The Once and Future Dad

“That’s right, Daddy’s lost.” Arthur pushed Lori along in her stroller. “Lost.” He flapped his hands out to either side of his body as he emphasized the first consonant sound of the word “L-l-l-lost.”

“Where are we?” he crowed, then tickled his daughter’s nose, repeating his query twice, each time speaking in a more elevated sing-song, “Where are we? Where are weeee?”

The baby giggled and cooed. She answered with a long happy babble, even offering up a few rewarding “da-das”.

Arthur smiled, then sighed. He lifted his cup from the holder across the handles, sipped his coffee, placed it back, then returned to pushing the stroller farther along the path through the park.

Not just any park, but Dozmary Park, the jewel in a crown of well-funded city parks. They purchased their home two years ago just to be a few blocks away. Dozmary Park was its own sort of city, here in the center of the real city. Innumerable paved paths looped through the borders of several playgrounds, tennis courts, basketball courts, dog play areas, and community gardens. These pathways themselves were lined by a network of benches, picnic tables, barbecue pits, sculptures, water fountains, and bathrooms. Any unused land along the promenade was filled with lush manicured thickets and copses. Everything circled around a large central pond in the center of the park.

“So how can we be lost?” Arthur spoke aloud to himself this time, not to his baby. “I can understand getting lost during our first visit, even our fiftieth, but certainly not what must be our five hundredth or more.”

Arthur yawned. Leo, Lori’s older brother, had crawled into their bed last night. He should have shooed him away but, with Gwen away on business, it was just so warm and cuddly to have him there. His son kicks in his sleep though, and so Arthur had slept poorly. At preschool drop-off, just an hour ago, Leo ran out to play with his usual energy. As for Arthur, he yawned again.

“Sleep is for the weak…” he scolded himself, then laughed, “...and the childless.”

Arthur suspected that he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere near the north edge of the pond. He had not seen it, so much as felt it. The smooth paved path became bumpy gravel, then finally just dirt with a few stones and weeds.

He also had heard it, or rather had stopped hearing it. A sudden silence appeared where once there was the din of babies crying, toddlers screaming, parents yelling, dogs barking, squirrels fighting, even birds tweeting. Arthur listened. Silence.

He stopped and looked.

He was on a dirt path along the edge of a meadow, surrounded on all sides by several rows of unusually tall trees. The trail followed straight along one edge of the field but also teed in the middle to the entrance of what appeared to be a very old tent. Near as Arthur could tell, the tent was made from a hemp canvas, a tan colored base material but patched with various random squares of blue and green. The shelter was held aloft as a triangle by one large wooden pole, several random stakes, and twine rope tied up to a few larger tree branches from above.

An old bald man in rags sat cross-legged on the ground beside the tent, smoking a pipe, surrounded by open cans, broken bottles and empty cardboard boxes.

“Well this sucks,” Arthur mumbled, then whispered to himself, “I hope he’s not violent.” He avoided eye contact, held his breath, and pushed the stroller more rapidly. 

Above the treetops, he could see the same blue sky and fluffy clouds of early spring as from earlier in their walk. But the meadow itself had suddenly become much darker and colder.

He was many yards past the old tent before he stopped to breathe. He inhaled and exhaled, deeply, then anxiously. He smelled the pleasant earthy scent of wet bark and the rich musk of moist soil. But then came the pungent odor of dried urine, unfiltered tobacco, cheap alcohol and woodsmoke - the stench of homelessness all too familiar to any city dweller.

Arthur winced and coughed.

Lori met his eyes, smiled, but then tensed her face and arched her back.

“Who’s making a poo-poo?” It was the usual face and usual posture. “Who has a poo-poo?” Arthur reached out with his index fingers as Lori grabbed them with each hand and pushed. There was a flatulent staccato, followed by the rich sweet scent of baby poo. Lori giggled after she finished and then babbled a long set of unintelligible instructions for her father. She pointed toward the meadow.

Arthur turned and saw a large flat moss-covered boulder in the center of the field. “Yes, good idea, let's go change your diaper over there.” He pushed the stroller off the path and onto the grass and walked towards the large rock. 

“Daddy’s not going to throw out his back again.” Arthur reached over to tickle Lori on her belly. “No he’s not. No he’s not. Especially with Mommy away on business.”

Lori squealed and giggled.

Arthur continued, “That’s right, M-m-m-mommy made p-p-p-partner!”

