Rocking on my son’s tire swing, I tilt my body backward, observing the shards of sunshine streaming through the leaves of the plum tree. This is my season, I think to myself, as I hear my child’s feet crunching toward me across the mulch, his hair smelling like sweat and sunscreen and almond milk, to stare down at my face, to make it clear it is his turn to ride the wind, to feel the branch above sway under his weight, to make lightness from a humid day. Each bead of sweat on his face holds a constellation of dust. There is no place to be but listening to the music of wind in the bamboo, watching the garden swell before my eyes. He is the mirror; I am myself and my own reflection. The worms move underground. The salamanders hide in the shade.
My child digs. To go deeper, to see what is held underneath the mulch and the dirt and the old, composting roots. To find the worms, to watch them wriggle across and over and under and around one another. There are treasures here, he is sure—and slugs and earwigs and roly polies and millipedes with all their legs moving at once, in concert. The land holds certain treasure. With no fruit yet, from above, so he goes below and into. This is how we find what is real and visceral. This is how his arms discover the definition of enough; how his legs, darkening in the sun, will finally have done their sufficient work.
We turn our faces to the sky to know we are here. The stars of dust in each droplet on my child’s face form a map. Each solar system points the way: This is what we came to do.
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Christy Tending (she/they) is the author of High Priestess of the Apocalypse and Creative Nonfiction Editor with Sundog Lit. Her work has been published in Longreads, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature, among many others, and received a notable mention in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023. She lives in Oakland, California, with her family. Follow Christy on Twitter @christytending.