Bracing

I share this now in the name of progress. It's been five years, which seems both an eternity and a snap of the fingers. But then, we've been warned enough about this speeding time phenomenon. We should know better than to gawk...

Bracing

 

On the day my husband figured out that he couldn't 

work in this country, I took off my clothes 

in the Whaler.

My daughter needed help in the water.

He hadn't applied when he should have
it would have been fine by now if he had
but now we are in a bind.

I didn't have a suit on underneath.

 
She'd had three tries already. “Hold the rope”

I said, and just as she grasps it in her hands
My sister finishes stuffing my shirt and bra
and panties into the duffel and accelerates.

This is not according to plan.
My daughter is laughing.  Success

on the knee board Except she never meant,

even for a second, to try to get up on her knees.

She just wanted to ride alone, Holding on,

dragged behind the boat as if that
in itself was a triumph, a colossal over-coming
of some kind.  On her own terms.
She holds on for several loops around the bay.

By then I've been given a clammy towel
And wrapped in it, stand shivering near the bow
Watching my daughter gasp and giggle.

gleeful. Charming. daring.  game.

I drop the towel as we ease toward the beach.
By now the unemployable has camera poised
click. click. click.  - a sound too far away for me to hear

But my father, slumped beside him, might hear the
sound.  Might see the pale blur on the boat he bought
one day long long ago for its rugged durability - its inability

to tip.  Easy to fill with dogs and pulling tubes and knee boards

and impudent children and mothers on the verge.

Yesterday, on the day my husband realized that he was

unemployable,  I jumped off the Whaler buck naked.
The water was only a little bit cold. 

And not quite deep.
But I knew that all along. 

- July, 2007