booandbunny

A swim through my head

If my brain were the Beluga Whale tank at Shedd Aquarium I might be able to capture more of these ideas and make something real. Instead, I look through the thick glass and see myself float by, trying to organize a cookbook of sorts.

Boo cannonballs into the tank, Bunny-less. I’m beginning to wonder if the tattered Bunny will survive to answer the question: What did an adult Calvin say upon finding Hobbes in a box in his Mom’s basement? Boo’s feet touch bottom and he shoots himself to the surface, passing Sensei halfway up.

Sensei fascinates me. He’s so approachable. And yet … And yet … And yet it’s easy to be intimidated by him. He enters a room and is immediately respected. The kids just don’t want to let him down in any way. “I always work double hard for Sensei,” Boo said one night after karate. I’d love to compare and contrast all the things Sensei teaches the kids and all the things we moms try to teach the kids.

Peanut shoots by, a purple whisp crowned by a pink anemone. She stops to look at Tommy sitting on the bottom then scoops Pooker into her maternal instinct and raises him from the tank. I call bottom dweller Tommy because he reminds me of the Denis Leary character on Rescue Me, though not quite so desperate. When my Tommy gets his name he will still be a single guy with a murky depth. His stories surprise me … but everyone should investigate the demons in the darker corners of human nature, that way they won’t creep up on you.

I put my face to the glass, shield my eyes to limit the glare and look in the distance of the tank. There’s the single mom running away from life with an abuser. The young man starting medical school. The teenage lovers with no money for gas and the retirees making a dream vacation come true. Someone lets 50 license plates fall in with a sploosh. They flutter before littering the bottom of the tank. Fuzzier are the women who are the two sides to every mom. Alter egos? SuperHero and Villain? I pull away from the tank and realize that I’m not sure of anything aside from how the squinting is hurting my face.