The mother had fought a small cause to prevent the little girl from sticking her hand into the pond to try to catch a fish, but the child fell in and went under. Which of them did the wrong thing?
The father wrapped his hands around the crying child’s neck as he lifted her up and out and the mother shook droplets from the wetted front of her own skirt.
A rose of Sharon—like an old Chinese, hand-painted lacquer screen—obscured the sight of anything more of them, as the group left. But the mother, I could hear her saying—“The what? I will not!”
But to get back to the pond!—we were at the Burnett Fountain in the Conservatory Garden where a bronze boy toots on a flute at the feet of a bronze girl who holds her overflowing bowl high.
Legs together—the boy reclines in a mermaid pose—and people in other mermaid poses had been taking turns being photographed on the stone pavers at the edge of the reflecting pool that was filled with the blue lilies and the fish.
I also lowered myself so that I was elongated and bent at the waist.
I watched a creamy madcap one ploughing among the others that were, most of them, too good to be true.
I felt an unimaginable touch. Oh, to be sweetly signaled.
A hand pressed against my back. “Come along, Kitty. We’re late. You wanted a bath.”
He kissed his fingers in tribute to me as I turned. And I got up with slow progress, trying for a look of extreme gladness, brushing off the back of my clothing.
A dead or disabled raccoon on the sidewalk, near the hospital, en route home, was attracting several lookers-on—partially on its side—with its legs opened up like scissor blades.
We’ve heard these animals in the trees and guessed what they were doing up there that always sounds so beyond the pale.
This was just going to be a sponge bath, God willing.
“You’re clean enough already,” my husband said.
So that was dear of him and the lineaments of his face are stamped with his best intentions whether he has any of those or not.
I am teal and gray and added colors. I’ve done nothing to hide the ugliness of my elderly body. And let others regret that my character has no allure, because I am worn-out with that also.
We have a roll-top bathtub I had stepped into. I tried to sit. I was angled painfully and wedged on top of one foot—as if I am intent to prove the impossible—that I don’t fit in.