We have three neighborhood children, ages seven to eight, who like to come an play with our dogs. Last night they all came by and ran around the yard with Little Sally Pumpkinhead. After a bit they tired of that game and came up on the porch to play. I sort of kept an eye on them out the front door since they were crawling around on top of the three foot high brick wall that goes around the porch. When they were younger I would keep them off of it because it is about five feet off the ground and I worried they would accidentally fall off but now they are old enough to be careful or so I thought.
As I said, I was kind of keeping an eye on them while reading a book when an unusual movement caught my attention. Instead of the random horizontal motion that their moving round on the porch produced out of the corner of my eye I saw something move vertically. When I looked up one of the children was standing up on the edge of the twelve inch wide stone ledge that forms the top of the wall. He was facing the steps and at first I wasn't sure what he was doing. Then an instant before he leaped into space I realized what he was planning.
When I was five years old we lived in a hotel in the Panama Canal Zone that had a swimming pool. Each weekday while my father was at work my mother would take me and my siblings down to spend the day at the pool. My mother would sit with the other woman and we were pretty much left on our own to splash around in the water. What was amazing about this was the fact that even though our mother did not seem to be paying attention to us she always knew when we were in trouble or when we were about to do something stupid. I still remember the day my four year old brother climbed to the top of the ten foot diving board holding his swimming tube securely around his waist and then jumping off. It was something my mother allowed us to do and he had done it many time before but this time, for some reason know only to him, as he jumped he put his hands up over his head. He hit the water about 2 seconds before his tube did. I turned to look at my mother and she had already dived into the the water to pull him out.
I also "taught" myself to swim in that pool. I would hold on to the edge of the pool and inch round it until I was in water almost over my head and then put my feet up against its side. Letting go, I would push myself away from the wall with my feet. When my backward motion stopped I would dog paddle back to the edge of the pool. One day I decided I really could swim and walked down to the deep end of the pool took a few running steps and leaped into the air above the water. I leaped totally secure in the knowledge that I could swim. As my feet left the pool deck I head my mother scream, "Colleen, no!," and I knew I had made a big mistake.
I hit the water and preceded to drown. I was choking on the suffocating liquid that filled my throat and part of my brain wondered how far I would sink before I touched the bottom of the pool. Then a strong hand grabbed my left arm and started pulling me up and out of the water. It was my mother, she had saved my life. As I lay on the pool deck coughing up water I was furious with her. It was her fault I almost drown. If she hadn't yelled at me I would have been fine.
So in that instant before M____ took his leap of faith I understood how my mother felt when I made my leap of faith and I also understood how he was feeling. I kept my mouth shut knowing that if I yelled at him I would destroy his belief in his ability jump across the four foot span between him and the other side of the porch wall. He jumped out of my sight and I held my breath. I did not hear him land but I could see one of the other children and since she did not react with horror I knew he had made it to the other ledge. When my heart started beating again I said, ""M____, don't ever do that again."
I still could not see him but I heard him say in a small voice, "OK."
"M___, it was a great trick but don't ever do it again, you almost gave me a heart attack."
Small voice, "OK."
M___'s jump proves the Zen saying, Leap and the net will appear. I now realize my and my brother's leap also proved the same thing.
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