a ~ When the wind blows the water white and black.

Today is a snowy, stay-inside-and-drink-coffee, watch-lots-of-movies, catch-up-on-internet-shopping kind of day. Marred only by a missing book and…. no, that’s it. Just the damn book. A problem which I have pretty much explained to the powers that be and can now forget. Poof!

[B is kneeling on the kitchen floor drawing thought maps on packaging paper. “This is a picture of everything that I know of,” he says. There’s writing (illegible), tic-tac-toe games, squiggles (“These are squiggles,” he explains), smiley faces, and butterflies.]

When T was four months old we went to Cape Cod with our dear friends. We shared a house that was just a little ways up the street from a beach. As my friend, b, said, “I can make a cup of tea and carry it to the ocean and it would still be warm.” Our first night there we trooped to the water in our bathing suits and T fell asleep in M’s arms while I confronted the waves. That moment, standing in the surf and looking out into the moving dark was my first alone in days, weeks, months. I was keenly singular, that was the word that came to mind, and I dived even though I was scared of creatures waiting under the surface. I was happy, alone, untouchable, freed from obligation for a few minutes.

Moments like this are more frequent, now. Usually they happen in the car, after I’ve dropped children at school, on my way to work. I listen to the news or, most days, to popular rock music I don’t really understand. It’s another kind of diving. One that is, maybe, less promising than than a dip in the ocean but no less effective. It washes me. Provides a bridge between thinking this way and thinking that way. White and black. Hot and cold. Smooth and rough. Warm and cold.

It’s almost time to feed horses, walk dogs, and pop a chicken in the oven to roast. Then we’ll watch an episode of Dr. Who, all of us crammed in our wee TV room which does not, sadly, open to a larger version of itself like the TARDIS. TV closet, more like. It’s going to be great.