During high school, on an afternoon walk along the beach, my buddy told me, “Yesterday, I got pinned under my weights.”
“What?” I asked, trying to understand the physicality.
“During my bench press reps. I got pinned.”
“What did you do?”
“I realized,” he said, “that I’ll never be Conan the Barbarian.”
I’ve thought about his story many times over the years. He said it with such sincerity, and, as far as epiphanies go, his was a vital one.
Do you ever feel that you’re missing it? Your life. That you’re so busy with the hustle, with the commute and the 10 minute breaks, the pile of dishes and the never ending laundry, you’ve forgotten to dance around the porch on a summer evening. Or eat at a sidewalk cafe and watch the girl in the heels walk her Great Dane. What is all this for, anyway?
My son is in Florida this week, and I’m rootless, or grounded, or anyway, clipped, and I keep wondering what exactly I’ve built my life around. And is it enough?
Last evening, I walked through the neighborhood, the clinker brick and the bungalows and the maple trees. The dogs pulling at squirrels and cats and shadowy black plastic bags, and on the wind the smell of northern fires. I miss him. I miss the sound of his voice—the impossibly high, clear pitch of it—and his laugh, and the urgency of his every request.
It has been him, the adventure of my life, the spontaneous joy of these years in which we have nurtured one another. All this free time now weighs on me the way summers did in my own childhood. Waiting, always waiting, for something to happen.
When you think of fear, what do you think of? Is it a memory—specific and concrete and unshakable—or is it an idea, a potential experience?
Much has been made in recent years of the positive aspects of fear. When you’re afraid, when your heart beats faster, and your hair stands at your neck and you feel an odd chill, or a heightened response, you should trust these instincts because they are warning you that something is wrong. Is our fear response always primitive, from our old brain, the one that knows that monsters live in the lake, in the basement, in the parking garage?
When Gavin was 10 weeks old, he began sleeping through the night. I’d put him to bed at 7:30, and he’d sleep until 9 or 10 the next morning. And without fail, I’d wake every morning afraid that he wouldn’t. Terrified, certain, when I opened the door to his room I’d find a body. Maybe I’d heard too many stories of crib death. Or maybe my old brain was calling up an historical anxiety about infant mortality, or maybe I understood, with absolute clarity, the limits of my ability to protect my child. Whenever I’d hear him croon in the morning, it felt like my chest broke open.
Yet, when I think of fear, I don’t think of those mornings. I think of the Ozarks. Bugs flitting on the water. A pig on a spit—an entire pig!—and a red and black water disk. I was a second grader, and I’d been sitting in the back of a boat with my friend, Brian, while his older brother water skied. And then, we took turns on the water disk. I had on one of those goofy orange life vests. The disk had grip handles at the side, and whipped across the surface of the water with exhilarating momentum. I shot off waves, and felt a pelt of fine spray. I cornered and bounced and then the rope slackened and I let go. The disk bobbed for a moment, then dipped with my weight. I had to look for the boat. It was a surprising distance away from me. And then I heard shouts from the shore. Several men were pushing toward me through the water, waving, pointing, shouting. In the water, 5 meters from me, was a black snake. A cottonmouth. A poisonous water snake. I knew it was a cottonmouth, and I knew it was poisonous, and I saw it was on a line to intercept me. On a sinking disk, too far from the men swimming toward me, seven years old, too frightened even to cry out, and here came this snake.
I didn’t hear the boat. Brian’s dad lifted me by my shoulders. Everyone was talking. The light around us seemed smoky. I watched over the side as the snake cruised past.
