They are splashing in the frigid lake, my boys, dumping heaps of glacial water on top of each other’s heads with glee. Prancing in their underwear around the beach, climbing onto other people’s paddleboards and inflatable water toys. Eli, don’t touch that please. It’s not ours. Words fallen on deaf ears. They have now immersed themselves in a giant fluorescent unicorn raft, still on the shore, belonging to a school of adolescents. Who the fuck brought that here, I think. It’s ridiculous.
space
Another boy digs a hole in the sand. His mother pats it firmly as he pours water in from his pale. I see you’re trying to make a river here, she says. The hole caves in. That’s frustrating, when you’ve worked so hard and it’s falling apart. Her voice has a singsong melody, a stream of consciousness quality, like it’s not only her speaking, but you and me and the boy and the universe. The mother’s hair is a curly blonde, her frame petite. Dressed in something unmemorable but just right, a cotton dress and a pair of Birkenstocks, her skin golden from the bubbling heat of the Slocan Valley in July.
soace
Are you sick of me, Mommy? Eli’s arms are now wrapped around my neck, his knees in my lap. I open my legs and give him a nudge to the ground. Now that he’s five, he’s gotten heavier.
space
Of course not! When did I ever say that? You boys are my world. I am racking my brain. Had I said something to make him believe such a thing? In the throes of my divorce, I had trouble remembering. But please don’t climb on the raft. It’s not ours.
The mother talks to the father, who’s wading in the lake. He has a kind face, unshaven and relaxed. She talks and plays effortlessly, boy and father sated by her sheer presence, her tending nature. Do you think this will be a good move for us? she asks him.
space
Well, we can always come back here, to Canada. You can take some time to do your training, get the certificates you need. We’ll be close to my family. His voice has an energy to it, a direction.
space
I suddenly imagine those diagrams from high school with the plane and the wind and the arrows. A vector has both magnitude and direction. I was shit at physics but remembered that phrase. Look at those phallic lines with the hat on the end! Never doubting, never veering, like this blessed vector family. Their hearts beat. They are pregnant with possibility. I stare at them like a UFO has landed, one-eyed aliens talking jibberish, the language of bright spirits, or believers.
Space
Eli has wandered off at this point towards the bushes. I have to pee Mommy, he shouts, running into the woods. I see him from a distance pull his pants down and urinate. The father turns towards me with a gentle smile, don’t worry no one can see him. It is empathic, like we are in the same situation with our boys, trying our best to parent, yet bumbling along. Although he has one and I have two, and he has her and I have only myself. My marriage had collapsed. I was naive, not realizing mothers still did everything, carried every burden. Or perhaps not, but in some psychologies they did. The family unit was a brutal structure I learned, but now my parental loneliness was another sickness, a dark hole I couldn’t climb out of, a kind of twisted deprivation.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I realize Eli has vanished from the bushes. I scoop up my younger boy, traipsing through the sand towards the edges of the beach. Eli! Eli! My shouting gradually turns to panic. I start jogging, the little one beginning to whine in my arms. I’m hungry, he moans. Staring down the shoreline I see nothing but rocks and weeds, the sand becoming coarser on my feet, the beachgoers gradually receding. My eyes dart around frantically. This is my fault, I think. Engulfed by my own self-pity, I had been lured into a daydream with this family of three, replacing my own story of depletion with their fertile dynamic. My toddler points away from the shore and there is Eli, running down from the road. He saunters towards us cheerfully as I wipe away tears, my eldest son dead and reborn within a matter of minutes. Relieved and furious, I grab him by the wrist.
space
Where have you been? You can’t run away like that, okay? I am shouting, clutching him too tightly. I’m just sick of you not listening Eli.
space
Mommy you’re hurting me.
space
I loosen my grip. There are two teenage girls looking on from the road. They gape at the spectacle.
space
But Mommy there is a playground up there with logs. You can climb them. I didn’t need any help. A girl’s daddy helped me up to the tall one. Can you climb logs Mommy? I don’t think Atti can, he’s too little.
spsc2
You’re right, Atti is too little. We used to tag-team at the playground, their father and I. I would nurse Atti on the bench or watch him toddle around while Eli took on riskier feats. He was nimble, that boy, always pushing the envelope, climbing higher, running faster, moving deeper into whatever woods he could find. I was glad to look away, or to share the burden at least if something went horribly wrong. On these solo weekends, it was now my weight to bear.
space
We leave the beach, a cool wind sweeping through the valley. The weather is fickle here, I have learned. The rain comes quick and heavy, enveloping the mountains in a sheet of opaque cloud.
space
Mommy, how will we get home? I can’t hardly see.
space
I want to tell him about vectors. That sometimes we have direction and other times we are aimless. That we should be sturdy but also open to swaying. That veering off track can help us find our way.
space
The wind will carry us darling. It knows where we have to go.
About the Author
Claire is studying creative writing at Selkirk College. She lives in Rossland with her two boys.
