a little secret

honestly, i was really planning on blogging today, however, my father and I crashed into someone very meaningful to me today and i wanted to write about it, coz it sparked a memory that i really should never forget. and i want to share it.

(for privacy reasons il just mention her first name) Betty. we were at the post office earlier today, my dad was talking to me about the house and what was set in motion should he pass.

and so we just caught up, before she left, she managed to pull me aside and whisper that she "never forgets me" and that "it's our secret".

about 11 maybe 12 years ago there was this church outing to bacchus marsh, the name used to freak the heck out of me, the thought of that place would really torment me for years, till i went back.

it was a baptismal outing (people were going to be baptised, good on em) i can't remember who the people were.. next to this lake there was like a deep pit, i really dont know how else to explain it, and it had the downstream of water and it had like a very small waterfall or water flow, whaterver. and myself and a friend that i was with at the time, Danny G. same age as me, we were playing in this water pit, as most of the kids were, coz like the first meter of land was fairly shallow then it just drops.

anyways, we were playing and we someho ended up with a log in the middle, and we started sinking, we were getting tired and it became a struggle to stay afloat, and the whole survival of the fitest thing started to kick in, we lost the log somehow and began pushing each other down for what would seem like hours at a time (all of this in less than a minute), and Betty saw us, and immediately, she put her kid down, i think he wa sa toddler or somethin, i remember his name was James, and she just dived in, grabbed both of us and gave us a towel each. and nobody else saw. no one else heard us scream, no one else was watching.

i don't remember what happened to Danny after that. i went to the car and i stayed there in shock, till we left the place. i saw her again a few years ago, and was thrilled to see me, alive.

i remember that occassion so vivdly, and i remember thanking God so much for her, the times when i'd see her at church i remember thinking- what if she's like an angel, disguised as a human, for my sake. (irrational, but then i was a kid so it made sense.)

i remeber the pushes back and forth, i remember the lack of breath, i remember the how helpless i felt under the water, i remember what the sun looked like from under the water. i remember choking, and i remember seeing her jump in.

i told this memory to my dad today, i really can't describe the look he had on his face.

once again, a reminder- 'querido'.

-- David E. Ceballos.