Public Republic

Photo by the author

They are the only people on the boat.

The woman is sitting in the manner that a woman sits when holding a child on her lap, or when nursing a child.

The boat is getting closer to the shore and the boy working there is fastening it, tightly. He is doing it as if he could manage with his eyes blindfolded. A few movements and now it’s all done.

I see that the woman is indeed holding a child on her lap. My thought is that the baby is a girl. It is rather subconscious. Maybe it is because there are two sons. One of them, the oldest, seems to be in his mind already on the land as he is standing right at the place where you get off. I notice him the last. He seems to be at the age when children dive in the certainty of self-sufficiency. He reminds me of a milk-tooth lost in the sink. The rest of the family is at the bow. The younger son and the father are putting the sandals on the woman’s feet, the son is holding the left, and the husband has the right one. It looks so natural. It looks beautiful.

Even in the older son’s energy there is something tranquil. There is something so quiet about this family. And in this quietness there is the whole energy that could be in a family. So it speaks.

Now the woman is standing up, holding the baby, tightly. She is asleep, wrapped like a gift. I can see nothing more of her but the blue blanket. It matches the mother’s dress that the wind is playing with as she is stepping onto the ground.

Rather unnoticed they are all already on the land. It is only now that the woman is giving the baby to her husband and the very gesture is a gift in itself.

The family is approaching the long steep staircase to the castle. The older son is leading or rather speeding ahead, in his still speed. For a second or so they are at the same level as me, as I am sitting on one of the hills below the castle. In this second or so their silence casts itself on me, wraps itself as a gift and finds itself on my lap.

Some other people are crowding onto the boat. The same boat, the same river, yet everything is different.

I will sit here a bit more. Then I will go down the same staircase, will jump on my bike and rush to where my sight might lead me today.

Wisla shore, 30th July 2013