One day I am sitting in my old body at my old desk reading young essays — essays sent to me by holy children of various sizes — and I can feel the joy sloshing and rising in me as their words pour in, and finally I get topped off by the phrase in otter words. A child has scrawled this in the brightest green ink you ever saw: in otter words, the holy parts are circled, she writes.
I think maybe the top of my head is going to fly off from happiness, and what remains of my organised mature mind sprints away giggling and mooing with pleasure.
You know how it's said that human beings are the only beings who can contemplate two opposing ideas at once? It's even better than that — we can entertain lots of joyous ideas at the same time, it turns out.
Such as, o my god, otter words, that's enough right there for hours of happy speculation, am I right? I mean, what are the otter words for trout and rain and minnows and ice and fur that has been warmed by the sun to just the right sheen and shimmer? I bet there are otter words for that.
And for clumsy fishermen, and for osprey, and for mud of exactly the right consistency for sliding in, and for dying chinook salmon like ancient riddled kings, and old red drift boats, and young mergansers, and huge herons, and the basso murmur of mossy boulders grumbling at the bottom of the river, and the tinny querulous voices of crawdads, and the speed-freak chitter of chickadees, and the fat feet of tiny kids, and the little pebbly houses of caddisflies, and the rain of salmonflies in season like tiny orange helicopters.
And the holy parts! which are circled, we knew that was true, the holy parts are underlined and illuminated and highlighted, aren't they, and circled with a huge honking blessed magic marker, isn't that so?
Sometimes I feel like the eyes in my heart close quietly without me paying much attention, and I muddle and mutter along thinking I am savouring and celebrating, and then wham, a kid, it's always a kid, says something so piercing and wild and funny and unusual that wham my heart opens again like a door flung open by, say, an otter, and wham, I am completely and utterly overwhelmed and thrilled by the