Friday, September 14, 2012

Celestial 81


I’m afraid to jump into the deep end from a high place. I talk big talk, and even walk along that edge, but something always stops me from taking That Leap. A fear of heights, of the unknown, of passing through the shadows, the mist getting into my skin, who I’ll meet down there, or up there, or what I’d be inclined to Do. I’m always inclined, and I have Done, but if let loose to do like that, could I find my way back with heart intact or would I just float away in the waves, sopping from my chest cavity and seaweed pulling at my legs? Would that be all bad? Would there be anyone standing on the rock, the cliff, the overhang, what have you, to wait or watch and make sure I was alright out there?

There were fewer questions once. Because, it seems, I was always afraid of this leap. Every summer, once we’d open up our big pool, all built by my father, hole dug, pool placed, small creatures saved and insides cleaned out every single year, I was always afraid the first time. I took to the water as was in my DNA to do, but the deep end was a little troubling, and more than that, the first jump off of the diving board was absolutely frightening. I eventually managed it a few times in each summer, but the first time never failed to wreck my nerves and cause an hours long scene, usually solitary, at the diving board, trying to get myself to jump in, full throttle.

The time, like many, my father was outside most of the day, as he was in summer, and most times in the year, in the place. Time seemed to go slower – everyone says that, but what makes it true? It slid and slowed into perpetual summer for me, or in the realms of mind that remember it so. No matter the season my dad was out there all the time. Around one end of land or house, or another. Some implement at work, but at Work was the key.  Actually, the key really being that he was here, creating ponds and tennis courts, and septic systems, cementing garden steps or fixing roofs or cursing at bees that were caught in the hot, dry flimsy shed structure which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy to be stuck inside in the heat of summer. Oversized baseball hat on his tiny head, the same as mine, v neck undershirt which never started out white, not that I could tell, and all manner of sweat, dirt, grime and sun on it, baking shapes and stripes into his farmer’s tan, different places in the same way. What the hell was 9-5, I wondered? Nobody in my house sure did anything like that. Sure, he went and did jobs but I’ve seen lazy housewives spend more time at “errands” in an afternoon than he did wiring schools or doctor’s houses. His job was outside, and that’s the way he wanted it.  Truth be told, I’ve become really good at staying in, but it’s not in my nature to want it that way.  Something in the air in late summer gets into my nostrils and I can’t seem to back away from it. But once it gets lost, it’s hard to find it again and again.

On that day, he was tending to his roses. To one side of the pool (which was Olympic sized – this he wanted in exacting proportions), running all down the length of it was a dirt hill. A fairly steep one at that, since there was the time my dad was wheelbarrowing some dirt (just like he knew my favourite thing was to be placed into the wheelbarrow (dirty of course) and rolled around in whisk-like circular motions, kind of like the feeling when you jump) and fell back down it and barely hit his head on the cement. He was fine, but there were a few close calls like that. It was late afternoon, the rainbow feeling of the light, and he was near the bottom of that hill, digging up weeds, and re-planting, and picking beetles off of the row of multi coloured roses and dropping them quick as a shot into the glass jars he had leaning every so often in the dirt, filled up with some blue liquid that shocked them dead.  He did all of this with bright eyes, and I am only able to see his always satisfied face in my mind, never anywhere he didn’t want to be, doing and being and striving and being challenged and creating his own world exactly as he wanted it to be.

I was still sitting on the diving board.  It had been too hot to really sit or stand on, but the sun was beginning to fall a bit behind the leaves of the tallest cluster of trees, and I was able to sit, then stand, bounce, then get off, walk around and sit again.  We were talking most of the time, but we could be perfectly silent around each other too.  These afternoons would form the patterns of the late night wine conversations, long car drives from train stations and figuring ourselves out talks with each other during my whole childhood and adult life, and during the rest of his life.  We were so alike in our silences that there was never a need for any forced conversation. We were easy like that. Embodied within our own worlds, and yet alive in each other’s. He would teach me things about what he was doing, tell stories about his childhood, and our family oversees, or just say things which seemed to drop off the dew in the trees like “over your life, you will find that you can count the truest and best friends, people who you love and who are the most important to you on one hand”.  It hasn’t failed me yet. 

We talked then- directly about my fear of the diving board and of jumping into the deep end, and how it happened every single summer that I was afraid this first time. He didn’t prod me, or push, but would work, and listen and talk about how it can always feel impossible when it’s the first time for anything. Even when the first time comes around again like clockwork.  Eventually, I expressed the pinpoints of the fear and how I was afraid that if I jumped from such a height (truth be told it wasn’t very high, but I was short in those days and not very confident in my physical prowess) into the deep, that I would drop too far down and not be able to hold my breath (which I was also nervous about since I still used my hand to hold my nose [I still mostly do in the oceans too]) and how would I get out in time? Then he said it. Matter of factly, in his soft, broken English and gentle Slavic by way of Italian sounding tone.  He either called me Mimi, my nickname, or more likely sweetie pie, which came out as sveeteh pieh…the gist of what he said being, as he stopped what he was doing, put his tools down and stood up, walking a few feet closer with the kind of intent I seemed to have inherited, that if I fell into the water or was in need of help, and he was upstairs in the window of the top floor or even on the roof of the big house, he would jump down in a second and help me.  The emphasis was that there would be no hesitation, that I needn’t Ever worry, that the fear I was having wasn’t necessary, because he was there and always would be.

I clearly cannot erase that moment from my memory bank, nor live without the knowledge of it. This, after all these years, has turned out to be a double edged sword. A bliss/curse, or something. I live to this day with the feeling of protection from my father, for many more years in my life with him in it and the five and a half years with him only in my dreams (where, incidentally, he is always young. I mean YOUNG, as a twenty year old man, in a way I have never known him to be. He didn’t live a second of his life indebted to anyone else and he is not starting now it would appear), he is there.  In the shadows or between the windy currents that blow at the top of the cliff, he is there to say this to me, and I have full knowledge of it. That’s why he was a good father, because he was there to teach me to not fear anything, at least not for too long. And he was a good man, because he was never got down, even when he was. A gypsy with two countries, many lives, the grandest of failures and creations, and a self beating that would never give up, most of all on who he was. That’s who is standing in the shadows for me, and it makes me feel very fortunate indeed. The other prong of this puzzle comes simply from where this fact leaves me now. Could anyone else in my life ever want to do that? Maybe he did it, so no one else would have to, and so I wouldn’t need that of them, and so I could do it for someone else, with the courage that he helped bloom quietly, on each of those summer afternoons when I thought it was finally time to jump off the diving board.

The sum of this equation is written in the form of a promise. I have feared and still will fear, when the height feels too high, or my confidence up or shot aside, sensitivity to light or the abyss, both outside and inside me, prevails…but promises are for people who don’t do anything, aren’t they. I have jumped. I have jumped so far I thought I’d drown, and yet I know more chances are coming, and I am going to have to take them at their word, take off my dress and leap. I don’t wait for the first days of summer, or once a year’s time to do it either. I am and will find myself out there, beyond the joviality of the summer sun, arms out twisting with exaltation, mid-air, as I catch a glimpse of his smiling, independent eyes from just around a corner from my starting point and the sea.

{Happy (81st) Birthday Da.}

No comments: