warm spot in the pool

Avoid it.

At all costs.

You know what I mean...it is hot with a breeze but the water is chilly.
You are trying to acclimate, walking softly, trying to minimize the water as it laps bitingly against your belly.

The water is clear, bright and quite possibly colder as you stand there allowing the breeze to strike the waves against you.
You see them, those annoying kids who you saw pick their noses and wipe it on each other earlier, the ones who pushed the shy little boy off the edge and called him a sissy, the ones you pitied because you know that at the heart of it they are not happy with themselves,

and they are splashing now.

You cringe like the skin of your torso is made of the same flesh as the Wicked Witch of the West.
You slowly and deliberately move

into where they have been

to avoid where they are going.

Your arms are bent at the elbow creating a shield against the sheen of the water's surface and your upper body,

your shoulders are shrugged, trying to eek another inch out of the water.
You are still struggling to take the plunge when you feel that all too familiar warmth.
The sensation begins...
radiating down the length of your body.
Without thinking you succumb...
gliding deeper into the warmth

arms fanned out

until it is just
beneath
your
nose.....

The sun is dazzling on the surface of the water.
All you feel is the warmth.

Your mind wanders to the greater worries of life and you tell yourself that all you need to do is get acclimated and you can do anything.

Your mind quickly turns to the times when friends have reached out their hands and you jumped into the waters of life. Unabashedly. Fearlessly. The laughter and support of their kindness warmed you.

And then, just as quickly as you succumbed to the warmth, just as quickly as you reminisced of life's metaphors, you realize that warmth you embraced
that shoehorn to the chill of the water that you excepted
that reaching hand that came with all kinds of strings attached

is

urine.

mean kids urine at that.

As I flipped and then flopped early this morning trying to fall back asleep I worried about a friend of mine. She has been dancing in the warm spot of the pool and the sad truth is she doesn't see it for the pee that it is. She is starting to smell of it, I'm afraid. She doesn't read my posts and I have shared my worries with her before. I fear that she won't see it until she has had a taste of the moral-wrongness of it all.

I worry about how easily it is to get coaxed into what seems to be a good deal. More than once I have asked the Almighty for sight, to see the truth, to see evil, to see the piddle in the pool water as it were. I hope when Aidan and Nadia read this as adults they will have grown accustom to having their eyes open to the truth and to see favors for what they are.