I have such a clear image in my head

I was born when my mom was 36 and my dad was 37. (Huh. Until I did the math this very second, I thought my mom was 37, like I was 37 when I had Mack. Huh.) I spent every summer while growing up driving (and later flying) back and forth between SLC and Lake Powell in southern Utah. We probably got in 12-15 trips between April and October. I don't feel like I saw much of my dad during the school year. He didn't come to my school programs or events, I don't remember eating dinner as a family except on Sundays, and when he got home from work in the evenings he just sat in his recliner and read his newspapers and magazines. But during the summer he was mine all mine, as we boated up and down the arms of the lake and took long hikes hither and yon. He knew as much about that lake and the land surrounding it as anyone. He ran the Colorado River often before it was dammed, and he boated it faithfully when it became Lake Powell.

So, I have really really clear memories of him from the ages of, let's say, 42-55. These were the years he belonged to me, or at least Lake Powell belonged to him and I belonged to Lake Powell. I realize now he didn't do those trips for my enjoyment, but for his; but that doesn't minimize even one little bit how much I adored those trips and that lake. It feels like home to me. I yearn for it. I miss it. It almost isn't even fair that I don't have a boat and money and resources so I can still be on that lake half the summer.

I remember sometimes a wind would come up and he'd have to jog after a blowing towel, or he'd have to run after a rope that was going out too fast, or have to dash to catch the boat before it rammed the dock. And his run looked like this funny, choppy thing, sort of a half-gait, all knees up forward and no legs stretching behind. Like his hips and knees didn't quite work on demand.

Which is me now.

I didn't understand it then; I was single or barely double digits in age, and my body did anything I wanted it to do the second I asked for it. I was lithe and limber and never stiff.

But today, when Jackson and Christian and I were setting up sprinklers and I would stand there adjusting the spray pattern, and then try to run out of the way before I got wet, I could feel that I was all knees up forward and no legs stretching behind. Damn! Do I really have to get old? I'm even a jogger. But without my warm up, my hips and knees don't just get up and go anymore.

So now I know where I am in my kids' lives, and the strange and funny images they'll carry away of me, trying to dodge the sprinkler spray. Until they hit their 40s, and then they'll understand.