Country Baby Swims In Poison.

Up to my ankles in the bathwater lake, I stare at the greenish globs of what I'm pretty sure is goose crap. I stare at it out of the corner of my eye so Monica doesn't see it and get leery. I stare at Violet in my arms. She's in her Old Navy Big Strawberry One-Piece and looks damn happy about that. I bite down into my lip and wonder. I stare at the lush summer hillsides slithering in the crippled breeze. I stare at hunks of shredded cloud forming circus animals far off in the distance. A walrus. A zebra head. I breath Pennsylvania air into my Pennsylvania lungs and try and follow my Pennsylvania heart towards the right decision. I need to make a Malcolm Gladwell here in about the next four seconds. People are waiting.

Do we let Violet 'swim' for the first time in her little life in this lake here on a beach where a few geese have sculpted a monument to old lunch? Or do we play the very safe/cautious/caring parents who would never expose their tiny baby to the cornucopia of problems that hang around little kids who bath in animal shit?

Do we have fun in the summer lake?

Do we drive away dry?

I dunno.

I kick the damn turd with my foot. It sloshes about six inches and settles down to float some more next to it's brother/sister. I make a wave with my foot and it bobs up and under the turd with all the energy of maple syrup. I sigh. Monica is ready with the camera and is jabbering some shit at me about when to get ready and when to dip Violet's toes in but not before she's definitely taping and blahblahblah.

A boy of about seven or eight is staring at me and Violet with a bratty hyperish look. Maybe he's pissing himself in the lake, I think to myself. He is swinging a purple plastic shovel and no bucket and he's staring at us and aimlessly hauling sand up out of the the bottom of the lake and tossing it over his shoulder where it plops back onto the wet beach with a depressing squishy thud. I make sure I don't see any parents around or any older brothers into Tim McGraw and peppered jerkey and Kicking Ass In The Name Of Fourth Of July Freedoms and when I'm pretty sure there's no one watching I give the kid a Mega StinkEye. It goes through him like a crossbow bolt, but he doesn't flinch or stop staring at us or anything. He's one of the Unwavering. Ugh. Whatever. Let the fucker watch then.

Monica is saying: Hemmma Hemmma Hummy Halloma. Hummuno Hummo Hemma Haboop!

I don't really hear her or know what any of that means, but I know she is over there talking to me. It's not that important anyhow. I'm alone in my wilderness of decision here.

I touch Violet's sunscreeny forearm. She bats it all around like she's swatting at a flying tarantula. She's watching the small waves that roll in from the far off motorboats and slap up against my lower legs. She's seeing the other older kids as they chuck Nerf footballs and tease each other with splashes and dunks. Some big twentysomething over by the rope that marks the swimming border is laughing with his buddies as he holds up a sunfish that he's managed to catch. Or more likely: found. Violet can taste the excitement flitting around in the Fourth of July air here. She's hungry for some.

Fuggit. We're going in.

The moment comes. I sit on a concrete curb thing that makes no sense in the world except that maybe God built it there on the 3rd so I'd have a cool place to sit for the big moment. Up til now Violet has only known the feel of water in a two foot plastic baby tub. And her own spittle.

Monica say's "ROLLING!". So we're rolling.

A mini mini wave breaks around my calf.

Shovel Boy has ceased operations. He's just fixated on us. I see a goose ball bump into his foot and I smile at the poetry.

I say a few words, I don't remember what. I lower the loveliest pink toes I have ever known toward the lake water. Monica films.

Somewhere in the Paris night a couple falls together in an embrace of red wine and lust. Around the world in a remote African village a baby dies after trying so goddamn hard to live. Somewhere a car crashes into a cow. Everyone is ok but the cow. Under Manhattan a young man sees a woman in the subway he will one day marry. A Ukrainian grandmother turns out the lights. An Australian grandfather turns 'em on. Stag move through dark forests of pine. Great White Sharks move through dark caverns of coral. A chipmunk somewhere eats a piece of bark, closes his eyes, sighs.

