, neatly arranged in a tri-fold guide. I spent years practicing the rule of thirds, from artistic compositions, to friend groups of trios, to still relishing and remembering my childhood tricycle. I don’t know if I’ll ever live up to the standards and prestige of the triquetra, its looped knots interwoven with my heritage like the threads of a kilt. But I do know that I’ll wait and watch for good things to come and lessons to be learned, because good things? Good things always come in threes.
Simon Edelman plans to graduate as part of the Rutgers University Class of 2026 with majors in History and English. Much of his personal work surrounds his dual identity: He is from what he calls “middle of nowhere” Fredon, NJ, but also spent his adolescence in Piscataway, NJ. There is also the dichotomy of being thrust into suburbia while finding so much of a home in nature—though he does endeavor to spend his time writing fiction, creating art, and world building for his own stories.
Simon wrote this piece in a creative writing class taught by Professor Alyea Pierce. Pierce selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.