156 The Meadow 6. Before my second son was born I wished, first thing, as he was lifted up fresh from his mother, to smell the ocean of his head. I told nurses not to hurry him away or wash whatever blood or mucus still clung to him. I wanted to hover close, in my own time, above the beating fontanel, the small red hairs slicked by dark swimming. In the middle of the continent, I wanted to know the nearness of salt, to finger that place on the neck where gills had been, where skin now kept its secret as the head sagged clumsily, the head of a giant turtle, come to shore on the wave more powerful than itself, suddenly on sand, the tide having receded, the air new, that light bright and new, every human being on the beach rushing that way now to touch it.
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