Plunge

Today you are at the top of a diving platform that is too large for such a small human. You passed the swimming test for the first time only a couple weeks ago and because I have thrown myself from the top and your older sister has followed suit, you insist you are ready. You stand there for so long, looking at me and then looking at dad and then looking back at me and peering over the edge, uncertainty fixed in your gaze.

You disappear from the lip, headed back down the stairs.

And then from the edge of the platform I see your banana swim trunks as a blur and your small body falls and falls toward the water. You did not just leap, you took a running start. I am equal parts proud and aghast, watching with bated breath until you kick your way to the surface smiling from ear to ear.

The distance from the top of the platform is vast and jarring and infinite and the plunge toward the water slows time so that you are falling for days and days and days. And when you do reach the water you go into the deep until the animal part of your brain starts to panic that you may run out of air before you can surface. Your ears alarm with pain at the pressure difference and for a moment you are weightless and lifeless and belong only to the water.

You are so brave.

I used to feel courageous, fortified somehow, against the kinds of things that now wake me in the night. The planet is warming. The supreme court has been hijacked and the politicians have all been bought. The last of our three dogs is old and dying and I see those I love less than my heart wishes. I can't protect any of our children from our gun problem and I see the blood of my neighbors as I shop for apples in the aisles of my newly-renovated grocery store.

I am desperately in love with people who will die. I will die. People can be so broken and when they are, they can do such terrible and dastardly things. I have been less kind and patient and generous than others deserved. I have bemoaned my body for its size, my mind for not being smarter, and my heart for its propensity to crack at the smallest slight.

But you stand there at such a great height, surrounded by gray clouds and drizzling rain, with the wind shaking your entire body with cold and when it looks most like you may concede defeat, you turn and hurl yourself with total abandon and glee into complete free fall. And then you proceed to do it again and again, the flush of novelty and pride enveloping your entire being.

You are so brave. 

Perhaps I can learn to be, too.