Lori returned to her long babbling speech. She stumbled upon some “m” sounds which Arthur exaggerated back to her. “Mmmm. Mmmm. That’s right. Can you say Ma-ma? Mma -mma?”

Arthur was proud of his wife and her legal career. Gwen now billed more in an hour than Arthur could make selling a year’s worth of short stories. “And besides, who really pays anything for stories, anymore, anyways.” Gwen had encouraged him as kindly and honestly as she could. Arthur earned far less than the pay of any nanny, and so, after Leo comes, why not just become the nanny himself? “You can always write later, but they are only cute and little for such a short time.” And thus Arthur the writer had become Arthur the home-dad.

He looked again towards the boulder in the meadow. “The flat top of that big stone over there is a perfect height. And it’ll be easier on my back than bending down.”

Arthur continued pushing the stroller towards the boulder, and also cautiously away from that homeless man and his tent. Behind him, along the way, Arthur now heard the man alternately crying and yelling to himself. It was mostly incomprehensible, random gibberish, but with some fantastical repetitions about “serpent’s breath”, “death and life” and “charm of making.” Arthur did his best not to react, he looked away and pushed onwards across the field, towards that boulder in the center.

The large rock was perfect, about waist high above the ground, and indeed the top did have a flat surface about the size of a small table. There was old graffiti scratched around the base - Quisquis hunc e saxo gladium trahit, rex est iure - which Arthur tried, and failed, to translate with his middle school Latin.

He parked the stroller next to the boulder, reached for the diaper bag beneath and hung it over his shoulder. This was when Arthur noticed the glint of metal from an object sticking out the center of the flat stone top.

He looked closer. It was a sort of white metal tee pushed flush against the stone. There was a flat metal base parallel to the surface, about a foot in length and curled up into a decorative roll at each end. A much thicker round bar of the same white metal pierced this flat metal base, perpendicular to the stone surface and extending above it, also about a foot in length, wrapped with several straps of untanned leather.

Somebody must have hammered this old handle into the stone. Maybe that crazy homeless guy. Arthur placed his hand around the leather straps and gripped tightly. But I need to clear the surface to change my baby. He could feel that the exposed metal tee was part of a much longer piece of metal, perhaps rebar, all stuck into the bed of the boulder itself.

Arthur pulled at the odd metal tee with one hand, balancing his diaper bag with the other. The metal stuck at first, then loosened, then slid out and up, quickly and effortlessly. He held the exposed metal above his head with one hand as the diaper bag dangled down from the other. The revealed metal was certainly not a piece of rebar, nor any other sort of metal piping, but rather, of all things, a sword!

Arthur looked up at his hand holding aloft a large broadsword.

His eyes widened, his mouth opened, his heart raced, his breathing froze.

Fluffy white clouds parted above him in the blue sky and a thick beam of sunshine poured down from above to reflect off the shaft of the sword, bouncing brightly and remarkably in every direction all at once.

Arthur admired the mighty sword as he held it above his head, rotating it slowly. I can lift it easily, with just one hand, and it pulls out smoothly, even from having been embedded in solid rock. He stared at the white blade and heard music, a crescendo of hidden violins playing all around him.

But his trance broke from the sound of his baby crying. He awoke to himself, breathed in, and again smelled her poopie diaper.

Black clouds suddenly drifted above, blocking the sunbeams, and the sword in his hand darkened. The weapon seemed rusty and worn to Arthur now. Entirely purposeless. He tossed the old sword to the ground, then kicked it away with his feet.

Arthur placed his diaper bag upon the stone, opened it, and removed the changing pad from inside. He unfolded it, flattening it down with both hands across the boulder’s now cleared top surface. He removed a pack of wet wipes, opened a tube of diaper cream, and unfolded a new clean disposable diaper.

“Alley oop.” Arthur lifted Lori up from the stroller and laid her on her back atop the changing pad. He rolled her pants down and off, and then, in one well practiced set of movements, he pulled open the Velcro tabs of Lori’s present dirty diaper, unfolded it downward, lifted her legs upwards, wiped her clean from front to back, placed the soiled wet wipes on top of the brown poop in the diaper, folded up this dirty diaper into a tight ball, re-affixed it with the Velcro tabs, lathered a dab of diaper cream into the folds of Lori’s buttocks, lifted her hips slightly, slid the new clean disposable diaper underneath her bottom, folded the front side up and over, finally fastening the tabs snugly but not too tightly. Dirty diaper off, clean diaper on, Arthur exhaled, then rolled back up Lori’s elastic baby pants.

