Her hair is straight and white instead of dark and curly and she no longer has the body of a twenty-five year old, but her eyes still flash with the same intensity and she smiles with the same conspiratal smile and her breasts are as high and proud as they were thirty years ago when I first realized with a shock that she was treading water in front of me and everyone else in the swimming hole quite naked and completely thrilled with herself.

My mother, who had no truck with swimming, was not there to witness this seminal event in my developmental history, and I have no recollection of whether my father was in the water or even at the water's edge to see her, because all I could see was her hair and her eyes and her smile and her breasts with the dark hard nipples floating in front of me like a dream, not just any dream, the dream I had been having every night and day for months, the dream that became her for years to follow.

Outside of my dreams I only saw her a few more times and when I did she was with men who were legally men. None of the men I saw her with was my father, and I will probably never know whether there was anything between them then, but there is obviously something between them now, and when I smile back at her it is out of both joy for the past and the impression she made on me, and joy for the present that he can experience what I have always wanted.