A Stroller Walk with Anya in Cambridge

Yesterday lightening and thunder and big darkness came in the afternoon. Rolling thunder bumped, clapped, bounced and rolled from one end of the heavens to another time and time again--such langorous and loud rolls as I haven't heard since my childhood in Indiana. Then of course the downpour. Ten minutes later the sun was out and the air damp and warm.

Later in the afternoon, between storms, as it turned out, went out for our stroller walk. Stopped along a grassy spot on the bike path. She was asleep. Sunshine, brilliant green and I lay down beside the stroller on my sweatshirt(such attire one might need on days like this) a sleepiness overcoming me, I put the bag through my arm and my hand on the stroller and shut my eyes like any good homeless person. I could hear the rumble of T periodically, traveling right underneath me from Davis Square to Alewife, it's rumble like the thunder. The sound of motor and tires on pavement on Mass ave I imagined to be ocean waves rushing against the beach and I dozed, or pretended to which was almost as good. A dove was cooing its soft call somewhere close by. Calling for rain, my grandfather used to say about that and I believed him. I remember Indiana when the strength of the sun was too heavy to bear on hot July days, when life was simple and on afternoons I sat on the screened in front porch in the swing, hoping for lemonade or in later years someone to take me to the river to swim. Now in the midst of civilization, I dream a dream of a time when time had no limits and summer stretched before me like an eternity of green sunshine and freedom--the end of which, though I knew school would start again in the fall, was too remote to sully the imagination.

I think of Anya asleep her mouth sucking even in sleep. She will awake to find herself once more in a body !surprise! in a world of sound and color and hunger.