Man with a Limp: Place 7

A man with a noticeable limp carries his daughter around the pond. She’s younger than you, not quite walking yet. She’s black, or African-American. Admittedly, I’m still not quite sure what the politically correct thing to say is. And I only mention it because the man is white. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I am curious what the story is. I would guess there’s an interracial couple in the family. The man looks old enough to be her grandfather. Maybe his son or daughter is married to an African-American.

I haven’t spent much time on the “natural” things at the preserve today, which is to say that I haven’t talked about or even given much consideration to the animals, the ducks, the geese, the buffalo, the peacock, the missing swans. But I’m drawn to the question of the “naturalness” of the man and the little girl. The fact that my attention is drawn to them would make it seem like the pairing is unnatural (and let me say here that I am in no way shape or form against interracial coupling, nor do I believe that it should be viewed as unnatural). The fact is, society (and when I say society in this context I mean the last two thousand years of social shaping, or maybe the last two hundred of American social shaping) has made us believe that there is something unnatural about it.

That said, I earnestly believe, at least among most of the people that I know, that an interracial couple would not be viewed as wrong or unnatural. I feel strongly like the world is moving in that direction. But that’s really just my small world. Tonight I’ll go home and watch the news where a hundred Israelis were killed in a suicide bombing near the Gaza Strip. Are the Palestinians to blame? I wouldn’t have any idea, I couldn’t tell the difference. And I’m just being honest. I don’t hate them because I can’t tell the difference, I just can’t. Sure, I’m ignorant of their cultural differences and their histories. That stuff goes back to the beginning of time. I’m just amazed that an older white man is carrying a little black girl around and aside from noticing it, I actual think it’s cool. I feel like something good has happened somewhere.

Two mallard drakes are squatting next to my bench. They look exactly the same, brown and white bodies, black heads with that turquoise green color around their eyes and white stripes on their tails. A common merganser waddles up next to them. He starts pecking at the mallards. They don’t seem to be bothered. And why should they be? They’re all ducks. They’re the same thing. They just look different.