Yesterday in the garden

My son Chun Woo and I were in the garden, where a light snow was melting. I was gaping a bit and weeding a bit, and Chun Woo was messing around with his own invented rubber band shooting gun, which is named The Mariner. I heard a loud splash. Chun Woo had fallen into the ornamental pond (small, plastic embedded in the rock garden and its gravel, non-dangerous). He was already emerging when I looked around. And stank to high heaven.

He informed me that this was the second time this had happened-- the last time was last summer, and evidently he slipped upstairs quietly while my husband Sheeyun and I were watching a movie or something, and set himself and the universe well enough to rights that we never knew.

Ah, when I was nine I magically fell into any body of water I was close to. I don't know how, either. It just always happened. In my case, though, they were streams or creeks, ponds or lakes, not little plastic tubs.

As I helped Chun Woo clean up with as little spread of stench as I could manage, we were laughing. I was going from the bathroom with the laundry basket with the besmirched clothes in it as Chun Woo said from the shower, "I will never be the same!" "No," I said, "I don't suppose you ever will."

And so now everything is changed.