One of my moms told me to fly last night. She didn’t even care where I was going. She just said to go ahead and fly. Don’t think about anything else. Where I was going. Who needed what. Don’t feel guilty about anything. Just go fly.
They got me a bike. Shiny new and clear blue like Hawaiian water. I dove into my bike and rode with Hank the big fat dog late tonight. We flew out past the 4th of Julyers, teenagers out walking from parties. Ducks asleep at the duck house. Nobody else on the road, just black deep pavement and sleeping houses.
In my mind I replayed the parties we went to today. I could actually feel the parties, sometimes I’m on the outside of them but today I was at Poppa’s 4th party, with red white and blue decorated children and the tattoos we spilled water on and ruined in the car on the way over – melted ice cream and cotton candy and I ate an entire hamburger. Emma won the hula hoop contest like usual and Nathan fumbled the rely race like usual – Nathan has exuberance and clumsy going all at once, tied together in joy. Lilly ran the relay too, capturing a tiny American flag and running back with it held high – she didn’t know the point of the race is to run as fast as you can, forget the flag you’re holding. She thought she won the flag, so happy to have run and won the flag.
Then we swam at Michael Shapiro’s with the family that we love, two hunks of love parents and two blonde spritely boys. The kids buried themselves in pillows, Emma jumped into the hot tub and smashed her lip, I ate half a hamburger, we ate whipped cream and ice cream and brownies. And all the variety of kids sat in a row on a high bench, on pillows and watched the fireworks and me and Barry sat behind and there was our life laid out there on the porch, the fireworks over the mountain, the kids lined up in their pajamas, I like this 4th because it is one time that I can sit down and catch my breath and see that my life is a holy place.
We get home driving the freeway with fireworks bursting around us like it’s celebrating us driving home, and at home Lilly is asleep in moments, laying on my chest, and her weight is like a treasure chest, pirate gold. I think, I love being smothered, I love being needed, I love mattering to people. There is warmth spreading out from Lilly’s little heart, down my limbs, into my fingertips and toetips. The whole day brings me this.
So I snuck out on my bike to fly for real because Hank and I needed more room, the whole outdoors to hold in the love because I didn’t know it but everyday, all these days, look somehow I am soaring. I’m not winning any relay race at all, who needs the race, I don’t even know the rules, cause I already won this little flag. It was meant for me.
