Water Metropolis

Family and friends boat trip – River Thames – 1961.  Michaela 6 years old.  My penchant for living in the moment has early roots.  Here is an excerpt from my book…

On a summer afternoon, Michaela and Gary found themselves floating in the softly lapping water of the River Thames.  Gary quickly drifted off to sleep with his air mattress rubbing against Michaela’s, and the slowly eddying currents sandwiched her mattress between the boat and Gary.  She felt an intense sense of safety and peace.  Voices droned from the adults on shore.  She could distinguish her mother’s raucous laugh and picture her theatrical movements.  The side of Michaela’s face lay wetly molded into the pillow.  Her senses were alive. The potent smell of rubber, punctuated conversations drifting overhead, and lapping water on the bow of the GayMic, all lulled her into a comfortable little universe of her own.  Hands dangled in the cool current, eventually she inched herself forward to afford a better view below her suspended bed.

Immediately her arms flew out of the water and her mood was instantly broken as her little heart tried to explode out of her chest.  There was some sort of underwater spider down there that may as well have been an attacking monster!  She gingerly lay back down as close to the middle of the air mattress as possible, but curiosity demanded she keep peering into this new world.

As Michaela leaned over, a small metropolis came into existence.  Tiny schools of fish twisted this way and that in synchronized dance.  On the bottom, more darting spiders went about their business, intricately tap-dancing around one another.  Out of focus, something scurried by right under her nose.  She shifted her head back a few inches to clear her view, and spotted some sort of insect that was walking right on top of the water.  Its little feet only dented the surface as it scurried on its impossible journey, the indentations appearing like enlarged clown shoes.  The closer she looked, the more she saw.  Totsy little shrimpy things scissored their way around, grasping at reeds by body-hugging them with all their legs, then flinging themselves back off to the next reed.  In the muddy bottom little swirls of muck were mixed with legs and fins, their owners going about their business otherwise unseen.   

Gary suddenly woke, and Michaela’s peaceful mien was too much for him.  He roughly grabbed the side of her air mattress and hoisted it over, dumping his shrieking, sputtering sister into what she knew was a heavily colonized river.  Horrified, she scrambled up the bank and ran screaming over to her mum, convinced she must be covered in insects