February 10, 2012

Rain most of the night . . . a constant drip of rain, no big deluge, no rush of water from the roof, just drip and drip and more drip.  The sound of rain spattering anything solid, lots of different drip sounds, drips from leaves, from eaves, scattered by cars, the shush of wet roads.  Rain mutes all the normal sounds, so all you can hear is that constant splatter.  Such a slow steady rain is so good for trees and anything green, even the ground, like cement from the long drought, is beginning to soften up, beginning to hold on the the water instead of it flooding the ditches and bayous.  We have actually come up two categories, we are no longer in exceptional or extreme drought, now we are merely severe and may be coming out of that.  The La Nina is fading, and while it may not fade soon enough for normal spring rain, they hold out good hope for early summer.

This morning, for the daughter who returned, a poem about one of the most important things we learn . . .

First Lesson

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Philip Booth

I remember teaching all my children to swim.  Matthew didn't take to it so much, but Michael and Mikayla were fish, from the very first.  They seemed to trust the water, seemed to have little fear of it and expected it to hold them.  I love the gentleness of this poem, the slow work of trust between them, and between the daughter and the water.  And as a parent, you want to give your kids that sense of the world, that the trust they have will hold them up, the love and care they have experienced will keep them afloat.  The light-year stars . . . i often think of how long it takes light to travel such distances, how what we are seeing is the past, the very distant past.  And when we look at our grown children, what parent doesn't see the past as well as the present, what parent doesn't have that thrill of fear for their future, even if small and distantly felt.  I like to think that even for me, swimming though all these days, if I lie back, lie gently and wide open, the sea of this life will hold me.