Lori gurgled and smiled.

“Alley oop encore!” Arthur lifted her up into the air and held her above him. Her shirt untucked and so Arthur tickled her belly with a big sloppy kiss. She giggled and squealed. He then lowered his daughter back into her stroller, tucked her shirt down beneath her pants, and restrapped her into the seat.

He stood in place, then rotated just his torso from the stroller to the top of the boulder, where he folded the changing pad and repacked everything back into the diaper bag. He rotated back to place the diaper bag and the dirty diaper ball under the stroller.

Then he saw him.

Arthur’s heart seemed to skip a beat and his hands began shaking. Directly facing both him and the stroller, there on the ground, just a few feet away, the homeless old man posed rigidly in a long bow. His head was bent down and his forehead was touching the ground. His arms stretched forward, cradling that old junky sword like an offering.

“He who draws the sword from the stone, he shall be king.” The voice was raspy, and had an English accent. “It is written, there, upon the base of the stone.” The old man kept his head down but pointed with both index fingers towards the old graffiti scratched across the bottom of the boulder. “We are unworthy, the land bleeds, the people suffer, we have sinned. But you - you found the grace to draw the sword and be king.”

Arthur remained silent. The old man became silent. They stood there, still, until Lori dropped one of her lovies, a fluffy pink kitten, onto the ground between them. “Look, sir, please, you are blocking our way. Please let us move on.” Arthur kneeled down slowly and retrieved the stuffed animal.

“He who draws the sword from the stone, he shall be king.” The old man mumbled over and over again, several more times, still holding his pose.

 “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take it. I needed space on top of the stone to change my daughter’s diaper.” Arthur stood up between his daughter’s stroller and the bowing man.

The old man slowly turned up his head and met Arthur’s gaze. He was bald with a long gray beard. “But you drew the sword from the stone?” He wore one long tattered brown robe and his feet were bound in open leather sandals. “The future has found root in the present. It is done, my lord. You - you are King.” The old man left the sword there at Arthur’s feet, then used the wooden staff by his side to slowly lift himself upwards into a standing position. He smiled and announced to the sky, “We have our king - you are our king - thanks be to God!”

Arthur bent down slowly. “This is a joke, right? I was teased like this my whole childhood. My first name is actually Arthur.” He lifted back up the sword into his hand, as much to keep it away from this crazy old homeless man as to inspect it for himself. “I suppose then this is Excalibur?” Arthur slashed twice in the air and then pointed the blade tip at the old man. “And so you must be Merlin?”

“Well yes, I am the Merlin.” The old man blinked his eyes and they turned from brown to blood red then back to brown again, startling Arthur. “Do not be afraid, my king. I have been asleep for centuries.”  The Merlin gently tapped the sword hilt with the tip of his wooden staff. “This sword is indeed Excalibur. It is a gift. Not just to you, but to all of us, to all peoples, to all lands. A blessing.”

Arthur’s reality began to feel unreal, his present, a dream. This old homeless man, this ‘Merlin’, how had he done that trick with his eyes? Arthur rubbed his own eyes now. His tiredness drained away and a surge of unexpected energy replaced it. Something inside of him had awakened and these forgotten longings from his youth emboldened him to imagine what could have been. “A blessing?” Arthur grabbed the hilt with both hands this time, then raised the weapon above his head again. He swung the weapon around his head, then his waist, in a wide circle. He placed his legs in a fighting stance and parried an imaginary opponent. The black clouds above dissipated and sunlight descended upon him as he twirled and pirouetted in the meadow. Arthur felt somehow young, and fit, and free. He recalled a vague life from long ago, a different sort of someone who he could have been.

The old man smiled. “You see, it is a blessing.”

But then Arthur was reminded of who he was now. He heard a crack, then felt a rip. “My back!” He quickly dug the tip of the sword into the dirt path. He held himself aloft with one hand leaning on the hilt, while pressing his other hand against his back as he stooped over. “Ugh. I pulled my back again.” He slowly pushed himself upright, then balanced both hands on the sword hilt to hold himself in place. His breathing quickened from the pain, which had at first been sharp, but now dissipated dully throughout his lower back.

“This sword is no blessing - it seems more of a curse, at least to me.” Arthur again felt his age, his actual age, and he was angry. “What good is it to me that you’re here now?” His eyes watered from his back pain. “Where were you twenty years ago? Or even ten?” He was crying now, and yelling. “Where were you when I was young and strong? When I was eager and free?” He continued bracing himself on the sword hilt, but now with just one hand while wagging the index finger of his other. “Where were you when I was brave, and begging for adventure!

