Mercury and memories

It's hotter today than it was back then, but back then was warmer in ways that now never is.

I can picture with chrystal clarity every aspect of one of those days. The floating dock, its treated pine sun-baked and toasty on bare feet. The blue foam floats peeking through slats, stainless steel cleats with green jonboat tied alongside, gently swaying in the constant current. Rustoleum-red steel diamondplate and angle-iron stairs, welded by a man named Willie just upstream.

Often, my grandmother would sit on those stairs, a pack of Mores and a Tervis filled with iced Nestea by her side. She was my lifeguard, and there she'd sit, sipping, sweating, watching, vigilant. Cigarette smoke would help keep away the gnats, but I'd see her gently wave them away in between my jumps off of that floating dock.

I'd angle up and over the jonboat, clearing it in a shallow dive into warm waters that looked like that iced tea in her insulated cup.

When I inherited my grandfather's singlewide, I didn't keep any of those cups. Only now have I thought about them, and it pains me to not have one sitting in my keepsake cupboard. I have her old coffee cups and a replica of her stained-glass Coca-cola drinking glass that she used before getting the Tervis tumblers for Christmas one year. I believe those came from Anita, downstream. Her house has long been sold, but it looks the same, even if it looks much smaller today than it was then.

I'd plunge into those healing waters, that miracle mile of flowing wonder that fills my heart on these summer days so many years later. I learned to swim in an old concrete pool in a trailer park. The floor of the pool and the blacktop of the lanes would conspire to leave my feet a chewed, shredded mess, and the cooler sands of the riverbed were a balm for the soul. Summertimes were spent split between that river and the pool, and sunburns were a way of life.

The pool has been filled and forgotten, and I don't know anyone at the river anymore.

It's hotter today than it was back then, and memories of the warmth of a woman shepherding her lamb makes me mourn for my own cold, empty flock.