Snapshots

Last night I went swimming in our outside pool with my mom and my younger brother and sisters. We swam in the warm, dark water and eleven-year-old Brian asked me questions about the stars and space. I told him how some of the light we were seeing was coming from stars that were already dead. Learning that myself years ago made me feel as if the Universe was a magical place, holding time in some strangely loose grip that could be jumped in and out of like a flowing river. We talked about our favourite planets, about the recent discovery of a planet beyond Pluto and the possibility of one day travelling to Mars. When my mom asked Brian what his favourite Planet was he said, “Urpenis” in complete innocence. I felt like I was living in a Reader’s Digest Article.

We all wore goggles and played under the water, pretending to lounge around on the bottom of the pool, our legs crossed, hands beneath our heads as we floated upwards to the surface. Later, I went off to the side and watched the kids under the water like a frozen circus – Courtney, standing on her hands, Brian floating limply like a doll and Tammy standing beside them, like a confused ring leader, wishing she could take part in the performance.

The kids always swim around my mom, clinging to her, spiking her hair up into a mohawk, showing her their latest tricks. She gets irritated with them sometimes because she can barely move with them always so close to her, pulling at her arms or attention, in three different direction. She was fifty-one years old when she agreed to take in Tammy, Brian and Courtney as a foster parent. She will be sixty-two when the last one of them graduates high school. All three have varying levels of disabilities and my mom becomes tired and frustrated at times but she is generous in her kindness and love and I am humbled by her life of sacrifices.

People often tell me I look like my mom. I can’t usually see it, but last night as we swam she came up out of the water and in the dark, with her hair wet against her head I felt like I was looking at an older me. The kids went inside to bed and my mom and I swam silently in the water, floating along the top, sinking to the bottom, rolling in circles as the air in our lungs pushed us to the surface, enjoying the buoyancy and freedom of our bodies in the water. The stars were thick above us and steam rose up off the water.

There are moments of joy in my life when my soul seems to expand within my body and reach out to my very fingertips and toes, leaving no empty spaces within me. My head aches with the beauty it beholds and I wait for my soul to split my skin and pour out of its bindings. But my skin holds and I float through the moment, frozen in that space like the kids in the water, standing on my head, oblivious to gravity.