Saturday, March 19, 2011

the beauty of life's invisible derivative

She sits on the living room floor wrapped in the safety of a blue half circle pillow. I lay my head on that pillow, her body between me and the rest of the world.

It's hard to say how much she appreciates the closeness. Her hands and eyes wander amongst her toys, sometimes they cross my face and hair before going back to the stuffed spider or red and white maraca she loves to shake. She steals my glasses, fills my vision with her profile, her guileless eyes, her ears collecting light, her small nose, her divine cheeks. Behind her the window is blurry, beyond the window is an infinite gray that I know is rain, clouds and fogs, but feels like much more. This closeness to her, in the dying light of a rainy day isn't a thing I expected, it wasn't bargained for. Its like going into a used clothing store and stumbling upon a pair of slippers once worn by some mighty queen. It's a thing so great that even though it has just made its appearance on the distant horizon you can already feel its absents growing close. Some day she'll have boundaries, need space, have friends to impress, a life all her own, you can sense all this in that endless gray on the other side of the window, beyond her innocent face. The great arc of her love is steadily climbing, and although that most sacred parabola has many years before its slope hits zero--when the life of a child and her parents' go their separate ways--my mind already looks fondly but sadly upon a moment merely a few minutes old like a lost treasure buried beneath the endless blue seas.