Happy Birthday Mom

Night Swimming

It is a late night, in late August. The last of warm summer evenings are cupped in curled leaves, readying themselves for the fall. My two-year-old daughter, India, is asleep, and I slip on my bathing suit and out of the house, into pine-scented night. The pool deck is scattered with towels and beach balls, and although my three younger foster siblings are playing happily in the water with my mom, the dark sky smeared in silver sequins, absorbs and slows their noise and movements, like a warm towel. We swim in the dark air, and eleven-year-old Brian asks me questions about the stars and space. I tell him how some of the lights we are seeing comes from stars that have long since died. And I remember myself, learning this as a child, and how it made me feel as if the Universe were a magical place, holding time in some strangely loose grip, that could be jumped into and out of, like a flowing river. We talk about Space, about the recent discovery of a planet beyond Pluto, and the possibility of one day traveling to Mars. When my mom asks Brian what his favorite Planet is, he says, "Urpenis," in complete innocence, and then blushes when he realizes his mistake. I feel as if I am living in a Reader's Digest Article.

I wear goggles and play under the water with the kids, pretending to lounge around on the bottom of the pool, stretched out, legs crossed, hands beneath our heads as we float up to the surface, pulled towards the moon. Later, I move to the side and watch them perform, like a slow moving circus; twelve-year-old Courtney, walking on her hands, Brian, floating limply like a doll, and fourteen-year-old Tammy, standing beside them like a confused ring leader, wishing she could take part in the show. They swim around my mom, their sun, clinging to her arms, spiking her haivyinging for her attention. And she stands there, patiently, taking the time to decipherer Tammy's garbled speech, laugh at Brian's jokes and Courtney's tricks. She has bought them snorkels and flippers, and times them, and plays judge to their races. She teaches them to flip under the water, and I remember again, what it felt like to be small, with her hand on the small of my back, and her telling me to, "Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick."

I can see that she's tired tonight. It's late in the night, and late in the summer holiday season. School will start soon, and she will again have the day to herself, but not yet, and tonight she is worn. The kids are pulling on her arms, and hair, and attention, in three different directions, and she becomes irritated and short, telling them to play with each other for a while, and to stop touching her. I watch her with them, and count out her years. She was fifty-one when she took in Tammy, Brian and Courtney, as a permanent foster parent. She will be sixty-two when Brian graduates high school. All three kids have varying levels of disabilities, all take medication daily, all come from horrible histories of abuse and neglect, all three depend on her love, completely. And my mom loves them, as moms do: in family suppers, help with homework, doctor's appointments, clean clothes, kisses goodnight, stern warnings, birthday parties, consequences, bedtime stories. She loves them beyond what genetic mothers are required to dworkersial wokers' meetings, documentation, in services, specialists visits, record keeping, submitting accounts, house inspections. She has anchored these kids to her life, and they move out from her, and in again, connected as tides and the moon.

It's late, and my mom sends Brian, Courtney and Tammy inside, to bed. The two of us swim silently in the water, floating along the top, sinking to the bottom, rolling in circles as the air in our lungs pushes us to the surface, enjoying the freedom of our bodies in the water. The stars are thick above us, and steam rises up, off the surface of the pool. We are unusually quiet, together, tonight. Our children in bed, a moment of independence, and I do not feel the need to fill the silence. She comes up, out of the water, and in the dark, with her hair wet against her head, I jump into the magical river of time, and feel that I am looking at an older reflection of myself.

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 sees, and I wait for my soul to split my skin, and pour out of its bindings. But miraculously, 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.

The air chills and time skips back again. We climb from the pool, dripping and shivering. Wrapped in soft towels, we leave the quiet night, and step into the glowing house, with the warm, sleeping hearts, that pull us through our days, and time, and space, into moments of selflessness, grace and night swimming.