I Feel It In the Deep Heart's Core
August 22
Here, sitting on the porch in Freeport, in the woods, I watch the family of deer graze on raspberries on the verge of the dirt road up to our house, watch the five wild turkeys bob and twitch in the grasses. But best of all, on four delightful days at three different lakes, parked on a blanket on a sand beach feet from the water with Bob beside me, I watch in awe as my grandchildren, age 8 and 10, do what they do together with so much ease and imagination and care: they play, together, wholeheartedly, totally engrossed in the moment.
Together they dig holes in the sand, bury each other’s feet, then their whole bodies, hide sticks and shells in the sand, pour water into the holes they’ve dug. They borrow each other’s shovels and ask the other for help moving sand or bucketsfull of water. They make up stories and talk fast, as if their audio is speeded up, about imaginary worlds found underground or in space and the robots who live there and the two headed animals or the evil spirits who roam its forests. Then in seconds they destroy it all, smooth over the turrets, fill in the moats, leave their whole built sandworld behind. “Let’s go,” they say to each other and suddenly they are running into the water, diving in headfirst. They splash each other, take turns doing summersaults and hand stands and back floats. The sound of their laughter and their hoots of joy drift over the lake. They dare each other to bring something slimy up from the lake bottom. They drape that slimy thing over the other’s shoulder. They squeal. They are like puppies from the same littler. They are like two instruments finely tuned to each other. The music they make together is the music of joy.
When one or the other tires and climbs out of the lake bluelipped and shivering, the child left behind eyes the two dry old bodies sunning in their beach chairs. “It’s your turn now!! Come in the water with me!” It will be Bob who agrees readily as he is a much better sport than I about diving into cold water, playing with children. He stands, takes off his shirt and, his body not yet straightened, walks gingerly into the lake. He too dives. He comes up transformed, the cold dive in the lake has metamorphosized him into a strong, high spirited incarnation of his young self. Time slips backward. He too splashes and dives and hoots and chuckles. “I’m going to get you,” he calls out over the water. When he does capture the giggling child, he says, “Now I’m going to crouch down and when I do, you stand on my shoulders, and then I’ll stand up too and you can dive over my head.” This takes some co-ordination and practice and lots of falls are taken too soon from his shoulders. Sometimes he stays under so long I get a tiny bit uneasy, but he always comes back up, laughing and sputtering.
Then, after what seems like a very long time, when he’s finally ready for a break, and climbs out of the water with a big smile on his face, his energy still rippling like the energy of a much younger person, one or the other or both of the children will turn their faces to me. “Ok Gigi, it’s your turn!! Please come in the water and play with us. Please.”
I’ve never been as good at playing as Bob is. When our kids were little, I was the one in the kitchen making supper while he, in the next room, flew the kids around by balancing their bodies on his feet while lying on his back and bending his knees. Though I had numbers of brothers and sisters, I never played with them the way Finn and Addie play. Mostly, I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. And, sadly, neither of my children had this ease of play, this mind/spirit connection that is so magical. I didn’t know how to create the conditions in a family that nourish such sibling connections. But Finn and Addie’s parent do, and now Bob and I are the oh-so-lucky and grateful participants in their circle of play.
So, as you may imagine, when Addie comes to the blanket, dripping wet, lifts my hand, holds it in hers and asks me to come in the water, I don’t refuse. It’s never too late to learn to play. And there’s not much time left. Holding hands, we walk together over the hot sand and into the lake. I feel a little shy while I do this, a little awkward, like a young duckling who needs teaching. Once in the water, we get very close to each other. She wants me to hold her body and help her do a summersault underwater. “Hold me like this,” she says, placing one hand on her belly and one hand on her back and looking me directly in my eyes, hers all sparkly with anticipation. For a moment I feel as if I could cry. “Hold me,” she says, trusting I will, knowing I will. Hold her, in warm lake water, blue sky endless overhead. It’s all I want to do, ever. Play with her. Keep her safe. Keep us both safe. Or to misquote Yeats’ poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, “I feel it in the deep heart’s core.”
Later, drying off on the blanket, I recite my favorite lines from that poem to the kids in what would be a failed effort to get them to memorize a one or two of those lines. The poem is one of the few I know by heart. Like Yeats, I call on that lake, those words, in darker times.
“Repeat after me I say to the kids, thinking they will like the sound of the words, ‘I will arise and go now, for always night and day, I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.’” They look at me like I have lost my mind and resume acting out the story they were making up together. They haven’t yet learned about darker times. They aren’t worried about the future. They are here in the present, being kids. I give up trying to impart these words to them on this lovely afternoon, words they don’t yet need. But first I store a bit of this day for the future, for the time, likely soon, when “I stand on the roadway or on the pavements gray.”
Kathleen Sullivan