Brilliant blue sky, almost surreal - where you believe you can will time, itself, to stop.
Ancient Maples. I took refuge under their page sized leaves and cried silently, often.
They gently swayed with the fullness of summer.
Solstice...it was to be all downhill toward the darkness from there.
Two babies. Two years. Too much for you.
I was finally remembering myself and getting a foothold.
Still plump but getting back to the me I had been, the me you wanted me to forget.
It was a perfect day for real estate - everything would show well.
You were going to swim in an over-sized Hollywood Azul Pool with them
and 'allow' me to 'have something for myself'
I grabbed my briefcase, stepped into my heels and made it to the flats; a plateau of land that was the
original dump when the farm land turned suburbia was young, when I was young, when we had
made the move from Brooklyn to the 'boon docks'
I had forgotten...something?
Was it my phone? I cannot recall now, all these years later but it was incidentally monumental;
right up there with a wrong turn down the right road that leads you to your core.
I circled around.
Back across the rolling farms that had sold chunks of land off to build schools.
It truly was a lovely place. A place where nothing could go wrong.
My grandmother always commented that the apple trees reminded her of Scotland.
I felt so lucky.
I could see the fence within myself and was ready to climb back into a career,
back into me, and into our future.
I climbed the long driveway to the house on the hill built by 2 sisters,
at the foot of a watershed mountain.
Good Water.
Well Water.
Water that had nourished the farm and the ancient orchard in the front that sporadically bloomed.
I had won the personal lottery; out of a childhood of financial uncertainty...
fighting, dissension, lean holidays and day trips but never vacations.
I parked and rounded the yard.
I could see you on a pristine white lounger; one of four we had purchased.
My four year old next to you like a clone.
Both oiled, arms akimbo behind your heads - lazy afternoon ahead.
I couldn't see my little guy. My two year old. I walked closer,
my heels sinking into the fertile yard,
beads of sweat on my back,
under my dress clothes - black and now stifling.
"Where is he?" I asked, my voice pitching away in a whispered shriek.
You sat up, startled, and glanced toward the pool then looked relieved - like a bullet dodged.
"He's fine!" You said far too enthusiastically, "He's in the boat, see? Fine!"
A smiling two year old.
Alone.
In a large, luxurious pool. In blue trunks. In a blow up boat.
Kicking off my shoes I jumped in. He laughed and clapped and lunged into the water. I caught him.
'MOMMA!'
Oh such a game
A wicked game.
You stood up. My older one looked puzzled, looked at you then at me - half a smile.
Something wasn't quite right and he knew it, for he already had a greater compass
and stronger stars than a man decades older. But that would prove to be part of his sacred contract.
You stopped walking toward me midway between the chair and pool.
To this day I wonder what it was you had seen in my face that planted you in that spot.
That kept you there while I held him fast and wrapped a towel around him.
I could no longer make a run for the fence, for I had to make sure I could clear it for three,
and I just wasn't a strong enough runner...not yet anyway.
Plans changed. My appointments would wait. Finding me again, would wait...for 17 more years.
I felt cheated.
I felt trapped.
But I never looked back.
I couldn't see the future, but I knew you weren't in it.
Approximately 17 years later, almost to the day - the solstice to be exact - I heard of a drowning.
A child.
It brought that day back with such lucidity it took my breath away.
I could feel the sunlight through the swaying lush green maple leaves.
The sun bouncing off my luxury sedan.
I tasted the decision to bypass what I needed and stay with that precious little man,
to play, to nap, to hold him close.
I know now I regret nothing.
Time has assured me; slowly, patiently, delicately.
Even when this child, now a man, slights me (as young men can)
tells me he doesn't need me (as young men believe)
rolls his eyes when I remind him a mothers love is endless (as young men forget)
I love him fiercely.
It's a knowing love, that angels intervened on our behalf to keep us safe to
get us here, to arrive at this moment, and then the next.
This is a mothers love.
This is a warriors understanding.
These are selfless choices for life beyond our own.
And this precious young man is the truest wealth and most handsome of treasures
for believing in those choices.
