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It began, I guess, like any relationship with a swan might begin.
She lived at Mountain Lake Park in San Francisco, just before the tunnel leading to the Golden Gate Bridge off of 19th Avenue. And I—like so many others who saw her there—wanted her attention. She was circumspect, with clear boundaries, and when anyone came too close she would either quickly move away, or attack.
Yet when I approached, she didn’t move away. She didn’t attack. She came toward.
To be honest, I didn’t trust her in the beginning. She was powerful, and when she came toward me, I thought she was going to bite me like she did with any of the many people who tried to get near her. But gradually I came to realize that there was something special between us, that she really liked me, and that I could trust her.
At first, I didn’t know how to love her.
I thought she would like pets and stroking, like a cat or dog. She tolerated those, but what she really loved was dancing together, pulling her wings back, arching her back, and just being near each other. As I learned to trust her more, I let her crane her neck next to mine, bobbing first to one side of my face and then the other, touching her neck against mine. It was very vulnerable; very intimate.
It wasn’t all sweetness and light. She was jealous. She would snap at anyone else who tried to come near us. She was clingy, too. When I had to leave the park, she would follow me, threatening to follow me right to the parking lot and my car. I was worried about her safety around cars, so I would run away from her, in the opposite direction from the parking lot, sometimes hiding behind a tree until I saw she had given up following me, and then I’d make my way, like a spy trying not to be seen, to my car.
I wasn’t sure whether this was a “one afternoon stand”, or whether she would remember me the next time I returned.
Four weeks later, I got to find out. I returned to the lake. There, drifting idly on the water at the other end of the lake, I saw her. I don’t remember if I did something to call her, or just looked at her. Somehow, to my amazement and delight, she started swimming in my direction. She traversed the lake, came up on the shore, and waddled directly up to me. I like to imagine that we both smiled, but I can only confidently speak for myself.
Our courtship resumed exactly where it had left off, dancing together, craning heads. I even started to mimic her, stretching out my neck and bobbing first on one side of hers and then the other. Although the book on “love languages” had not yet been written, I somehow intuited that this was her “love language”, and I wanted to make sure she knew how I felt.
People would come up to us, like the kids in the picture, wondering if this was a tame swan that anyone could play with and touch. Every time someone got too close, however, she would turn and snap at them, sometimes with a loud “honk”, letting them know that she was not that kind of swan.
Our relationship lasted about a year. I didn’t get to the lake as often as I would have liked, and eventually, I’d come to the lake and not find her. Of course, there were lots of reeds and rushes, so it’s possible she was there and I just didn’t see her, perhaps even with another swan. I don’t like to think about that too much. In any case, we both moved on. Now, all I have is this photograph, and the sweet memories.
~
author: Mark Schneider
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Molly Murphy
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