Perspective

MOMENT 1

At the park on Saturday—two kids standing by a tree eating their apples—the girl is balancing on the tree roots, the boy is squatting. The sun is high, but blocked by the canopy of the tree. The mom’s voice, “Is that cheese on your lips?” The girl can’t hold still. She is waving her arms about—the way that hair floats in water. I close my eyes, and open them. Still life. The girl approaches. Her knees, knobby like mine, engulf the frame of my eyes. She giggles and returns to the tree. 

MOMENT 2

Sitting on the edge of the backyard blow-up pool, the boy dangles his feet in the water. His toes barely touch. Anyone else’s would be fully submerged, their weight having squished the side to deflation. The late morning sunlight refracts through the water, bouncing across the painted fish, making the water seem alive. The girl is periphery. Playing games on the edge of the pool, on the edge of the grass, in the liminality of time. The boy reaches down, past his toes—bending in half—to poke the water and to send circular ripples vibrating across the surface of the pool.

MOMENT 3

In a world apart—separate and together the boy and the girl converse, crossing over only occasionally to the world that waits, neither caring, nor ignorant, just being in the moment, as childhood dictates. Eating grapes and Coco Puffs at the kitchen table they laugh, giggle, slurp, and chirp. It’s a foreign language, a tribe all their own. I only recognize a few of the words. Their grandma walks by, passes them at the table. “I’m eating them through my nose,” says the girl. She and the boy go into hysterics. The grandma opens a cupboard. Their grandpa comes into the kitchen, so does their aunt carrying their 11 month-old-cousin, then their uncle. The adults in the room move around and past, hearing the boy and girl, but not included in their conversation—