My First Swim

Before Jacob I had always been afraid of the river.  My parents spoke from time to time about drownings there and there were always stories about other accidents and even fights breaking out at the swimming holes upstream, just a few miles out of town.  But he took me there once, to a favorite spot of his.  We were alone and he dared me to jump in and I did.  It was cool and thrilling and I felt myself immersed, baptized into the natural world. A part of it all in a way that I never had been before.  I was sitting on a big rock on the riverbank, hoping to dry off a bit so that the bike ride home would not be so cold. Jacob swung from a rope trapeze and threw himself into the middle of the stream.  He surfaced and shook the water from his hair and swam straight toward me.  He stood right in front of me on that rock and spoke.  “I know our rules. And I know that I could say too much, and I don’t want to do that.  But I have to say something or I’m just going to burst, so here it is.  When I am with you, I don’t want to be anywhere else. You are exactly what I thought you would be.  This is exactly what I hoped it would be. I knew that it could be this way.  This is what all the songs are about.  This is how all of it should have been.”

He didn’t wait for an answer or any kind of response from me.  He went back to the trapeze and flew into the river again.

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