The toes and the legs kick at the water. In the water. Violet is technically in the water. I hold her out and we do a rise and fall thing where she gets lifted up fast above my head and then slowly drops with my arms to a foot dip in the silty lake. Her eyes are so serious, deliberate. This is not play yet. This is a massive gargantuan body of splashy shiny water closing in all around her and she is excited but uncertain. Short little laughs are twined to creeping little cries. Its a package deal. Her baby emotions are thrown into a tizzy. She doesn't know whats going on. She is out here in this wide open world of mountains and swimmers and buzzing boats and distant laughing and well-fed farm people with scuba masks on hollering for their friend to "Bring Down The Super-Soaker!"

All these lovely country folk out swimming in the lake on the Fourth of July, it's like a seven billion gallon vat of tepid American Gothic Soup. It's the perfect place for an American babe's first swim.

I loosen up and splash my baby. Hand her off to her Mama. Film those two, take pictures. All these fine people have been swimming in this water most of their lives, lapping up mouthfuls of it's healing powers and continuing to live. Coming back, every Fourth.

Swimming right through Goose Shit like it was a Finish Line Ribbon at the end of another long tough year.

Which it probably was.

Sad Funky Funeral Train From America.

In the end, they didn't know what to do with the body really. Display it? Let the people see the altered face of the legend one last time? And if so: where? At the ranch? In a hall? On a train rolling through the countryside in this gelatinous heat, stopping in hamlets and one-horse towns; a train rolling in/a train rolling out: the music always there playing in the background. The unstoppable beats. The unkillable voice. That final tour.

They still can't decide. So his body lies there undanceable. Maybe he is in his old bedroom in some overdone four poster Victorian with an oversized Mickey Mouse leaning over his waxy slight fingers, keeping lookout. He won't wake up though. Way too tired. No nap could of stopped the bullets.

The people who loved him make more sense to me than many other people. They loved someone magic. Not talented. Magic. Talent is everywhere these days. Cruise back any deep suburban cul-de-sac on a midnight ride and there's Talent staring at you from his parent's driveway, his eyes like a buck deer. An acoustic guitar in his creamy little fist. Flip-flops.

Keep driving, for Christ's sake.

The one they loved, the one all the millions loved so much, was one of the real ones. Snapped with the belt of his father til he threw up in his mouth. Thrust out in the footlights when he shoulda been hiding dirty magazines under a rock by a creek in some woodlot. Singing to a world who sang along to every word when he shoulda been falling in love with some chick for real, instead of having to pretend about it. Dancing with zombies when it finally became apparent that only the dead could ever appreciate who he was and where he was heading. Crucified by the ones who made him.

Hey, we got bored. You got lazy.

It would have been cool, the train thing. A steam locomotive knifing through the United States Summertime, when death seems so impossible yet still very very likely. People would show up. In droves. In zippered jackets and sequined gloves they would sweat their raceless colorless sexless salty sweat down off the tips of their natural noses/nose jobs onto the sizzling concrete of some Iowa rail station platform and no matter who showed up to doubt any of it with jaded hipster eyes, they would be denied, because death was involved and bodies in coffins will never ever allow the living to pull that shit on them.

The train would pull in, the fancy casket would roll into town for a few hours, maybe the whole day. People would line up and cry, but in happy ways. Happy they lived when someone like him lived. That he danced right through some of the same moments that they danced through.

New York, LA, come see your man.

Miami, Seattle, come see your man.

Philadelphia, Detroit, come see your man.

Chicago, Boston, come see your man.

Tulsa, New Haven, come see your man.

Gettysburg, Trout Run, come see your man.

Conshohocken, Bridgeport, come see your man.

Appalachia, Gold Mine Town, Whorehouse, McDonald's, Alley on Broadway, Roller Rink, Discoteque, Dairy Queen, Sam Goody, Chick-Fil-A, Plymouth Meeting Mall, Mormon Temple, Jewish Synagogue, Moonies, Atheists, Piercing Pagoda, North Falls North Dakota, Brooklyn, King of Prussia, BigFoot Country, Rattlesnake Country, Mule Skinners, Jail Birds, American Originals, Sweet Tea Drinkers, Klansmen, Priests, Cops, Robbers, Queers, Trannys, Newly Baptized Babies, Stoners, Dopers, SpeedFreaks, Winos, Break Dancers, Pop Lockers, Moon Walkers, Justin Timberlake, Ice Road Truckers, Horny MILFs, Soda Sticky Rug Rats, Webster, The Lost Boys, Liz, Liza, Jesus on the Cross in Gary, Indiana, America.....

