A Well Deserved Smack in the Face "Mama Jo, what are we doing out here?" "Nothing." "Why aren't we going anywhere?" "'Cause I'm not rowing." "Why aren't you rowing?" "'Cause I'm looking." "Can't you look and row at the same time?" "Not when I'm looking like this." "Why not?" "You really want to know?" "Course I do, Mama Jo." "Because it's so beautiful here." "So?" "Well, it isn't this beautiful everywhere else. Lots of people all over the world are very sad. They can't go anywhere like this. They're stuck in their houses or apartments. They're stuck in the hospitals. They're stuck in sadness and madness. There's so many stuck in their sadness or madness, you wouldn't believe. But you and me, we're not stuck, are we? We're out here on the body of the deep blue sea. We see an island that's like heaven and the sea having a loving conversation. And then there's heaven, heaven in all its glory, smack dab before us." The little girl wanted to hug her great grandmother, who with all her wrinkles and white hair and sagginess seemed to radiate the same beauty they were looking at, but they were on different seats in the boat, and her life jacket was bulky, and she didn't want to tip them over with a clumsy movement. So she just said, "I'm happy to be here with you." "And I with you," said Mama Jo. "I'm so happy I can't hold it in. But instead of shouting, which I do rather feel like doing, I'm imagining that everybody in the whole world is with us, and they all feel what we're feeling, and their sadness and madness is washed away rather like dirt in the rain." As the boat gently rocked in the small waves of the inlet, the little girl sat and imagined it too. She imagined it for a long time until finally she had to say, "Mama Jo, can we go home now? I'm cold." So Mama Jo rowed them home, and when the little girl was back in the kitchen with a cup of hot chocolate, she felt both warm and incredibly accomplished, as if out of nowhere she had suddenly learned to play the fiddle, and the applause in her heart was quite deafening, and the sadness and madness had just got the smack in the face it deserved, and so there. 8 January 2022 Texas Jim Rogue's Roost, Nova Scotia www.granitecoast.ca