We lock our bikes handle bar to rear tire and walk easily inside the conservatory. Vanilla, an orchid, climbs up the walls of the rear room, dry and bright. Circling again past the coy, fiery painted carp, we admire the ferns and walk out onto the lawn, past the empty enclosures that sun rhinoceros, and on toward a bench. The bench is dry and wood and later, when Sebastian leans back on it, falling from a big sigh, he notices the bricks beneath it read Albion Shale.
Scanning from the Friedrich Schiller statue in the south just West of the Eli Bates fountain where marlins are being wrestled and storks attempt in their bronze to rise up with the recycled water, I spot her. I do not notice her specifically, but her children. A young girl and a young boy and I wonder if they are twins, to satisfy the rare and strange occurrence of seeing two sets in one day. The other pair were found red headed and disappointed at the fence of the empty rhino pen.
As they scamper it is clear that the girl is older. She walks steadily, he totters. She no older than three, he something half of that. Their mother, dressed in a black top moves to her hands and knees and begins to, with fierce feline snarls, I imagine, play into the belly of the girl. The girl giggles and rolls backward onto the grass. The boy, awaiting his turn giggles and falls back too as the mother approaches his belly in the same way: her mouth open, from which I imagine, a growl emerges. This game continues and she takes turns, the belly of her daughter, laughter, the belly of her son.
She has slender, long arms that prop her up nicely, her spine level as her daughter gets up to mount her. The game continues. Sebastian shares a memory of playing Tigers in the dining room with his aunt. Parents do not do enough crawling around with their children, we mourn, as other children quietly run into the scene. I wonder how far apart in age the children are. Was the time between them planned? It seems, from thirty yards away, to be the perfect gap. The children seem to be sharing the attention well and she, full of energy and joy.
The grandmother stands up and walks across the bike path onto the grass where the young girl meets her, and the mother meets her and they fiddle with something. Jonathan! she calls, after a minute or so. How secure she is, I think, to let her young son walk about without her piloting his every discovery. Jonathan! she calls again. She drops whatever white thing she holds and her long slender arms bend in v's, her legs in jeans bend in v's and she darts from the carriage to the fountain in an instant. She lifts Jonathan by his waist, he hanging his body over the outer edge of the fountain looking down, looking into the well of water at coins and his own reflection. On her hip she carries him to the carriage and buckles him inside.
Sebastian smiles at me, he now laying just beside the bench in a snow angel on the grass. I begin to cry, and then to weep at the beauty of the dance that played out before me. I want that very much, I think. I want no thing at all more than my version of exactly that. The grandmother pushes the carriage slowly, steadily ahead, and the young girl points to a something in the flowers. Her mother turns to look. They stand for a minute before the mother swings the girl up hugging her, legs squeeze in return around her waist.
Scanning from the Friedrich Schiller statue in the south just West of the Eli Bates fountain where marlins are being wrestled and storks attempt in their bronze to rise up with the recycled water, I spot her. I do not notice her specifically, but her children. A young girl and a young boy and I wonder if they are twins, to satisfy the rare and strange occurrence of seeing two sets in one day. The other pair were found red headed and disappointed at the fence of the empty rhino pen.
As they scamper it is clear that the girl is older. She walks steadily, he totters. She no older than three, he something half of that. Their mother, dressed in a black top moves to her hands and knees and begins to, with fierce feline snarls, I imagine, play into the belly of the girl. The girl giggles and rolls backward onto the grass. The boy, awaiting his turn giggles and falls back too as the mother approaches his belly in the same way: her mouth open, from which I imagine, a growl emerges. This game continues and she takes turns, the belly of her daughter, laughter, the belly of her son.
She has slender, long arms that prop her up nicely, her spine level as her daughter gets up to mount her. The game continues. Sebastian shares a memory of playing Tigers in the dining room with his aunt. Parents do not do enough crawling around with their children, we mourn, as other children quietly run into the scene. I wonder how far apart in age the children are. Was the time between them planned? It seems, from thirty yards away, to be the perfect gap. The children seem to be sharing the attention well and she, full of energy and joy.
The grandmother stands up and walks across the bike path onto the grass where the young girl meets her, and the mother meets her and they fiddle with something. Jonathan! she calls, after a minute or so. How secure she is, I think, to let her young son walk about without her piloting his every discovery. Jonathan! she calls again. She drops whatever white thing she holds and her long slender arms bend in v's, her legs in jeans bend in v's and she darts from the carriage to the fountain in an instant. She lifts Jonathan by his waist, he hanging his body over the outer edge of the fountain looking down, looking into the well of water at coins and his own reflection. On her hip she carries him to the carriage and buckles him inside.
Sebastian smiles at me, he now laying just beside the bench in a snow angel on the grass. I begin to cry, and then to weep at the beauty of the dance that played out before me. I want that very much, I think. I want no thing at all more than my version of exactly that. The grandmother pushes the carriage slowly, steadily ahead, and the young girl points to a something in the flowers. Her mother turns to look. They stand for a minute before the mother swings the girl up hugging her, legs squeeze in return around her waist.
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