Growing up, if you lived on my side of town, you swam at Rehm Pool – where every hour there was a 15 minute rest period – pure agony – where Superopes were 50 cents and Fireballs were 10, and where if you wanted to dive, or do any sort of trick jump, you went to the diving well with a low dive, a high dive, and three platforms, the highest of which was used to film the last scene of “Backdraft,” so as to give the impression of firefighters falling out of a city building on fire.
Bathing suits were known to split upon impact with the water. Or, wedgies so powerful they could make your belly button pop to an outtie. And nobody knew which outcome was worse.
To get to the platforms, you climbed a spiral set of stairs and by you, I mean you. I wasn’t trying to jump off any of those platforms. I was busy perfecting my somersaults and handstands, and also looking for loose change at the bottom of the pool in an effort to support my Superope
and Fireball habit. Underwater was where it was at.
I did watch people jump, though. Usually, the most entertaining jumps and dives occurred during the rest period which I was grateful for because it gave me something to do besides watch three, maybe four 105 year olds with flowered swim caps take up the entire Olympic size pool doing a side stroke. (I know, it’s not nice what I wrote. This was like, maybe 30 years ago? They’re not around anymore. It’s fine.)
One guy, I think his name was Greg, but I could be confusing him with Greg Louganis, because he was super popular in those times and also a diver, but anyway this guy who I’m going to call Greg was incredible. He would dive and I swear between the time he left the platform and the time he hit the water, he did like 3,621 different moves. Plus, he pierced the water like a perfectly sharpened pencil.
“That guy’s crazy,” I remember a mom saying once. “Something is not right,” I remember hearing as I watched him climb out of the pool, and head for the spiral staircase again.
I jumped off the low dive; even dove off it once or twice. And I climbed the ladder and went so far as to walk to the very edge of the high dive. I also know what it’s like to walk back to the ladder and walk down, my rear end facing all the kids as they screamed, “Awww, c’mon!
Why’d you get in line! Just jump!”
//
It is 6 o’clock in the morning and I’m wrapped in a blanket clutching a mug of coffee close to me, and balancing a book on my lap. The book is enormous. It could be used as a doorstep or maybe a weapon except you need significant arm strength to lift it. The book is Kristin Lavransdatter, a medieval Norwegian trilogy that I read in graduate school but for many
reasons didn’t connect with. Recently though, a good friend of mine and writer I admire told me it’s the best book she’s ever read, and because she and I have almost exactly the same taste in books, I wondered what it was I read past the first time. What did I miss?
So each morning, I start my day with Kristin, and I admit, it takes concentration and deep focus to read. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s not Twilight, either. It’s best when I’m fresh, and when it’s quiet.
Across from the room I am in, my daughters, Hadley and Harper, are getting ready for school. I am underlining the following sentence in the book when Harper asks Hadley why she’s wearing shorts: “…good days [are] granted to sensible people, but the grandest of days are enjoyed by those who dare to act unwisely.” I am thinking of not Greg Louganis of my childhood when Hadley tells Harper that she isn’t wearing shorts. Harper tells Hadley that actually, at this moment, she is wearing shorts, and that it is February. In Michigan. And so Harper asks again,
“Why are you wearing shorts?”
“Well, I’m not wearing them to school, dumb butt,” is Hadley’s response.
I open my mouth and take a breath in order to yell, “Cut it out,” but the two of them are laughing, and Harper tosses a comeback having to do with some other kind of butt, so I look back at the sentence I underlined and I wonder if it wasn’t so much that there was something wrong with not Greg Louganis, rather it was that he dared to act unwisely.
Is it an unwise act to pursue writing – to take one shaky step, and then another, to allow the spiral steps to slow us down, to take notice of the air around us, of the way the sun hits our shoulders and spreads down our backs as we climb out of the shadows? Are we crazy to walk
as close to the edge as we can get, to curl our toes around the platform and look down?
Suppose it is an unwise act: to give a really tough story another chance, to believe the toilet humor banter between your children forms a sisterhood for the rest of their lives, to lift your face to the sky, breathe in, to take all that you have, and dive in.
//
Some friends and I are writing together on a common blog we call, “Project Redux.” It’s a community of women writers revisiting forgotten texts, and our first study is Kristin Lavransdatter. We’ve been writing together since January, and there are essays, discussions, and poetry. Read along. We’d love to have you.
As always, your words are magic.