Mermaid

(this is the second in a series of posts I'm writing about my Water Babies. you might want to read part one, part three, and part four, too)

Sofia is almost ten. She stands poised, as all ten-year-olds do, on the brink of young woman-hood, awkwardly suspended between adult and child. Vacillating between the two, rarely perfectly comfortable in either world-- the grass always green on the other side of the proverbial fence.

But in the water she perfectly straddles those two worlds, my graceful water-girl-woman. She glides and swoops and twists, mistress of herself. She feels, I think, a little safer, a little private, here in the water. She goes back to her imaginative games, elaborate plots and characters played out on the bottom of the deep end. Completely unconscious of any audience, or even any world outside these four concrete walls and 20,000 gallons of blue, she acts out her fantasies, her dreams.

I'm glad she has this place where she feels so Right. I remember all too vividly the wrong-ness that dogs one during those early teen years. A place where one feels one truly belongs is so important. When I watch her dart and glide and dive, I think perhaps we will survive these next eight years without too much heartache. Perhaps here in the pool we will always be friends. Perhaps we can come out and swim together and all the argumentation and conflict will wash away, untangled and smooth...





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