What I saw on the last day of the year – for my blue eyed boy and my green eyed girl

As I sat in the shade feeling the warm air dry my swimming body I watched the blue eyed boy and the green eyed girl in the pool. They had that self assuredness and total unawareness that anyone other than their mother may be watching them. Self contained. A total lack of self consciousness, completely engrossed in their own activities together.

Every now and then the green eyed girl would raise her goggled head and give me the thumbs up.  I’d return the favour, then she’d be gone again.  Their voices would sometimes catch the breeze and snippets of their conversation would wing its way to me…a ‘watch this’ … or a ‘I’ll go first this time.’

Blue eyed boy smiled, lost in his new found water bravery, jumping in from the side, bobbing up under a boogie board…. slowly surfacing, wild hair covering a creamy skinned face.

They traversed the pool in a haphazard way, together in a sibling bubble.  The blue eyed and the green eyed – the fair haired and the dark.  Around them others swam and splashed, laughed and dove… but it was these two I looked upon, these two that held my gaze.

Then the breeze changed direction.  The sun slid behind a cloud  and a dripping, colt legged girl bolted across the lawn with a treasure in her hand, glee on her face. ’Mum!’ she called as she dripped on my towel… ‘Look what he did! He found it!’ She opened her hand and showed her prize – her hair band, loosened and slipped from her thick, thick hair to the pool floor. Returned by the treasure hunter… the blue eyed boy – and I looked, and I smiled, and I loved.

Tags: children