.....come see your man.

Party People.

In the parking lot of the department store where we have come to kill fifteen minutes my wife speaks to me.

"Dude, I think she shit."

Grace and elegance in a murder/suicide.

"Really?" I respond. With an experienced hand I move in to slip the diaper back a tad, have a look.

"Watch out or you'll get PoopFinger", she blurts.

Ahhh yes, PoopFinger. Not today, not here. I barely pull back the plastic ruffle with the very tips of my fingers. I'm edgy this morning...I have no idea why, a bad Zoloft maybe. Whatever. A dunk in the kid's swamp is not what I'm needing.

"Yep, there's shit! Holy shit! Dude, there is an exploded star in here!"

Things are put into motion without words. I spin backwards around Monica as she pushes towards Violet in her car seat. We ballet. I open the back door of the Honda, glide to the left like a windblown Fiver, and pause in refined observation of my partner in life as she lays the vinyl changing pad down on the bendy plastic Honda Filthy Pet tray as if she were fluffing out a picnic blanket onto a French hill.

Violet ganders at her Mama, then over at me. Her eyes shine with love.

I pirouette to the side of the vehicle and fetch the stroller, unfold it, and return in one buttery slide. Monica's arms are pure theater as they move so swiftly that she appears to be an Octopus.

Whats this!!!!???

From her swarm of activity there pops up a miniature white balloon: the diaper! I pluck it from its sky path and pull it to my chest.

Then just as quickly, I jump and twist my way back to the front of the store where the trashcan is. I Air Jordan the thing, and leave a little bit of my daughter/a little bit of me: outside the Kohl's in Sandy. Then I flutter back to our parking spot. Violet is all changed when I get there; she's playing with her toes in the stroller.

We go in the store together to not buy anything.

After a few minutes wasted we leave having not bought anything. My spirit is kicking at the Blue Wall.

We go to a birthday party. Even with all the poopy diaper ballet dancing poking around ghostly empty box store with no money...we are still the first ones at the party. We cannot be fashionably late. No matter how hard we want it. Even at a three year old's Birthday Party, we are first.

We move through the quiet house into the empty yard. We regard each other nervously, uneasily, with politely raised brows. We want to blame each other for this ridiculous early shit.

Then, the surroundings come in to focus. My spirit soars.

A massive trampoline stands epic in the sun; The Coliseum in the morning mist, before the Gladiators.

A plastic inflated palm tree leans against a railing taped up with electric blue shiny streamers that crackle and whisper when the slightest breeze passes by.

The grill stands alone. Uncovered. A rocket ship on launch day.

There is a dry yellow Slip'N'Slide lying on a steep bank like a dead giraffe.

The magical tang of anticipation wafts across this summer place. Beneath the majestic Wasatch gaze, I stand upon this backyard's hill and I look down across the sweeping spectacle of suburban rooftops, one after the other, as far as the squinting eye can see. I look down and across and I see the future and the radiant flashing glints of the distant electric colored streamers of so many summer days yet to happen. Ice cream days. Days of cake and pale ale. Days in which other parents, people I barely even know, will look at me with sympathetic eyes and chuckle at my Daddy jokes, hand me a cold can. I will accept that can, good sir. And all that it says.

What begins with a celebration of the mundane and slightly stinky in an empty parking lot can indeed end up a festival of sweet young life. Of the wonders of youth. But you need to let it happen, you see. This was a special day. For Violet. For Monica. For me. This was the first birthday party we were invited to, as a unit/as a squad. We are The Bielankos. And we have come to party in the new old way.

Now. Who else do we know with kids? And a trampoline?