Caution

My friend Stephanie jumped out of an airplane. It was something she longed to do, and one day, she just did it… Later, at my house, we watch the video they made of the jump. Stephanie stands, weighted down with goggles and backpack, at the gaping hole in the side of the plane, the wind and open sky beckoning. Just standing there on the precipice of that hurtling plane, she gets further than I would have. And then after several moments of indecision, she pitches herself into the sunny abyss, shrieking I can’t do this!, her voice trailing off as she plummets down toward the earth, back down to her uneventful life in a small white house with a husband named Fred and her dark green mini-van.

Jumping out of a plane is not something I’ve ever felt called to do. I suppose because I don’t like heights; and also because I can’t imagine having the courage to jump. I would need to be pushed—which, I understand, they will not do. But there are days—many days—when I desire to live my life a bit more incautiously, a bit more dangerously. I want to jump out of a metaphorical plane; I want to live out the danger a bit more in the abstract. Stephanie has her plane, and I have mine, too.

I have many dreams, many hopes, that play themselves out in my head as I drive along in my car, as I am folding laundry, as I cleanse my face at night before crawling into bed. When I’m feeling brave, I lean in close to the mirror, examining the porous nose, the crinkled skin collected like paper fans at my eyes, the lines between my eyebrows that remind me how I knit my brows together when I am considering things. My face. The one I show to the world, and the one the world interprets and judges. It’s a scary thing to consider, when you stop and think about it. Putting your face out there like that everyday…

Yesterday I tried bourbon and whiskey for the first time. We are standing in a converted barn, in the Catskills, on a warm afternoon in September. A short young man explains the science of distilling; he is knowledgeable and passionate about the making of spirits. I read their story in a magazine: two young men who took a chance. Who threw caution to the wind. Who tried something entirely beyond their experience and now have this. We are a small group, listening; most of us catching only part of the science of how grain and fruit get transformed into something special. Later, in the tasting room, I will sample the “baby bourbon,” made of corn, and stored in an oak barrel. After that, I swallow the distillery’s house specialty: whiskey. And it does a deliciously slow burn down my throat and into my belly. I am with someone who hurries through the process—of this, and the tasting of wines at two other places we stop—but I stand there, feet planted solidly on the wide plank floor, wanting to savor the moment, my new experience. Feeling that whiskey burn…

Most days I live very tepidly. I wake up, shower, coax my son from the warm folds of his bed, make breakfast, put him on the bus, go to my office, come home from my office, make dinner, read to my boy, read to myself, and go to sleep. And the next day loops around for me to go at again, just the same way. And suddenly many weeks have gone by, many months, many years… Things get broken up, of course, with Christmas, with trips to the ocean, with something brand new carried home from the store. Just enough distraction to keep me from recognizing the banality of life, of the quiet, uneventful way most of us go about living it. Just enough to mask the absurdity of it.

My mother often told me when I was a young girl that I had too many dreams, too grandiose a plan. And this when I never fantasized about the stage, or the road, or the underbelly. I wanted simply to get out of a place where the snow silenced everything, where the winds of change never blew. My mother shook her head at this and cautioned me against such thinking. You will be sorry, she said…

And yet, as I stand before the mirror this morning, I am sorry only that I have not lived more, loved more, and taken more chances. Outside the window, there is the harmony of birds answering each other—and I am savoring the moment because it is, after all, late September, and mornings will soon be quiet with winter… Last night as I drove home from the mountains, there were three text messages saying come into the city; be my guest tonight—and it is a lovely night, the sky littered with stars, a lively Manhattan just a few short miles down the road. But instead I turn on to my own familiar street, park my car, come inside. Kick off my shoes, drink a tall glass of cold water, hang my sweater alongside others in my organized closet; settle into bed. And it’s not long before I am drifting off to sleep, thinking of the new home I plan to buy, of the smoky blue walls I will paint, with creamy white trim, and a new chocolate colored couch; of the brownies I will make tomorrow for my son; of a quiet Sunday afternoon with him and the Times; of the walk I will take around the fountain after dinner.
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