The children are poorly raised. It is entirely my fault. I cannot move to Toco because none of the cats swim. Surely no one expects me to endanger their lives by casting them into territory unfamiliar to them, especially with the knowledge that the blame is all mine. They are, after all, the fruit of my…verandah. I should have thrown each one into the water the day they turned up and kept doing it until nature took its course and everyone could manage a reasonable breaststroke.
I'm not laying any of the responsibility on the Cats' Father. If anything, I should be adding him to my list of those I have neglected. The Cats' Father is a good, good swimmer but he does not need to swim. He and the children possess the incredible superpower of being able to look at water and not jump in.
My parents were strict in both conventional and arbitrary ways. I could not go to sleepovers at friends' homes. I was not to roller skate down the street. But then strangely - alarmingly, some might say - they didn't mind if I spent half my time on the roof. Near water, I was something other than their child. I was like a real person. Or a turtle. I am sure they cared about what happened to me, but not in a way that made them think they had to commit any particular act of caring. In short, the sea, a pool, a river, the rain - that's what freedom was to me. Water has always been the healing in my life and I've needed a lot of healing.
Water is the only thing that feels like home to me. That and the cats. And their father. And my family. So, really, all I need is to bundle all of them up in a big bundleable truck, take them to the coast and set up house. People will complain about needing to go to work or take the babies to school or how much they don't like the idea of leaving Port of Spain for more than three days. I accept that. But I don't understand why it is that they don't feel the same pull.
Recently, I fell in with some bad company. The kind that's quite healthy and walks a lot. I walked and walked and all I could think was how unnatural it felt to be doing all this walking when we could be swimming. I moaned. I hurt my foot. I dragged a million miles behind my intrepid friend and wished I didn't feel like a large rock pulling a never-ending line of large rocks just to cross the street.
But the water is kind. There I am weightless and agile. I am a stronger sea creature than land dweller. My physical comfort and confidence feeds the rest of me and my thinking is clearer, cooler. Unfettered emotional urges fetter themselves (or at least become quiet) for a while. The concept of 'home' is, for some of us, the feel of the familiar and natural. When the world gnaws at us we want to bite back with what we know 'from home.' I love all the people I mentioned earlier but no matter who I'm with - lo, even unto the cats - nothing and no one has the same weight as water. Water holds me.
It is good and right that many people think of both Earth-as-planet and earth-as-ground as the great mother. I'm happy for them. They will not w