“Now I am a husband with a wife, a dad with two children. There is a mortgage with bills to pay. There is shopping, and cooking, and cleaning, and laundry.” He removed a handkerchief with his free hand from his back pocket. “Don’t you understand? I have life insurance - my life’s insured! It is no longer mine to give, to you, or to anyone else.” He dried his eyes and blew his nose, then pushed the handkerchief back. “My life, my LIFE,” he next pointed a finger to his own chest. “I would have given my life to this sword. But how dare you come to me now, when I am this?” He lifted up the bottom of his stained sweatshirt and pinched the large folds of belly fat. “And this!” He took his free hand and flapped at the dangling fat of the second chin beneath his first. “And this!” Arthur moved his free hand to pull at the strands of thin gray hair on top of his head. Arthur finished by pointing at his opponent, “How dare you - how dare you come now”, and then at the sword beneath his other hand, “and with this.”

The old man gave a curt bow, then began a reply, “My king, please listen -”

“No, you listen!” Arthur interrupted. “I know as much about the ‘Hero’s Journey’ as anyone, more even. I once had hoped to be a writer. I’ve read and reread the Hero with a Thousand Faces. This is my call to adventure, isn’t it? My hero’s call.” Arthur stopped leaning on the sword, stood up, and tossed the sword back down to the ground between them. “Well I don’t accept it. I reject it. I deny this story structure being forced upon me.”

The blade hit a rock on the path and a loud clang rang out across the meadow.

“What’s this?” The old ragged man’s eyes widened and his brows furrowed. “What’s this! I never saw this!”

The sword rested there now on the ground between them.

“You can’t refuse!” He leaned on his staff and began a step forward.

“Stay back!” Arthur raised both his hands. “I don’t want to be king. And I don’t have to wield that thing just because I drew it from the stone.” Arthur spoke loudly and boldly, but he was filled with a quiet uncertainty. It was unclear to him now who was more disoriented - he or the old homeless man - and who might be more violent. He needed to de-escalate the situation.

Arthur tried taking a step back. “My wife lives and breathes contract law, and so I know my share too.” But both he and his daughter were pinned on the path, with the old man in front of them, and the boulder behind them. “This contract of yours, it’s what’s called ‘unenforceable’. I was never presented with your ‘terms’ before I acquired the ‘product’ - the sword - I just drew it from the stone because it was in my way, not because I wanted it.” Arthur emphasized his nervous legalese with finger air quotes. “A person can’t be ‘involuntarily bound’ to a contract.”

“But you misunderstand me, my king. The sword is not a contract, it is a gift.” Merlin, the Merlin, or was it the old homeless man - Arthur was confused - tapped the sword hilt with the tip of his wooden staff.

Arthur replied softly and measuredly, “Gifts can be refused. I renounce it. I don’t want it. I can’t -”

Lori just then interrupted their argument with a loud repetitive “Ba ba, ba-ba, ba-ba…” She held her stuffed pink kitty tightly with her left arm, as she started tapping her right hand to her mouth, the thumb touching the tips of her forefingers. “Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba…”

Bottle. Arthur hissed from his back pain, but then mechanically kneeled to the basket below the stroller to retrieve Lori’s baby bottle, loaded with formula powder, and a sealed water thermos. He poured the water into the bottle, shook it, then passed it to Lori in her stroller. He pressed the nipple into her mouth as she balanced it by the base against her right arm. She kept her kitty held tightly in her left arm, and suckled, staring upwards at the clouds above.

Arthur found he had begun to cry. “Listen. I’m no hero, I’m just a dad.” He kneeled down, grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands, and retrieved the sword. “You’ve got the wrong Arthur. I’m no Arthur Pendragon. I’m just plain old Arthur Arnold. I can’t be your king, or even a knight. There’s nothing grand or heroic about me.”

He placed the tip of the blade into the dirt path and leaned gently forward upon the hilt. “And the world doesn’t need some immortal king, the world needs newness. New stories, not old legends. After my first child was born, I realized it was my job - no, not just my job, but also my duty - to grow old, and to die, to make way for newness in the world.” 

Arthur felt as if he were stuck in a dream arguing with himself. “I’m a home dad. We’re a different breed of men from any generation before us. I never saw my father change a diaper, or even hold a baby, let alone cook a meal, shop, or clean a dish. Men who change diapers change the world.” He placed one of his hands on the back of Lori’s stroller and pressed the sword beside him upright into the dirt path. “Times are different now. I mean ‘Hero's Journey’ is all well and good - but Joseph Campbell clearly never changed a dirty diaper.” 

