The day, the Saturday, opened up into a beautiful thing. It felt like I was sitting in a theatre waiting for the curtain to rise on a play that I anticipated and  knew would not fail me. The early morning sky was as clear as a bell. Bird song filled the garden as if it were June. I was suddenly taken with an energy that had escaped me for the past few weeks. I had a spring in my step. I was thinking about reclaiming the laundry basket, cleaning the windows, caked in salt from the recent gales and even considered pruning back the once resplendent Michaelmas daisies, that is, if the shears were not caked in rust. I also wanted to move the hens out onto the lawn because the coop was thick with  mud, and allowing them a meander into the grass was more than a good deed, it felt humane. My mind was a riot of  Saturday morning possibilities.

But things can change. Yesterday, I had taken a blind down from my son's room. It needed reclamation. It was shoddy. Years of blocking out the dark nights showed on its old, stained skin.  Once the blind was gone I could see that the dormer window, facing south, commands a brilliant view. You can embrace the entirety of Galway bay and the hills of Clare to the south and on a good day you can fool yourself into seeing even beyond the hills. This morning the view was stunning. Blue sea, grey blue hills and a horizon to make you stop and contemplate the natural beauty before me.

I passed my son's room en route to the laundry basket. I saw him standing there, looking out the window,  clad in a yellow towel, massive head phones covering his ears. He was in a reverie.  I knew that but I kept moving although it struck me how he seemed like a statue, frozen to the view, lost in himself.

It is not everyday your seventeen year old son suggests a walk. He said, Mom, do you want to walk down by the sea with the dogs? I had plans. All those repetitive domestic things screamed at me but I said, sure, why not.  

When you walk with your son it is like giving birth all over again. No. I mean there is no pain but it is such a bond. You walk along without having to say a word and when you do it matters. And you feel so happy, so bloody fulfilled. You walk out past the place where all the people gather and beyond onto an empty beach of smooth round stones and the water is like glass and the dogs swim after stones they can never possibly catch. My son skims the smooth perfect stones. I count fifteen skims. I make do with three. And we are beautifully lazy together, like two shadows of people without any delineation. His face is strong and alive and determined and I blend into him and he bleeds out of me until we make a crazy collage of a Saturday morning where warm sun makes us thankful for one another and we don't even have to say it. It never even crosses our minds like something right that can never be spoken about, never even explained.