Of Trampolines and Yesterday

I took a bunch of kids trampolining today. I took this kid:

(My oldest and her daddy long legs.)

(My youngest and her beatific face.)

(Miss Maisie, quiet in groups, intrepid Goddess of the Trampolines)

And my friend Tango 5-6 and her kid, Tangette (civilian names Kelly and Liv).

They cartwheeled, they butt-bounced, they wall-walked, they foam-pit dived. They sweated, they flushed, they farted, they rushed — back and forth, up and down, around and around and around.

I jumped near them hoping my sport bra and ankles would hold out.

Tango’s urethra failed her, soaking her blue jeans with every bounce. Which made me happy after she destroyed me in our kayak trip to Hell and Starbucks last week.

I knew this day wouldn’t be a particularly special memory for me. But I wondered whether it’d make the kids’ Top Ten. Would it be one of those days they look back on that crystallize the beauty of being a kid?

• A lemonade stand in orange-grove strewn Claremont, California in front of your 100-year old Spanish house on a hot August day circa 1973.
• Sitting under water on the bottom of your parents’ Jacuzzi holding your breath, staring at your older brother, waiting till he surfaces first.
• Lying swim-spent on hot cement at the edge of your pool while chlorinated water drip drip drips off your nose and your hair is redolent of Sun-In.
• Listening to Simon and Garfunkle sing “L is for the way you Look at me …” while the tide lulls you to sleep in your bunk on a 40-foot sailboat your stepdad has berthed in Sausalito Harbor just a skip and a jump from the San Francisco lights.
• Your mom pig snuffling your ears as she tucks you in bed.
• Watching ants carrying food to their queen in a dirt-filled glass Mason jar.
• You and your sister lying in the flooded street gutters beneath a warm rainstorm in Upland, Calfiornia where there’s usually no “weather.”
• Lying on the leopard print carpet of your ’70s bedroom staring up at your popcorn ceiling singing along with Pat Benatar on your vinyl record, “You’re a hearbreaker, dream maker, love taker don’t you mess around with me …”

I wonder what my kids will remember?

I wonder where they’ll keep their magic? I hope they’ll have that secret knowledge that life is just a dream so much smaller than the vast, phantasmagorical unknown. I love you, sweet girls of mine. How lucky am I?

(Jumping with Bridget, our hair flying.)