Mind the gap

meep meep

Sometimes I feel like my entire family is taking a gap year. Between jobs. Between opportunities. Between caregiving for children and aging parents. Between a car accident and normal life.

But this chasm seems bigger than us. The gap between people, parties, systems. The gap between truths. The gap between incomes, wealth, needs. The gap between who we say we are and how we behave. The gap between all that is changing and where we eventually will land.

What will be left behind when the tide goes out? There seems to be very little listening, learning, or letting the impacts of one event clarify before starting the next.

Destruction disguised as disruption.

A friend once told me the only difference between the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote was that the coyote looked down. The Roadrunner zoomed across the chasms, followed by the coyote but midway, mid-air, the coyote froze, glanced into the abyss, gulped, and plummeted down— Boom. Splat. The takeaway: don’t freeze, eyes up, keep going, meep-meep!

I remember being a little kid in swim lessons. The hot puddles on the cement. My fingers and toes like prunes. Cinnamon bears from the vending machine. My mom on the deck smelling like Coppertone. How much I hated putting my face in the water. Blowing bubbles, kicking everywhere, flailing. The first time we swam across the pool unaided, I was afraid of hitting the wall head on so I stopped too soon. I remember my hands reaching out but not quite touching the edge. Instantly, I panicked even though I could see how close I was to safety, I couldn’t reach it. I had misjudged the gap between swimming across and holding on. I feel like that now— coming up a bit short, losing momentum, and needing to figure out some way to move forward.

The swim instructor grabbed my hands and pulled me the rest of the way, where I clung to the scratchy cement like a baby. I hadn’t been in any danger but I was deeply embarrassed. Later that summer, when we were supposed to jump off of the diving board for the first time, I remembered that moment of embarrassment and overcompensated by diving instead of jumping. This became a signature move in my life. Headfirst into the water, all the way to the wall. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

I am coming back to myself. Healing and resurfacing. Less grasping, more diving. Surfacing from a fog into a new landscape and world order. The gap is much bigger than I expected.

I still don’t quite know where the splashing stops and the wall starts. I still hate putting my face in the water. I still am a terrible swimmer. I still will only dive in.

Hoping you are holding on, head first, head up, still swimming. To your edges. To each other. This chasm is the deep end, my friends. Meep.