Swimming in Low Water

We're sitting under a big shade tree, having a picnic on an old blanket, listening to a flock of geese honking nearby. It's a lovely, lovely moment in time. Sam is sitting across from me eating his Burger King macaroni and cheese with gusto. The wind is blowing soft, the air is just right--not too hot, not too cold. And Sam has fries, and an apple juice box.

There is a pile of wonderful old Sam size books sitting next to us on the blanket, and a box of 50 fabulous old patterns that I just bought, along with the books, for $4. The thought of this wonderful little haul fills me with glee.

When we're done eating we lean our backs against the tree and read together until Sam sits up and says the geese are calling him. We follow them to the duck pond where we search for turtles and his old friend the red fish who rolls and dips under the water. But today the water is filled with corpses floating belly up, dead fish with blank eyes staring.

Sam is fascinated by this. The fish have succumbed to oxygen deprivation, says the landscaper, whom Sam describes as a 'young man' (let's ask that young man, he says, astounding me). While the level of the pond sunk during a recent construction process, the fish swam in water that was more like mud, and could not fill their fish lungs with what they needed to survive. We walk around and around the pond, Sam and me, counting the dead fish and talking about death.

The ducks and geese speak to Sam as we pass by them and he interprets for me, which I appreciate. In fact, I appreciate everything about this child. I appreciate his exhuberance, his spirit, his sense of humor, his very being.

And later at home, when he runs out of the bathtub with a headful of shampoo and refuses to return for a rinse, I forget for a while how much I appreciate his spirit. I forget myself, who I am, and where I truly come from in the times when the water in my own pond sinks low and I become mired in the mud of my own hormones. And only after I've snapped and seen the light dim in my son's eyes do I remember that who I am is not this story, not this body, not these hormones.

Who I am is a child of god, an extension of the source of everything, an embodiment of love. Who I am, stripped of the stories, the weight, the external blathering and dithering, is everything--the dead fish in the pond, the fiery sun in the sky, the great heart in my child, the dull ache in my head, the joy, the misery, the dark, the light.

I noticed, as we were walking around that pond, that I thought perhaps I should feel more sadness of revulsion over the many dead fish. But I couldn't muster it. Following Sam's lead, I felt only curiosity and a sense of rightness in the universe. Though these moments for now are only moments and fade into foolish temper tantrums (mine, not my child's--he never has temper tantrums), they begin to stretch themselves longer and longer, as if they were hands reaching, one to the other. And when those hands finally clasp and hold fast, they will contain me safe in the knowledge of how well and fine is this earth and everything upon it, whatever it looks like, whatever it feels like, however low the water sinks.

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Other Things We Did Today:

Sam fell asleep in the kid car cart at Albertson's!

We spent an hour playing with Diane at the clubhouse.

Sam actually wandered into the toy room by himself at the thrift store. He hasn't done this since he was not quite two and disappeared while we were playing hide and seek in the round clothes racks at the Salvation Army in Reno (I thought I would die of panic, it was the most horrible five minutes of my entire life, they shut down the whole store and the manager found him cadging cookies in the employee break room). This surprised me and made me feel hopeful for a future in which he might once again be OK without me right exactly next to him. I didn't say anything about it, just followed him in there and played for a while.

We watched Arthur and the Invisibles, Sam's first real action movie. He loved it, and now he is Princess Selenia and I am Arthur, and Daddy is the King.

We had shrimp salad sandwhiches for dinner, another thing I've been wanting for a long time but hadn't ever even thought about just making. Found everything I needed at Albertson's, even the croissants, and used the leftover shrimp from the tempura. It was very tasty.