As Lori finished her bottle, Arthur took it from her. He tossed it into the basket beneath the stroller, then removed a large burp rag which he placed like a breast plate over his chest and shoulders. “I don’t want to be king. I have all the kingdom I need with what’s right here in my hands, and with her older brother too, and with their mom, my wife.” Arthur lifted up Lori, chest to chest, and placed her head over his shoulder, then tapped her back softly to burp her. “My dominion is right here.” Lori burped several times, then regurgitated some gooey white spit-up onto the rag. She closed her eyes and rested softly on Arthur’s shoulder. He kept tapping her back softly and slowly swayed his torso side to side. “She’s my princess. Her older brother, my prince. And their mom, my queen.”

Merlin stood tall, growing somehow taller. “And you, you are MY king. THE king.” His last word echoed softly, then loudly, against the tall trees encircling the meadow. A murder of crows flocked upwards and squawked. Then silence.

Lori fell asleep and Arthur placed her gently back into the stroller. “Okay if you insist that I am king then I abdicate. A king can abdicate!” He rolled up the burp rag into a ball and placed it in the basket underneath.

“It’s not that sort of king.”

“What does it mean to be king then?”

“You will be the land and the land will be you.” As the Merlin spoke, Arthur noticed blue flowers, early for spring, somehow dotting the meadow. “If you fail, the land will perish. As you thrive, the land will blossom.”

“But why?” Arthur noticed the wizard coming closer, he kept one hand on the hilt of the sword, but now grabbed Lori’s stroller with the other.

The Merlin’s eyes blinked red again. “Because you are king!” He raised his staff with both hands above his head. The sky above darkened, a sudden spring shower drizzled down, and Arthur heard a roll of thunder in the distance.

Then the showers stopped and the sky cleared as suddenly as it had all begun.

“Well, frankly,” Arthur surprised himself by laughing, “that’s just stupid.” He placed both of his hands back onto the hilt of the sword and lifted the blade tip out of the dirt path. “The land, the world, it’s everybody’s, and we’ve got to protect it, not become it.” He moved in front of Lori’s stroller. “We live in a democracy and a republic, not a monarchy. Being king, any king, it would be wrong.”

The old man walked in a small circle, one hand holding his staff, the other now banging at the side of his head. “I am the Merlin. I have walked my way since the beginning of time. I thought to have seen it all with my sight. But truly, I could never have seen this!” He stopped and faced Arthur. “Look at the life of this ill old man before you, my host. He is homeless, unwanted, rejected by all family and friends. He is hungry, cold, wet, filthy and poor. He fills his body with drugs he shouldn’t use and scorns the medications that would heal his mind. He has been gentle and generous, but also violent and selfish.”

The Merlin had the old man roll up his sleeves to show several rows of track marks on his forearms. “What good has your democracy and your republic been to this wretch in front of you?  It’s too much freedom - the freedom to harm. With a monarchy comes true freedom, the freedom from harm.” The old man, now as Merlin, the Merlin, stepped forward with his staff. “This land, these people, we bleed for lack of a king.” He banged his staff onto the ground before him. The sky above darkened. “We need a king. You are the king. You must be king.” There was thunder in the distance. Merlin moved a second step closer to Arthur, with Lori in her stroller behind him. His eyes blinked again from brown to red. “I can take the child. She is but one child, and only a girl at that. You are needed to redeem the billions here on earth. You must heal us, protect us, unite us, all with the power of this sword, and as king.” The Merlin moved a third and final step forwards, and bent down, reaching out his hands towards Lori asleep in her stroller. “Give me the child. I will be the mother and the father of the baby. I will take the child.”

“No. NEVER!” Arthur heard himself yell. He pushed Lori’s stroller away and swung the sword forward to protect his baby from this stranger. The old man stepped back, but Arthur could not control his momentum. His back was too weak and so his body circled around completely and, with this second turn, his full weight fell into the sword hilt. The sword stabbed directly into the upper chest of the old man. The blade slid into the old man’s body as easily as it had slid out of the stone.

The Merlin fell to the ground before Arthur, with Excalibur in his chest. There was so much blood, bright, red, and dripping from the wound.

“Call 911!” Arthur yelled, then heard his voice echo against the tall trees surrounding the meadow. He fumbled for his phone and dialed. “No service.” He whispered into the receiver - “I don’t know what to do?” - then pocketed his phone.

