part one
When my abuela was three
she would bathe with her little cousin
in the tub on hot days.
When I think about her childhood
I always imagine chickens and a courtyard
and laundry on the line
Because these are the bits I piece together
from the stories she has told me -
I imagine dusty light and air thick with heat
but I know this must have been a galvanized tub
in a four-walled bathroom.
It was 1933.
Frida Kahlo was unhappy in Manhattan
A great dust bowl was forming in the midwest
And Ghandi had been arrested
In her little corner of the world, however
she was three years old
playing in the bath with her cousin
in an old house in Mexico
and her mother splashed them
and they giggled wildly,
the last of their baby years
clinging to small brown bodies.
Somehow (and she remembers this clearly)
she fell and hit her head, as children do,
always sending their parents in a desperate panic
to protect the life for which they would die.
She remembers the blood
blood on the tiles
and blood blooming in the water,
and screaming for her father.
(Two years later, her father would be gone -
Not dead, just absent.
This would not be the last time
she would cry for him)
This, she does not remember:
how they rushed her to the hospital
but they must have talked about it,
in that reverent, unbelieving, wide-eyed way
in which parents share such stories
with anyone who will listen,
and so today, it is the story she tells.
Eighty-nine years later
she can still feel the scar
beneath her thinning gray hair.
"Our first memories impact us"
she said when she told me
and in a brief moment of
pondering the endless threads
of possibilities life offers
I thought about how close
my children came
to not existing.
part two
Not to be dramatic, but -
It's twice now
I've held his life in my hands
My only instinct
my only focus and breath
and purpose to my very existence
in that moment
To save him, save him, save him
It's not that
he came close to death,
but that death is always lurking, I suppose
and we constantly make choices
which brush it casually to the side:
Some other time, perhaps.
Not feeling my knees hit the concrete, hard
as I lunge forward
(He's floating downward,
I first grab his leg,
attempting to lift up and out, effortlessly
with my weak and trembling core
his twenty-eight pounds upside down
by a single ankle
But that's stupid,
I've never been more stupid -
Just get his head above water)
Or my elbow scrape
against the rough side of the pool
as I jump in
(He's sinking
in slow motion,
why am I not faster?
My hands grope gracefully,
churning the water.
I am a ridiculous dancer -
there is no yanking even in
three and a half feet of water)
Or my ankle
slam against the wooden stairs
on my way downward
(Just keep his head
from hitting the sidewalk
Which gets closer
During this millisecond
Which lasts for eternity.
There is no stopping
once your body is flung into
three and a half feet of open air)
Or my hand as it catches my fall
(The back of the skull,
That's the tender part,
And he is hurled, his neck swung wildly
but I clutch him close to my body
with one arm
And I will outsmart gravity
If it kills me)
My nervous system's response is visceral
I am shaking, I let out a sob involuntarily
How many times in a day
do all the bodies in the world
escape inches, mere inches,
or minutes? Just minutes
Later, I lie in bed in the quiet dark
Which creates the perfect backdrop
For all the disturbing and fantastical things
To pester my thoughts
But I act in defiance -
Breathe my gratefulness
Wipe pointless tears
Kiss his soft cheek
His small open palm
Whisper that I love him so much, so much -
And that is all,
That is all I need to know
That's all I need to remember
I fix my thoughts
The what-ifs don't exist
And tomorrow doesn't really exist
Not yet, anyway
But he does
And he's right here
And that's all that matters
in this moment
