It has been a bit of a hiatus for me from blogging. Not because I have not had any thoughts to share, just not enough time to do it. But I witnessed something on Monday that I keep coming back to. Something that soothed my soul in a fantastical way.
I was at LuLu’s swim lesson, sitting in the designated viewing room when I noticed a gentleman swimming around in the pool. Normally this is not odd, however he was in the area where one does not swim laps. In any case, I began to watch him swim about. There was no rhyme or reason to the patterns that he created with his body. He kind of reminded me of an otter. He would periodically stop and lift an arm and stare at the water running off his hand, down his fingers and fall into the water. He was in awe. Mesmerized by the magic of gravity, or the spectacle the rivulets made coursing down his skin. Mesmerized. And I was mesmerized by him.
I was abruptly jerked out of my haze by Lulu’s need to use the bathroom. When I returned her to the pool, I discovered that the man was not alone. He was with a caregiver. The caregiver was obstructed from my view by a slide. Since there was only a few minutes left of the lesson I decided to stay in the pool area and resume my observations. What I then witnessed was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. If you had seen this caregiver on the street you would never have guessed that this was his profession. He had long, dark, wavy hair similar to a heavy metal guitarist. His face hosted a goatee of admirable length and he wore combat style boots with his black t-shirt and work shorts. He was small in stature, but that was just the confines of his skeletal frame. He was much bigger than my life.
I watched the man swim to him and they splashed a bit at each other and the man turned his back to him and the caregiver scooped up water and let it run over the mans head. The mans face was of pure serenity and then pure joy and laughter as the caregiver rubbed his head. It was like watching a baptism of sorts and I was just as mesmerized with the whole scene as the man was with the water itself. And I told him so. I also told him, the caregiver, that they were lucky to have each other and he replied that he was way more lucky than his friend.
The Plagiarist 