Duckweed . . .

Virginia's Fitzgerald's recent image on facebook "Photoaday" of two ducks brings to mind one of those extended moments as a 12 year old growing up on the north shore of long island amidst randomly scattered truck farms. There were several ways of getting to my friend Tom's house: cross-country or by walking the bendy roads. If the corn was taller then two feet, it was easier by road than cutting through the fields diagonally. Of course once the corn stalks had been stacked into tee pee type affairs and gathered in and tied about five feet from the ground, there were all sorts of other adventures at our fingertips. One afternoon I strayed a bit from one of my normal routes and it was along one of the bendy roads. That's when I discovered a seemingly abandoned and overgrown clay tennis courts just inside a stone wall and sure to cut my travel time in half. With one energetic bolt I was half way over the wall and still in mid-air, on the way down a perfectly executed arch, that in a fleeting moment of foreshadowing my future seemed to hang in the balance. As my feet penetrated the smooth clay court, which I was just beginning to understand as a deck of Duckweed, my life passed before me . . . I remember that moment to this day 58 years later as if it had happened but three minutes ago.