Relative Something

I don’t understand why this memory is lingering in my present day awareness, but trying to analyze it has revealed to me how fractured my recollection is. I’m guessing I was about 9, or possibly 10, years old. It was the first time in my life that I believed I was facing my own death. Up to that time, I had experienced only limited exposure to lakes or pools and did not know how to swim. I was playing on a floating raft at a swimming beach on Red Rock Lake, jumping from the raft into the neck-deep water. I didn’t realize the raft had moved to deeper water because I had become mesmerized with the experience of jumping into that water.

I know that I was with others, but I have no recollection who it specifically was. I have a sense that they contributed to my feeling blissfully free of apprehension. I don’t believe anyone noticed the time I jumped into water that was deeper than I was tall. It was a moment of 1, or maybe 2, seconds in which I mentally processed a lot more thought than that amount of time could allow.

Of all the bits and pieces of memory from this event, this is the most vivid of all: the combined feeling of shock and calm. I hadn’t sensed any hint of this possibility. I was in total oblivion of the fun I was having when all at once, I was faced with this potentially fatal reality. I surmised that I had reached the end of my life. I remember the instant of surprise, but in that same split second, the significant, calm insight that this would be it.

Pretty much as a reflex, I pushed off the bottom and sputtered as my face broke the surface. I went down again and without even thinking about it, pushed off like before. Keep in mind that the depth was probably just barely over my head, but to a kid who can’t swim, there is no range of depth; it’s either over your head, or not, and over your head may as well be the deep sea. Since it was not a long distance from where I had previously been playing, my 2 or 3 bounces had landed me back in my neck-deep zone, and that quick, I had overcome the expected demise.

Embarrassment kept me from addressing what had just transpired. Since no one appeared to have noticed, I figured it best to just keep it to myself, lest the fact of my not having learned to swim yet become something to talk about. I liked it better, left unsaid. I seem to have permanently logged the sensation of the lake bottom on my feet, the impression of a mother or sister (not necessarily mine) on shore under a tree, a variety of ages of kids playing in the water, and a day of hazy sunshine or more gray than blue sky. I have no real image of what the raft was like. I have a sense that my interest in jumping off the raft anymore was dashed, and I was left with the mixture of wanting to disavow any knowledge of what just happened, and yet still explore the drama I had just been through.

In addition to being fascinated by the different fragments of memory associated with this incident, I am also curious as to why it seems to be residing in the area of my conscious awareness of late. It strikes me now as I capture all this in writing, that I can’t wrangle a recollection of the point in which I finally achieved mastery of skills in the art of swimming. I bet it wasn’t too long after that. Maybe it served as a personal motivation. My teen years involved a pretty significant amount of time on and in Lake Riley at the Daly’s. There are quite a few memory fragments associated with that, but unlike my perceived brush with death, those remain ensconced deep in the catacombs of rarely disturbed files of the memory bank.

Things aren’t the same for me as they used to be. I’m the same guy, but the way I saw Christmas as a kid is completely different than the way I see it now. When I became a parent and had the opportunity to establish Christmas memories for my kids, I don’t know that I had a distinct awareness of the situation. I don’t recall overtly nurturing for my children, what my childhood experience had been. Now, from the added perspective of having my children grown and out of the house, I think I’ve become more like Scrooge than ever before. First, I complained that it was too soon to start decorating and advertising the holiday. Next, the focus of it all has become way too materialistic. Yet still, I harbor the greatest memories of the Christmases of my youth.

Memories like the wall covered with Christmas cards and children’s artwork, which is only a memory because of a slide photo my father took. The trees, tall enough to reach the ceiling. The project of decorating the trees, particularly the lead tinsel my sister, Judy, mentioned. The year we put our name in lights –at first it said, “Ho Ho” but for a short time was modified to “Hays”. The morning my father had me easily convinced that he just heard reindeer activity on the roof, moments before we made our first appearance, Christmas morning. He was so sincere, I fell for it, hook-line-sinker. …The time my siblings fooled me by taping the record album to the cover of the box I opened, so I found nothing but tissue paper in the box below. …Andy Williams and Bing Crosby Christmas albums.

It occurs to me that regardless my miserly personal opinions of late, about this holiday, I might want to cut others a reasonable amount of slack, especially kids. I think kids today deserve to feel just as excited about all things Christmas related, as I ever did. They don’t know it’s coming earlier, or been co-opted by the retail juggernaut and broadcast media. Why, it’s as if I have been visited by the ghosts of Christmas, past, present & future. Let’s enjoy chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!