Aaron’s was too.
Natalie stood behind us.
Christopher yelled:
“Last one in has to clean the grill.”
Aaron jumped.
I laughed.
Then I jumped too.
The water was cold enough to steal my breath.
When I surfaced, Aaron was laughing.
For a second, I saw the infant I never held.
The child I never watched grow.
The man standing in front of me.
All of them existed inside the same person.
I could not recover forty-one years.
I could not undo my daughter’s heartbreak.
I could not confront the dead.
But I could stop hiding.
My scar.
My grief.
My anger.
My son.
The truth.
At sixty-eight, I thought wearing a bright blue swimsuit was the bravest
thing I would do that summer.
I was wrong.
The bravest thing was learning that the body I had finally stopped being
ashamed of had carried evidence of a secret all along.
