Bright Lanterns

All the minutes of my life feel interminably long, as though I was always throwing my watches in the wash and stopping them with detergent and the incessant tumbling.  On and on they go...which means that the bad moments stretch out like an impossible disease of the spirit.  There are fewer good moments when your brain fights you every step of the way, but when they happen, their eternity is equal.  They live like bright lanterns swinging against a solid porch, the symbol of all homecoming.  They warm me deep into the trespass of nightmare, staving off the worst until early morning.

There are times that Philip, Max, and I walk together down dirt roads, towards some expected goal, and all of us forget about the goal, about the time, about the daily distractions of outside life, and we become a threesome of curious, sharp, quirky, crazy, loud, funny, renegades ready for any adventure.  I get spazzy about finding a large wild clump of blooming comfrey and Max says "So?  Who cares about plants?" and Philip says "Your mom does, for one." and Max makes great faces to indicate that plants are the most boring things on earth but the next minute I'm taking a picture of some strange white potentially poisonous berry and he crowds in to speculate on how poisonous it might be, completely forgetting his boredom, his grave indifference.

The three of us, with our eyes wide open and our ears alive listened to the fish gulping air at the lake, watched the dragonflies glittering across the water- chasing our swimming dog who is like a black star in the lake.  There is an ebullience  between all of us that is like a whipped up confection of the moment barely contained in the bodies we've been given.  So many of our hours are filled with ritual, anxiety, stiff effort so that when we are set free, even for a few minutes, it's like finding unicorns galloping across the Midwestern plains.  I see my son in the brilliant afternoon light, his pale hair and skin glowing like opals in the open, and I see more in him than the trouble he is going to experience.  I see a naturalist, a scientist, an artist; I see a person better and more promising than any other person I know.

I watch him pointing (with deep free smiles) to the rings the fish have left and what I see is an incandescent soul.  This boy I am charged with growing to full manhood, he is more than I will ever be and it's right that I should feel this for my own child. 

It was quiet in the woods, but for us.  Joyous buoyant us.  It's difficult to recognize our care-pocked spirits in this endless afternoon away from the rest of the world.  So much love between us all.  Though, when reality settles back and we are again struggling against our copious boundaries and mental blackouts we will think perhaps we imagined all this happiness.

I have a dream that we have a cabin up there in the woods, near a year round creek, without phones, computers, or televisions with DVDs and video games.  We follow the creek barefoot until we run into shotguns and deer.  Chick follows us or leads us, as the moment commands, and we all let our feet be shaped by sharp rocks and icy currents.  We lift rocks to find crawdads and salamanders.  We pocket smooth stones to add to bowls on our kitchen counter.  We burn wood fires in our cabin and roast marshmallows on twigs because even though marshmallows are creepy food Max enjoys them like most children do and we tell stories over the sparks and inhale the cold night and hope for rain.

Our life is never smooth, never truly without care, but there are these hours of absolute delicious communion with our spirits as they came into the world.  Together, as we were meant to be.