Water Girl

and the sail of time

Last year, when my daughter was struggling with her identity and I was struggling with my daughter, we had a poetic conversation that has stayed with me.

It started when I shared a memory of her as a kid — a memory that she’d heard me tell many times before:

“When you were little, you loved playing in water, remember? You were a water ___,” I stopped.

“Girl.” I was going to say, girl. “Water girl.” I’d said it a million times in the before days, but now I stopped. And she heard the stop. She knew.

I was sitting on the carpet in her bedroom, my fingers in the cut pile.

“You know, this is hard to navigate,” I said.

“Then don’t navigate. Just put up your sail,” she said.

I played along.

“What is the wind then? Love?” I said.

“Compassion,” she said, “for me and yourself.”

Then she thought some more, and said, “Time. The sail is time.”

I gripped the carpet.

We were hunkered down beneath a storm that battered us both. Who could say how long before it passed?

I remember dreaming of blue skies.

The sail flutters and fills.

(@walkwithmom)