Playmate

How water loves to play. Grandson Myja is just learning how delightfully frolicsome it can be. Whether generating patterns of flashing water by splish-splashing in the sandy shallows of the beach, or submitting to a drenching under a sprinkler, or trying to capture the fat drops arching up and over in a parabola from a water jet, Myja is learning an important lesson: whatever he does to it, water is already ready to have it done again.

What a delight to watch him on video chortling at this wonderful liquid between his feet, over his head, in his face, or between his hands, and see him, slicked and glistening, running from fountain to shower in a rapture of pleasure.

I want to tell him that this simple, wonderful stuff will never disappoint, will always offer new expressions of its willingness to cavort with us: giant surfing waves, waterfalls, rapids, gurgling forest streams, deep still lakes, frog  ponds; then there's atmospheric and celestial phenomena like rainfalls (even floods when too rambunctious), storms of all kinds, and tides; and what about ice and snow and its ability to transform whole mountains into giant playgrounds?

'Dear water, clear water, playful in all your streams, / As you dash or loiter through life who does not love / to sit beside you, to hear you and see you, / Pure being, perfect in music and movement.' sang Auden in  Bucolics, and how right. Water, my dear boy, will be your inspiration and nemesis while you live on this blessed planet and inhabit that special little body of yours.

We've not finished discovering the games water is willing to play with us. It's good you're starting early cultivating this good friend of ours.