Fooling around

                Well, we were. She put her nose right on mine and laughed. She has a remarkably soft nose. I have your eye, she said. She had just one. I know how that happens that close. And silently the part of me taking notes, aligning data, remarked that her eyes were the same distance apart as mine. She had one perfect, dark—faded, soft, the color of the night sky--eye. And from that we, the note-taker and I, remarked that she was seeing what I was seeing, eye-size-wise. Her hair fell forward and covered her face and mine and we were in a little enclosure a bit darker for her hair (fuzzy blonde.) I have your eye, she said. She did, and she does. She pushed her nose into mine pretty hard flattening them both, and half laughed, half giggled. I know nothing of this, really, but I’d bet, now, remembering our fooling around and what I’d heard that her voice is going to be dark and silky. In a flash I see her at twenty-five. And will the image away as possibly inappropriate. Besides, I’ll be eighty-seven and she’ll have come on a side trip from the conference she’s attending as a part of her doctoral work. It’ll happen to be nearby. I don’t know where I’ll be living then, but we’ll have stayed in touch, her parents and me, and, really it’s not all that far off. She’ll have lost none of her gaiety, none of her natural buoyancy the bud of which I am witnessing now and taking in like a thirsty desert plant. She'll visit and I'll hear her honey toned voice, mellowed to well-aged whisky but I want to avoid images of alcohol and hope she stays away from the stuff and achieves what she will achieve with other means and shows us how it’s done that way, a revelation to most, told-you-so to others, folks like me, those burned by alcohol’s cold flame. “Be the change.” I hope she will. She already is.

Emma

                Fooling around. I had been lying back in the chair into which I had collapsed following a two hour hill race on mountain bikes traversing this valley with her father. I won but he’ll win the next one, I can see that by the way he joked about it—and he’ll fix his bike, replace the pedals and the derailleurs, true the back wheel. She climbed onto my lap like I sometimes climbed into the crotch of a tree on a bad climbing day when I was 6, awkwardly, leg high, head low, arms grabbing at air, or anything, a giggling desperation confident that , anyway, I’d not let her fall to the floor. She’d rode the pony, this being, I think, my first time—plunked herself there—ooooo—and I caught myself wondering what might be in that diaper she was wearing and, if so, would it squirt onto my knee. That didn’t happen and off we went at a slow trot: bump, bump, bump, bump. Fortunately she got another idea before my leg gave out and her pony quit to nibble grass beside the road. She stood on my jelly thighs. It makes me laugh as I write this and see her again standing before me arms spanning the known world. She stood up, balanced in a wobbly way, held her arms wide, almost fell over backwards, her face alight, said, whoa, and giggled a canyon-wren-like descending series of soap-bubble sounds at her recovered balance. That was close, she laughed. My arms remained at my sides but ready. She bent over, grabbed the fold of my shorts in front there fortunately empty of delicate objects, pulled herself forward, stood on my crotch stepped onto my stomach and fell into my face and onto my wet T-shirt still giggling. I’ve got your eye, she said.

                I flashed that you can have this experience anywhere in the world, not just in the DR as a PCV; what had taken me so long? How is it that I’d never been this close to a two year old? In the States you can’t get this close to other people’s children any more. And I’ve never had any of my own. Maybe that’s why. What would Peace Corps think of “what we were doing?” (Say that in a basso falso voice while making air quotes.) I covered all the bases, or my mind did, on its own, being responsible, I suppose, and I had not covered this ground before. I was fooling around with a girl under eighteen. Well, okay. True. But it’s different. Her mother was in the next room making lunch for us. What would she say if she saw us? I know exactly what she’d say: Now, Emma, don’t climb on Paul, he’s tired.