Arthur’s hands trembled and his legs weakened. “I’m so sorry.” He kneeled beside the old man and cradled his head in his arms. “It was an accident, a horrible accident.”

The Merlin, still breathing, tilted his head back, gazed at the clouds above, then murmured, “...into the spine… of the dragon…” His eyes turned briefly red, next back to brown, then finally fluttered and fixed upwards.

Arthur slapped the old man’s face, no response, then he lowered his ear to the old man’s chest, no heartbeat.

The old man had stopped breathing. The Merlin, however, forced the man’s mouth to speak one last whisper, “Anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha.” Lori awoke from her nap, opened her mouth and eerily repeated those exact same words, “Anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha.” Then Arthur heard the same words swirl in the winds around him, echoing out against the tall trees surrounding the meadow, finally dissipating upwards into the sky.

How could this be possible? How could any of this be possible? Arthur rolled over and vomited. This old man is dead. His heart raced and his breath sputtered. I killed him. He placed his head between his knees and cried. My life, our life, it’s all over now.

Arthur closed his eyes and cried, but as he cried, he also remembered: the first time he saw Gwen in the dining hall, their first kiss, that night together camping under the stars, their first small apartment, the time he burned the pot roast and the fire alarm went off, how she always smiled in her sleep, how much he loved her big pregnant belly and the way her freckles darkened with each baby, the miracle of being there to hold her hand when Leo was born, how they both had just finished that silly jigsaw puzzle before Lori popped out, filming Leo’s first steps and sending them to Gwen’s mom, changing Lori’s diapers. Then Arthur was there again, at least in his mind, with Gwen and little Leo, all rocking baby Lori to sleep together on the large wooden porch swing he had just hung over their new veranda. Arthur stopped crying and opened his eyes.

His lower back was throbbing. He lay his body out on the ground next to the dead man’s body, impaled with the sword. He rolled himself side to side, to stretch out his back and relieve the pain. He rolled away, he rolled back, and then, just like that, the Merlin’s dead body had vanished. Or had it been an old homeless man? Or nobody at all? Or all three at once, as in a dream. Arthur was so confused.

This is when the forgetting began.

The sword was all that lay on the ground now next to Arthur. It was surprisingly clean, shining beneath the sunlight, with no blood upon it, nor anywhere nearby on the ground. Arthur lifted the sword with one hand as he slowly stood up. What was he holding? Was it a sword, a piece of rebar, a metal pipe? Or again, somehow all three at once, as in a dream.

Arthur was stunned, but the memory of what had just happened continued to fade rapidly from his mind. He held the sword - or whatever it was - in one hand as he pushed Lori’s stroller with the other.

The dirt path along the side of the meadow led out from the circle of unusually tall trees, it connected to a gravel path which then became an empty paved path along the north edge of the pond. Arthur stopped and listened. In the distance, he heard a small dog yapping and a parent yelling at her child. Arthur smelled the coffee from his cup, tucked in the holder on the top part of the stroller. He needed another sip, but he was holding something in his hand.

He lifted the sword - or whatever it was? - above his head, then flung it out over the pond water, finally forgetting it, and most of his odd morning, the moment it left his hand.

Arthur turned away.

If he had turned back to see it, he would have seen a lady’s arm rise from the lake to catch the sword he had thrown, then hold it briefly above the waters, before descending with it beneath the surface.

But Arthur did not turn back. Rather he reached down with his newly freed hand and took a welcome sip from his coffee, before returning the cup to its holder.

He returned to pushing Lori’s stroller, now with both hands, southward, as he regained his bearings. “Hmmm, I never realized it before, but it’s not really a pond here in the center of our park, it’s more like a lake.”

Arthur had found himself and was no longer lost.

They neared their favorite set of baby swings. He stopped the stroller to take another longer sip from his coffee cup.

“Lake. Lake.” He repeated the word to his daughter in a playful sing-song. “Lake. Can you say lake?” Then he emphasized the first consonant sound of the word “L-l-l-lake.”

His back felt great, stronger than ever.

Arthur lifted Lori up with both arms and placed her into the swing.

Adam Strassberg is a retired psychiatrist living in Portland, Oregon. He uses the intersection of psychology, religion, mythology, and magical realism to explore the human condition through fiction. His novella "December on 5C4" debuted in December 2024. When he’s not writing or napping, he often can be found updating his website at www.adamstrassberg.com