This morning, I am thinking about champagne corks. In their rounded form, they carry the essence of easy decadence; squat emblems of jubilant buoyancy. They are cheerful beacons of delight that fit in the palm of your hand.
I should like to be a champagne cork. Pushed underwater, they unfailingly rise to the surface, unperturbed by their sub-aquatic adventures. Would it not be nice to be propelled through deep darkness to incandescent daylight by the sheer force of your inner lightness?
That is what my mother tells me. She is a champagne cork — sadness can lick and cover her, yet there is a zesty velocity within her that effortlessly sheds sorrow’s oily sheen, as a diver emerging from water in a reverse film-reel. There she is now, doing backstroke on murky waters.
By degrees, with each small splash and inhalation of light that her bobbing figure breathes back into the sea, the waves lose their dense darkness.
Soon, she luxuriates in the gentle frothiness of honey-gold sea foam. If you were watching the scene, you could mistake it for a picture-postcard vignette of an endless summer Sunday.
