Ian Fell Into the Pond

"I'd drain that pond," said my father-in-law, whose mother's house the husband and I own and live in and try to repair and in many ways endure because it's an old place. A project always in need of doing or cleaning up from. Right now, the backyard is a bit of a wreck.

"I think I'm going to cover it," said the husband. Ian was either in my womb or on my breast. I can't recall because this conversation occurred more than once.

"You could put one of those cage covers over it," I said. "The ones they have at the fish nurseries to keep out raccoons."

The pond in question is stone, about 20 inches deep, a lovely oval thing, about the size of two jacuzzis, with a stone bridge going across it at the narrowest point. Big stones jut up around it on the border; it's quite good masonry. When we first moved in, I wanted to get rid of it because what the hell do I know about maintaining a pond? Fortunately, I've discovered, I have no interest whatsoever in yard work of any kind anyway. The husband and I have also discovered that for whatever reason we don't have to do much to it at all. It's full of mosquito fish (raccoons got all the goldfish we tried to keep in there) and large, lush patches of lily. We just infrequently remove algae with a net and that's it. It's actually a great thing to have, primarily because children like sitting on the bridge, hanging out there, looking over the iron railings. It looks very large to them, like a big, big thing. When I was a child I thought that the hill outside our house was huge and steep. I thought that the lilac bush outside my bedroom window was not huge but MASSIVE. I thought my father's arm muscles were the largest around. I remember going home for the first time in years when I was in my mid-twenties, and the hill was not steep but low and rolling, practically no more than an incline. The lilac bush was merely tall. I didn't need to observe my father's arm muscles because by then I knew my father. There was no substance or remarkable strength to any muscle in his body.

So when Ian fell into the pond, he probably thought he was in an ocean. He couldn't stand because the silt is too thick and the bottom is too slippery and because he's two and fell into his parent's pond and was of course in great shock and does not know how to swim. (We've tried to teach him to make a bubble, but he just drinks a gulp of bathwater and says, "Bubbles.")
I was at my computer, the desk of which faces a giant window and a sliding-glass door that leads into our backyard. I was typing something of absolutely no importance. It was about 5pm.

"Ian! Ian!" I heard the husband yell. I heard a splash and a cry, and I looked out the glass and saw Ian in the pond, head and shoulder above the surface, one arm reaching up. I opened the door and stood on the deck and the husband was holding our saturated son up out of the water. He was bent in an up-side-down "V" over the pond, looking at me, not sure what to do next. Ian was crying. He was also probably cold.

I think I was breathing. I'm not sure. "I'll get a towel," I said, and I did, and I wrapped the child into it and held him, took him in and dried him off. He smelled like pond water. He might have had a mosquito fish in his pants. I've no idea. I rubbed his toes to warm them off and he laughed up at me, his hair wet and slicked over one side of his head, like a comb-over you might see on an old man.