Imagine learning to swim late. As if you were the last one to figure it out. As if the depths of every body of water had already been sampled and dredged. The mysteries of the sea not only solved but cataloged and bagged. Set out on numbered slides.
Imagine being young enough to admit you still didn’t know how, but old enough to be ashamed.
Imagine finally doing it. Not beautifully, not perfectly, not strongly, but somewhere in between. Between success and fiasco. Between failure and mediocrity. Between "better late than never" and "it's about damn time". That's how it was for me.
Equidistant might be how you'd define it, though I didn't know the word at the time.
My dad didn't teach me. My mom didn't know how. An older cousin threw me in a pool once. Imagine you were old enough to ask for water wings, but not old enough to know an evil grin.
It was funny until I started gurgling, until it was clear I wasn't learning. Imagine you were young enough to panic, but old enough to know you were too old to cry.
Abasement or incredulity, might be how you'd define it, though I didn't know it at the time.
It was much later when I finally learned. With cousins from my father's side.
Imagine being young enough to get caught huffing the fumes of fitting in, and old enough to be unsupervised. Imagine being the only one on the shore. The only one concerned about how far down the bottom was. The only one limited to what your feet could touch.
Alienation or estrangement might be how you'd define it, though I wouldn't have thought so at the time.
Whether it was desperation or embarrassment that finally got the better of me, who knows? Who's to say?
Imagine being old enough to know better than to do something dangerous or stupid, but young enough to think it was a secondary concern.
Imagine letting go. Going deeper. Water invading every pore of your skin. Imagine arching your arms in sweeping motions. Your feet frenzied and crazed. Your face inches above something that could swallow you whole. And then...swimming.
Anticlimactic might be how you'd define it, though it didn't feel that way at the time.
Hope isn't much different. It's something liquid. Like a fountain. Like a spring. Something you can cup your hands in. Something you can drink deep.
Like a river. Something with a current. Something that floods and flows.
Like the ocean. Something that swells and surges. Something that comes in waves.
Like music, like repentance, like sex, like grace. Something that engulfs you. That holds you suspended between things. Between worlds. Between dreams. Something that washes away everything.
Imagine being old enough to be jaded, to be distrustful, to be cynical, to be lonely, but young enough to still believe.
Redemption might be how you'd define it, whether or not we know to call it that at the time.
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