Water

Did anyone know that I took the Minnow swimming test while keeping my feet on the bottom? Maybe the waterfront counselors only watched my arms. I did dip my face into the water and pretended to fill my lungs with air. Perhaps they awarded me the minnow badge because my father was the camp director and my mother sewed the badges on the camper's swimsuits. In the fall, when I entered the first grade, I brought the badge to show and tell.

2

My mother and two aunts went shopping—an event that often took several hours.

Ten, tanned, able to swim and bored on a day we were told to stay close to the bungalow— instead we three cousins, known as the Three Musketeers, set out for a local lake where we found a rowboat beached like a whale out of its element. We appropriated the boat.

"No one cares about this boat," I said, "Look at the peeling sides and splintered seat."
“It’s abandoned,” said Cynthia.

We took the rowboat out for a small voyage. Cousin Bobby once took a canoe out and I knew how to row. Cynthia never lost her way; she became our navigator.

We headed for a patch of water lilies because they were beautiful and lured us the way the mermaids beckoned the mariners. Once in the patch we pulled the oars in and played at being on a voyage around the world. The rowboat drifted deeper into the patch. When we dipped our oars into the water they were ensnared by underwater stalks— adventitious roots No matter how we fended off the tentacles they trapped the oars and the boat. We also noticed a small puddle of water in the rowboat.

We dipped an oar in, took a stroke, then removed the weeds, and took another stroke. Then we cupped the water on the bottom and threw it overboard. Drowning at sea wasn't an option.

3

A flash flood waits for no one. They say the sound is like an oncoming train. It carries whatever is in its path along to create a new path.

We traveled from Second Mesa to Gallup, New Mexico even though the sky was gray and thunderclouds were up ahead— the gray deepened and there was an ominous silence. Hours passed and we entered a stretch of road that ran between rivers, or lakes, or small ponds. The pick-up truck in front picked up speed and we stayed with the larger vehicle thinking that the car represented safety. The water began to encroach upon the edges of the road. We drove closer to the middle of the road. Somewhere behind us or in front of us there was a possibility of a flash flood. We drove ninety miles an hour losing more and more of the road edge. The rains hadn't yet begun but when they did we anticipated the water covering the road and meeting in the middle as if claiming their territory.

We drove the last few miles with a light rain beginning. Just as we realized the end was close the sky opened up and the road began to close.

4

There's small knoll at Queens College. Perhaps it’s even too small to call a knoll, just a low hill. One spring day when the temperature hovered in the low eighties my friend Minnie suggested studying for a biology test outside. We gravitated to the hill and talked of life as if we could blueprint the years. It started to rain and we put the books in our rucksacks. Once wet it was foolish to move. The rain began in earnest. I placed my rucksack on the ground to use as a pillow. Lying side by side we caught raindrops. I never felt cold or even wet. The world never intruded.

5

Growing up in the Bronx meant that snow turned black by the time the busses and cars finished the evening commute. Once it snowed day after day and the plows piled the darkened snow in a pile that began to resemble a mountain to my eight year old imagination. Then a new snow turned the mountain pristine white. We climbed to the top and dislodged the new snow revealing the blackened pile underneath. I couldn't know at that time that that was a metaphor.

6

I once did a painting for a friend and then she decided that the painting represented something she didn't like. It was philosophically incorrect. I tried to cover the oil paint with strips of colored tissue paper--a collage of moving water emerged, but beneath the surface the old painting. The more strips of tissue I glued to the canvas the more the water raged. The sea churned. The colors darkened. The water recognized the storm before I knew my own feelings.

7


The water that came from your faucet could contain molecules that Neanderthals drank…

In a 100-year period, a water molecule spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about 2 weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere

8

… in places where it has been introduced, the Water Lily can become a weed blocking out sunlight and oxygen from the water —displacing local aquatic plants

9

Filthy water cannot be washed.

-West African proverb