EYES IN THE SOLES OF MY FEET by Caroline Dumaine

Author:Caroline Dumaine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schaffner Press Inc
Published: 2025-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

I also told her about the mole. “Why didn’t you keep it?” she exclaimed. “Oh, I wish I’d seen it. Was it fast?”

“Yeah. It was pretty rattled. And you weren’t here.”

“You should’ve called me!”

“And face timed with the mole?”

“Yes!”

In truth, I could have. I could have really looked at those near-blind eyes and scrappy extra thumbs as I’m sure I won’t see another common mole on whose tunnels I walk every day, my foot feeling the earth exhale.

Late summer brought days so still the leaves never flinched, the sky lay pale blue behind a diaphanous veil of clouds. Ella and I spent hours in diamonds of turquoise light underwater, torquing like otters, pushing off from the bottom, diving for acorns, and holding hands while we said words to each other that neither could understand. “This is how I play,” she said, spinning in the water and entwining her hands overhead, “while you do laps.” During those days the filters caught only leaves. Catbirds and blue jays awoke casually, lacking the fervid eruption of songs in June. Cicadas chirring all day often went unnoticed. Russet hydrangea blooms lingered.

My daughter packed up the car and her girls bounced around in excitement at heading home to Brooklyn. Florence at two didn’t know how long she’d been gone or when she’d be back. At five, Ella knew. She leaned against my body and looked up, “It’s bittersweet.”

Maybe that’s one word for her thoughts as we discovered frogs and voles and fiddlers to observe and to live with and say good-bye to, alive or dead, though as she grew the inherent balance in the word would change.

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