At the Park

February 24~2005 I pick Zaid up from preschool and we go to the park. We feed the geese mostly, the ducks were a little intimidated by the geese. It is a cold, windy day and these webbed creatures are not getting a lot of human visitors today, in turn they are hungy. I am always a little scared of the geese, and how foward they are, I try not to spill this out unto my offspring, I pretend to be lighthearted about it all. They are only geese after all. Zaid is talking to them, and giving them tiny little pinches of the bread, I throw the bread ahead of us trying to get the geese to back off a little, it does not work, and Zaid gets bitten by a big, white one. He cries. I want to cry, but I have to tell him that they are only hungry, the goose did not mean to bite you sweetie. A park ranger comes over and trys to lighten up the situation, tells Zaid that the white geese sometimes forget their manners. I continue to feed them and tell Zaid that it is okay, he points out the culprit to the ranger, and begins to tell him how this one needs a time-out. If only it were that simple. If only life were that I simple I think. But maybe it is. Maybe life is so simple that we overcomplicate it. Back to my prior thoughts, the older ranger shows Zaid a seagull, and tells him it is the first signs of spring and we should feed him, it is too bad we are out of bread. I tell the ranger everything is fine, the younger ranger is smiling at Zaid. Does he understand? And we go off to watch the seagull, I pick up my 35 pound sweetheart and we watch the gull until he flys away. A trip to the play area should help the still wet eyes, I think. And we wander over there. It is cold. Zaid has an idea, we should go on top the slide, there is a little canopy there, that will be our house he says. We climb and climb and climb, finally we arrive at our home. A bit small but cozy and we love it. I never want to leave, neither does he. We both feel so connected to each other. I want it to be this way all the time, but now I realize that if it were, it would be much harder to appreciate. We talked about the lake, the trees, and why there were no leaves on them and how in the spring, green leaves would come, we talked about the grass and it was brown because it was winter, we talked and we also sat and thought, just me and Zaid. I put my arm around him as if to shelter him a little more from the cold. Sitting is nice, neither one of us talking for awhile, I wait for him to break the silence it does not happen, I am the one that can not stand the cold anymore. It breaks my heart to leave. I want to stay in our little house forever, the one that we had the pretend picnic in, the one he wants to have a real picnic in, but I tell him, we would have to come when no one was here again and that may be hard to do. I will try. I love this moment. A magical place in time. It can never be re-created. And I would never try too. I want more of these moments though. I become a seeker. Eventually we slide down, and play "school", Zaid is the teacher, I am the student, and I play these little games with him to get him the car. Leaving this place is hard, but at least I have this memory and Zaid who is the most magical moment of all.