I stood in a dream watching a baby stand on a dock of a slow-moving river. It was summer time in a place with golden brown hills. Maybe some forty feet away from the dock and from the child a group of people were wading in the water enjoying cooling themselves from the summer heat. Some of these people were splashing and playing and having a good time. The whole feeling of the place was that of simple carefree enjoyment of a good time. With the exception of the child on the dock whose thoughts I could hear. The baby wanted to be off the dock and with his father who was playing in the water. The child was confident that he could make it to his dad.
So, I watched him as he took a small leap from the wooden dock. With a small un-noticed splash he hit the water and began sinking. I waited two seconds to see what would happen. Would the child float? Or would he sink? Or would he swim like a champion to his father? I had no idea and so I watched for two seconds, knowing that the child’s lone thought was “daddy.”
I jumped in after the two seconds and grabbed the kid. He was okay. He had held his breath. He was at least smart enough to know that. I held the child looking at him as I have with other children. As I’ve looked at my nieces and nephews. And just as with them, I had that odd feeling of connectedness and the awareness of their fragility and beauty. The difference is that I didn’t feel unconditional love for this child but a great amount of compassion and sadness as it dawned on me what exactly was going on between me and this child with the familiar beauty that I felt like I had known but had somehow forgotten.
I moved through the water, with him in my arms, towards his family enjoying the last seconds of the oddest sensation of my life, knowing that it would end the second I stated my realization. I moved toward a woman who reached out to grab the child.
“Here, let me take him from you,” She said. And I handed him and his safety over to her, knowing that he’d never be as safe with her as he had been with me. Somebody asked me “how did you know?” as I handed the child to the lady. And I responded with what was the uncomfortable truth. A truth that I couldn’t explain. That the child was me. I told them that I had no idea how there was both versions of me there, but that it was the case. The baby looked at me, recognized this to the truth, and then he screamed.
