My Pen Mates,
It didn't belong there, but it was not unexpected; a shallow pool of water around a drinking fountain on a hot July afternoon. The playground's play structure just re-opened after a major upgrade, and kids from the neighborhood with parents in tow have been converging on the place every afternoon for the last three weeks. Replacing the sand lot with bouncy, shredded rubber and adding a faux rock-climbing wall, plus a separate mini-complex for toddlers to five-year-olds, made the new park a hit at every age level.
I found myself seated on a concrete bench some distance from the play structures, fifteen feet from said puddle. The seven o'clock sun is still way above the horizon and its full reflection is squarely on my face. I would have moved to another bench, but from where I sat, I get a full view of the play areas, where Lauren was gleefully engaged in meeting new friends and interacting with old ones. I could have moved to the shade of a tree too, but thought better of it after an idea came to me.
With the sun above and its reflection on the ground, it occurred to me that I have to have cast a shadow on the ground behind me, and another that's projected upward into space. I turned around and there was my silhouette on the gravel, long now because of the sun's position on the horizon. Then I look up at the sky to see if cloud cover has (at least in principle), served to catch my shadow in the air....
Blue skies.
Again, in theory, my shadow would have endlessly traveled in space until it's projected onto something to show my profile based on the reflection from the puddle.
Aimless, idle imaginings of someone who's passing time watching children play. But even as Lauren intermittently called out "Dad!" so show me her monkey-bar tricks to jolt me back to the present, I flicked back to my musings just as easily, and marveled at the myriad possibilities of existence and the number of options to contemplate the present. How for instance, I could have interpreted the moment as an exercise in physics_ when I should have avoided double exposure to the sun's rays_ is something unique to my personality. It doesn't make me intuitive or smart, it just makes me me.
But that shadow in the sky is a simile of certain things we have in life. We know a shadow would be there in principle, evidenced by the linearity of light rays through space. We may not see the actual image, but theory affirms our hypothesis. As in life, we know certain things without necessarily witnessing the proof. Loving our children for example does not produce a tangible outcome that's directly attributable to the emotion. But how they exist in the world long after we no longer have any influence, is a direct result of that "sunshine" that at one time we shone on them. That love will be projected on their object of passion, or forever travel across the vastness of humanity and touch multiple lives. Because of our mortality, we may not see that shadow which proves what we know to be there, but faith in its existence assures the heart that it's there for the worlds benefit.....
Before I knew it, the sun has gone down a bit lower in the sky and its reflection on the puddle no longer shone on me. The moment has passed. Now I can see more of the playground without the glare. I miss the experience even as I was relieved of the momentary discomfort. My shadow will be up there somewhere. I know that even without seeing it.
Mon
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