Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
Surprisingly, they got along well. Without expectations, they no
longer had to face disappointment. Without disappointment, they
were often surprised at finding what they had failed to find in the
past. But it was too late, and they knew it. Dwight didn’t hope for
reconciliation, and neither did Roxanne. They continued to meet
with lawyers to divide up the community property and had deter­
mined that they would share equal custody of the boy.
Roxanne was grateful to Dwight for the help, and that was enough
for him, just thank you, I needed your help. And she knew that was
enough, and also that he wasn’t doing this for her. It was for the baby.
He was protecting the baby. The baby was a kind of hope for him—
she could see that in the expression on his face, not of love for her,
but of a sense of peace, of ease. He had abandoned the fight against
himself. She didn’t know what the fight was; it had always been part
of their problem together. If she had asked why he felt so serene, he
wouldn’t have been able to tell her. It was a vague yet satisfying feel­
ing, a strong memory that would last to the end of his life.
In that future memory that he is yet to have, his child is a man who
is very much like himself. He has come to a point in life where he
feels lost and rudderless. He has been pulled to a place where he is
the stranger. He stands on the shore of the Irrawaddy and thinks
about who went before him and who will come after and how to­
gether but in separate times they will watch the same flow and feel it
in their blood. They were never strangers.
W HEN LUCAS WAS BORN, Roxanne had sudden attacks of fear
several times a day. She was afraid that she would forget to do some­
thing critical, like feed the baby, change his diapers, or recognize that
he had a fever or was not breathing. She worried she would absent­
mindedly walk into a room and leave the baby there, forgetting
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