isn’t this everything

The other day I drove down the hill and into a fog bank. A fog bank, yes, out of the blue. The weather is so odd around here — cloudy, gray, foggy— ­strange for September, which has always been our hottest month of the year. But that was then.

Just about all weather is strange these days, but ours is a stranger-than-ever world. It’s hard most days to lift one’s sights above the gloomy prospects.

It makes me think of this photo. It was taken at a children’s playground where underground misters emit a continuous flow of fog. It’s an ingenious form of play, and the kids can’t get enough of it. Without seeing farther ahead than their feet, they run and jump and get wet, but amazingly, they don’t get hurt.

I’m guessing she was about six years old here, because I don’t think she could have struck this pose after that. After this, she would have known a lot more. She would’ve known, for instance, what she couldn’t do, or shouldn’t do, what she was good or not good at, what other people liked or didn’t like about her, who said what, what things meant, and all of that, all of that. To her then, this pose wasn’t a pose. In this moment, emerging from the mist, confident, happy, and free. Pointing at me as if to say, even now, can you do this? Forget where you’ve been. Don’t think should or could. Without knowing what lies ahead, isn’t this everything right here?