Let us Gather by the River

"Mama, can we go play around there?"

I look in the direction my four-year-old indicates with his slender pointer. Wasn't it chubby and dimpled just a few weeks ago? "No way, bub." I shake my head and smile sympathetically at his crestfallen expression. "See how that part sticks out into the river?" I ask, gently turning him toward the small sandbar. "That's nice and low like a little beach. But now look this way." I gesture at the steeply rising slope that climbs from the water, creating a hill maybe six and a half or seven feet higher than my head, obliterating my line of sight in that direction. "If you go around to the other side, I won't be able to see you. Y'all will just have to play here for now."

His "Yes ma'am" could have been in response to an order to eat brussel sprouts rather than limiting him and his 18-month-old brother to just this part of the shoreline. His disappointment is short-lived though, and after a few stomps clearly tainted by pout power, he forgets to be angry and trots back to the mud castle they had been working on before I proved so intransigent.

As Nathan rejoins Jacob at the water's edge, I turn to my husband and smile with everything I've got. It's our first outing in months and I just want things to go well. I want things to work for us. Some days I cannot believe I left my entire family, all of my friends, and everything I knew and loved beyond the three people gathered here at the river's edge with me. I thought a fresh start was what we needed. I believed that away from his family's disdain and my family's knowledge of his transgressions, we could be whole. Instead, he seems to have taken my willingness to isolate myself for him as a sign that he can further indulge himself at my expense.

But not the children's. If I can just keep the peace, the children will be fine.

I dial the tooth power up a notch and will a look of affection to show in my eyes. I slip an arm around his waist and lean into him like I used to at the West Calvary Baptist Youth nights. Back when a touch like this felt deliciously illicit and filled with promise; before my skin started to crawl at his embrace.

"Can you watch them for a few? I packed a picnic lunch and some towels. I can go grab it from the car if you keep an eye on them."

He grunts his assent to babysit his own children like he's doing me a favor, and the smile I have plastered to my face - as I thank him profusely with what I hope to God sounds like genuine appreciation - aches with the weight of stifled melancholy.

The path we hiked down isn't too long and I can't have been gone ten minutes. I step into the clearing where the father of my children is sitting perhaps forty feet away, arms resting on his bent knees like he hasn't a care in the world, staring out over the water.

The extremely empty water.

A vacuum opens inside me, emptiness where my children had been, sucking my ribs down so painfully against my lungs I cannot take a breath. The basket and towels and dry clothes - all of the things a good mother does - are gone in an instant. I don't register letting them go nor hear them hit the ground. I am running and the movement frees something in me and I can breathe again and I struggle not to scream as I shout at him the most idiotic question imaginable:

"Where are the boys?"

Where are the boys? "Around there," of course! Don't stop, don't even take the time to stop. Any moment you will crest the hill and see them splashing around in the water and you'll feel so dumb for over-reacting.

"I thought you were watching them," he responds, not stirring but to turn his face upon me as I near him in my beeline toward the slope. I catch a brief sight of his disgust as I sprint past and I almost falter at the inconveniently timed revelation that he hates me and he hates how I love our children more than I love him.