In Sunday school class, Mom and the other teacher lay out a light blue blanket on the floor. It represents a river, from some story in the Bible where the people of Israel or something had to cross.
All of us children in the class line up to take turns jumping over it. Some of us make it, some of us do not and land in the “water.”
I am one of the ones that cannot quite jump over the entire “river,” try as I might. Making it over the water is a very real thing in my head. Failure is scary and disappointing.
This game is so popular that the kids want to keep doing it the following Sunday as well. In the week in between, Mom has the blanket at home. I practice in the living room, doing my best to clear it.
“Your heels still land in the water,” Mom tells me.
Some of the older and larger kids in the class can jump over the blanket pretty easily. The next Sunday, Mom and the other teacher take children’s books and line the edge of the blanket, pretending this is also water to make the river wider and more challenging for these kids.
But when it is my turn again, there is only the light blue blanket.
I line up against the wall, giving myself as much room to run as possible. Staring at a spot beyond the far edge of the water, concentrating on it as the place I need to reach, I sprint as hard as I can and then leap…
“Did I make it?” I ask mom.
“You made it,” she says. “Your feet completely cleared the water.”
I pump my fist in the air.
The other Sunday school teacher, an overweight, elderly woman, immediately bends over and begins slapping down a line of books against the blanket for my next try.
Mom must see the disheartened look on my face at this. She tells the woman, “No. He’s done well enough.”
The lady gives Mom a bit of a surprised look, but then picks up the books.
So I jumped over the sky blue river. Victory.
***
Wake Forest, North Carolina. 1983.
We are living with Grandma Carter while Dad searches for a job. Mom is working as a substitute teacher at Millbrook K-12 school.
Of course, at my young age I do not comprehend the stress and strain that is on my family right now.
One day, I am listening to children’s stories and songs on the record player in Grandma’s living room with my younger brother.
I stand on the couch, and the records are laid out on the floor. I do not like sitting or standing in place for very long while I listen, so I take a running jump off the couch and accidentally land on one of the glossy cardboard record sleeves.
To my surprise and delight, I go sliding across the floor standing on the sleeve.
“Wow! Adam, did you see that?”
I quickly line up the sleeve to the spot where I landed and hop back on the couch.
Adam watches carefully as I do another running leap off the couch and again slide some distance.
Soon, he and I are both doing this, and we also quickly learn that we do not need to jump off the couch. Getting a running start on the floor is even better. We scoot across the carpet, riding the record sleeves like surf boards.
The ones that have the record still in them slide much better than the empty sleeves.
Neither my brother nor I are big enough to reach the record player and change it when one ends. Mom comes into the room.
“Hey Mom, watch what we can do!”
Adam and I both give her a demonstration.
“Stop that!” Mom instructs us. “You’ll tear up the records.”
Sure enough, we have put some significant creases in the cardboard and stomped on some of the faces pictured on them.
Fortunately, Adam and I are both light enough that we did not actually break any of the records. Maybe the sleeves are pretty strong.
Later, I ask mom for an old record sleeve that I could use just for sliding. She begrudgingly gives me an empty one. Perhaps I wear it out, or perhaps it definitely needs the record inside it to work, but I never get the one she gave me to slide very well.
***
Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.
This afternoon I went for a six mile run. It was my third six mile run in less than a week. I am trying to get in shape to keep up with some friends from law school who enjoy doing races in Tallahassee. 18+ miles is more than I have run in one week since I was on the high school cross country team in 1994 and 1995. I can do these six mile runs on flat ground in Live Oak in comfortably less than an hour, but I need to be able to do it over hills in Tallahassee in about 45 minutes if I am to keep sight of my friends in a race. That is a tall order, and I am already starting to notice little tweaks, aches and pains.
But I am motivated. These are people I would like to be around, that it would be healthy for me to be around. So I hope it works out, that they enjoy my company and want me to keep coming back for these runs.
The uptick in the distance I run causes carry-over fatigue when I get home from work. A couple of days this week, I collapsed in my recliner after walking in from the job and went to sleep almost immediately.
If a baseball game is on television, I will set that to a low volume and then drift off to sleep. If there is no baseball game on, then I play a movie.
One of my favorite movies to go to sleep to is Blade Runner. I saw it for the first time in college, and did not think much of the film then. As I have gotten older, though, I have come to enjoy the world it creates. Two of the scenes in the movie are among my all-time favorites. And though it is uneven in parts, particularly with Harrison Ford’s narration, overall it is one of the best science fiction movies ever made, a terrific futuristic film noir.
I had a vivid dream during my evening nap this week, while Blade Runner was quietly playing.
I dreamed that I was back in law school, that I was a permanent student, having seen many three year cycles come and go. I am no longer young, but actually 37 years old. I sit alone at a table at a Student Bar Association event. It is at a nightclub of some sort. The law school students are all crowded around the bar, ordering drinks with their backs to me, except for the newly elected SBA president, who stands in profile at the end of the bar.
I watch him and marvel at how young and full of life everyone is. Then there is a pain in my chest, and I have the distinct feeling that I am about to die.
The thought that goes through my mind, that I know will be my last thought, is that I did my best to enjoy this. I did my best to enjoy being young. A stern religious upbringing , severe acne well into my 20s, and what was referred to as “autistic tendencies” were obstacles that impeded me, especially with girls, but I did the best I could once I understood myself better.
There is no feeling or fear that I am about to be judged by someone or something on the good and the bad things that I have done or on the beliefs I hold. There is only my hope that I did the best I could to appreciate the life that was given to me.
I know that I cannot rewind time, that I cannot be young again. I am not a part of this group who stands around the bar. I say out loud, “I did the best I could with the circumstances as I understood them.” But no one is paying attention.
Then there is a feeling of reluctant acceptance that my time is over. A pop in my chest. I exhale and die.
I literally die in my dream…
And then I wake up from my nap. The pain in my chest is very real, and I struggle to sit up straight in my recliner and shake the cobwebs from my head.
Over the past few weeks and months, I have had the uneasy feeling that I am going to die very soon. Of course, I hope it is all just nonsense and that many years remain to me. I am guessing that the feeling partly comes because I have settled happily into Live Oak and this job. Never in my adult life have I stayed in one place or kept the same job for very long.
I have been in Live Oak less than a year as well, but this feels like a place where I could live and a job that I could do for the rest of my life if I am lucky. It feels like a sort of last stop. I think perhaps my body and brain do not know how to react to that. And I probably never will trust this to last long, based on my other experiences.
Anyway, one of my all-time favorite scenes from any movie was coming up in Blade Runner when I awoke…
Roy, a type of superhuman clone gone rogue, has arrived at the last minutes of his pre-programmed four year life span. He has developed his own emotions and questions about the meaning of it all. Roy decides to spare the life of Deckard, the man trying to terminate him for the danger he presents to humans, and these are Roy's last words:
Roy: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.
On the written page, it does not seem so powerful. Performed by Rutger Hauer, though, in a setting from Ridley Scott, it takes on potency. Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw
Perhaps in the future, I should just try to sleep without a movie playing in the background.
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