My Good Friend Melancholy

Lilly is two and she swims underwater. There's something about a baby floating in the big lagoon of the pool, weightless, goggles on, looking at me underwater. We swim twice a day together.

She just walks off the step, slips underwater and then moves in slow motion, the water like a big liquid oil painting around her. Then this little body, the littlest one in our family, and she can do things, complex things like remembering not to breathe, finding my arm when she needs to lift up and get air. She loves the floating and touching the bottom of the pool. I like the silence, and the joy, and the watching her. She only weighs 24 pounds. She looks pretend in that quiet, otherwordly suspension that water brings to the body. She's my watery, living art project.

This week school started again. Nathan managed to slip and sprain his ankle. The scream still echoes off the wall of the burrito place. But he got to drive an electric cart at the grocery store. This is almost worth the ankle pain.

The rush of school, the sudden being someplace after months of being no place, it kind of sprang up on us. It feels like we were never free, we were always slaves to the clock, even though I know that's not true.

Sitting and watching Emma in her new class as I taped up words on the word wall and Lilly hid in the closet with the backpacks - I wish that melancholy and I weren't such good friends. I'm enjoying her life, but damn, her life is just running at a sprint. I was never a good runner.

So I go home and float with Lilly in the pool. We don't think about anything, we just float.