Polaroid: 39 Years, 362 Days

Summer was still a month away but the waterpark had opened early, for a few hours on the weekend, and I took the Boy there. We had things to do in the morning and only had two hours by the time we arrived. I had bought us season passes on the computer, but we had to stand in line to get our cards made. The sun was out but there was a cool breeze and the line moved slowly. The Boy was excited to go on the waterslides and was jumping in line, swinging the chain that provided order to the queue. I was irritable, feeling rushed, tired of the wait, I told the Boy to keep calm as we waited, stepped forward, waited, clouds scattered across the sky, fog collecting on the coast. We got into the park and laid our things down on a chair by the toddler's pool, and the Boy wanted to go on a small slide that was shaped like an elephant. I stood on the other side in 2 feet of water, waiting, watching the time, wanting to go on the bigger slides that we had come for. Someone else's child had paused at the top of the 6 foot slide, crying, afraid, his father in front of me, watching, telling him to come. The Boy waited patiently behind for his turn and I was anxious. Just get the kid down, I thought, people are waiting.

The Boy slid down twice and I told him it was time for the bigger slides and he took my hand and we walked across the park, me walking fast, he breaking into a jog sometimes to keep up. At the bottom of the slide yellow inner tubes were stacked up, and I took a two person tube from the top of the pile and the Boy wanted to help carry it; he tried holding it by the handle but the front end would drag on the ground and I said "if you're going to help carry it you have to carry it, you can't drag it", and he stuck his head and body through the hole in the tube and carried his side in both arms, happy. The line wrapped around the slide and up steep narrow stairs and the Boy was in front. Two young teenage girls were behind me and whenever the line moved they would step too close and their tube would bump into my leg and I would turn and look at them. "Can you not bump my leg with that?" I asked them.

We got to the top and put our tube in the track of the slide, a long, curving black tube. The Boy got in the back and I sat in front of him, we were next to go down and the worker told me that the tube was backwards, we got up and turned the tube around and sat back down, the Boy asked me if he'd been scared last time we went on it and I said no, you liked it, and the worker said we could go and I held two metal rails on the side of the slide and pulled us forward, leaning my head back as the water pushed us into the tube and it was dark and I reached back and held Lovey's feet and he was screaming as we slid down the long dark tube, spiraling down down, the cold water splashing on us, brief rays of light coming in through holes in the top of the tube, shining on us briefly as we sped through it and back around a turn into the dark until we came out of the tube into a shallow pool and Lovey yelled "that was awesome!" and we stood up and handed the inner tube to the worker at the bottom and walked out the exit and I asked "Where do you wanna go now?" and Lovey said he was cold and wanted to go to the jacuzzi so we walked out and across the park to where the jacuzzi was and we crossed over a footbridge that spanned a circular river that flowed slowly around a large pool and there were empty blue inner tubes floating in it and not many people and Lovey wanted to go in that so we hopped into the river and climbed on the blue inner tubes and the water was cold but it was okay and Lovey was off ahead of me and I leaned back, head on the back of the inner tube and paddled my arms to him and caught up to him and I grabbed his foot and held onto it, the river pushing us slowly around the big pool, sunlight on my face, Lovey next to me, and I was as happy as I'd ever remembered being, moving in the water under a blue sky with my baby boy as I closed my eyes, felt the light, breathed air, and I thought that, for once, I was finally the person that I was supposed to be, and the river circled around to the other side of the pool and steps led out of the river to where the jacuzzi was and Lovey asked "can we go in the jacuzzi now?" and I opened my eyes and looked at him, smiling against a blue sky and took a deep breath and said "Yes. Yes we can."