It is easier to pick him up at the Y then go through the pick-up line at the school. It astounds her how some people start lining up an hour before dismissal and then just wait in their cars. What she does an hour before dismissal is work out. Her son then walks across the park, she can see him from a bench outside, and then they go home. It also gives him a little bit of independence and a little after-school time with his friends. There is a group of kids that comes over to the Y as if it is an extended day care, which it is. It takes them a laughably long time to go the short distance across the park. There is the bridge and the field and always something of interest along the way. It’s a liminal time, the space between school and home, in which they are temporarily free from being monitored and from having responsibilities. It is a moment of delicious freedom. Just enough. Later, when they “graduate” and move on to Reynolds High School, the park will become a more serious playground, for loitering and smoking and skipping class and sex. The way the carnival changes at night.
Today, she realizes she has made a mistake. It has been raining all weekend. When she gets to the Y, she sees the creek has overflowed and flooded the park. Surely, he’ll be smart enough to wait for her at school, won’t he? Except he is a child of routine. If this is what he does and this is what is expected of him, then this is what he’ll do. But won’t his friends or teachers or someone tell him otherwise? She is about to get in the car and drive around the park to the pick line when she sees him, trudging down the hill into the park. Alone. When he gets to the edge of the water, he doesn’t hesitate, he steps right in. The water quickly reaches his knees. She grows frantic. She begins yelling his name to go back. With his head down, shouldering his backpack forward, he doesn’t see her. She wades in herself yelling, and eventually screaming, and just before he reaches the bridge, her voice comes to him, and his head comes up. He stands there, in the temporary lake, water braiding around him, an image she will remember for the rest of her life.
Grey Sparrow Journal 