She sat in her beach chair watching her two young boys, ages 11 and 4, playing together in the shallows along the shore. She caught my eye just as she stood to reposition herself more directly toward the sun. Her long lean body, clad in a stylish Catalina one-piece, stretched to its full length to reveal sculpted calves and what my mother would have described as “legs up to here” as Mom indicated a height somewhere near her shoulder. The woman removed her wide brimmed hat and let her blonde hair flow out from underneath. Like a geisel, she walked with a measured pace into the water. Her youngest son asked, “Mama, what are you doing?” Without giving him an answer, she executed a perfect surface dive, with the barest hint of a dolphin kick flap of her feet, and seamlessly began swimming freestyle just as I’m sure she had done in competition sometime in her past. Her four-year-old began to whimper with anxiety as she swam further away from him and his older brother. The child never broke into an actual cry, but his distress was evident as he watched her go. About a pool’s length away, she stopped to stand. She pushed her hair away from her face and then turned to look at her young son. He cried, “Mama!” She yelled back in a voice and volume I wasn’t expecting, “Shut up! Just shut up!” He stopped, a look of hurt on his face. His brother quickly set about distracting him with a water toy and she stroked back to shore. Emerging from the lake she quietly took a seat in her chair and placed her hat on her head.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2018
