Taking the Jump
October 9, 2020, Freeport
Taking the Jump
I listen to the news on the radio during the three hour drive to Freeport from Addison. I pass blueberry barrens bleeding scarlet and purple into the slant Fall light, pass battered lobster boats marooned in dooryards, scurry over the Penobscot River in Bangor and finally settle down for a long hour and a half drive down 95.
The text pops up on the car’s screen at about 6:30 pm as I am nearing Freeport out on the highway.
“Welcome back. Don’t run over grandchildren on way up drive to yr house. Kids riding new mt. bike trail, practicing jumps in woods.”
After a month and a half safely tucked away in Washington County where covid numbers are reassuringly low, I am excited to be going home, but wary and unsure of how we are going to reunite with the family of four next door now that Finn and Addie are back in school two days a week. Real school.
“School is 100% safe,” Finn reassures me on Face Time last week. “We wear masks all the time and wash our hands and have our temperatures checked every day. I couldn’t possibly have covid. Oh! Yea. It’s fine! Come home, don’t be afraid, Gigi.”
I don’t tell him that, actually, after listening to the news all day I am scared to death. Lenin once said, “There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen.”
In the early gloom of October twilight, I turn off the black top road and plunge into the dark woods that surround the long dirt driveway to our house. Slowly, I round the corner at Bridget’s house. From the trees, I hear Chris shout, “Go, go go!” Then, suddenly, Finn, on his bike, pops out of the trees, going fast, crosses the driveway, heads for a ten foot jump on a narrow trail through the woods. His father is standing beside the jump. Finn takes the jump, and flies through the air for what seems like an eternity. I don’t breathe. When he lands firmly on both tires, he lets out a high pitched whoop.
“I did it, I did it, I did it. I can’t believe I did it!”
I get out of the car and Finn, who, I soon learn, has been trying to get up his courage to jump for an hour, fairly flings himself, maskless, into my arms and despite all my misgivings and intentions not to hug this just back to school, to real school, little boy, I open my arms and kiss him on the head and tell him how proud I am of his courage, of his daring to jump, to fly, not knowing how he would land.
Last week, I and a hundred and eighty million people around the world, watched a red, puffy, rage filled face snarl into the camera and spew out lies about the virus. A few days later this man who has not kept us safe, contracts covid himself and I think, Good, now he will repent. Now we will find common ground. Now we will agree on what is real and what is true.
But soon he declares the pandemic a gift from God! No one, he says, should fear it. His threat not to leave the White House peacefully, even if he is voted out, looms over the next few months like a radioactive cloud. “Our nuclear is all tippy top now,” he tells Rush Limbaugh on October 9. If anyone were to consult me about his mental state after a week on steroids, I would refer them to the DSM V page on mania. There’s not much more terrifying than a manic man with a nuclear button.
And all the while, the numbers of people contracting the virus climb. Today there are 39,000 new cases of covid in the USA. The smallest details of our lives are rearranged. I am afraid to hug my grandchildren. To bring them in the house after school for their favorite snack, Bob’s homemade chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk.
Where is the ground under me now? Where will we as a nation land in the next year? The years after that? I am flying through air and nothing under me looks familiar, solid, trustworthy. Where are the arms to catch me, to catch us, to fling ourselves into? Where is the ground under us of care and truth?
I recall Finn’s courage when he took off over the jump without knowing if he would land safely. It was trust in his father beside him and in his own ability to handle fear that helped him maintain balance as he flew in the air. I am going to hold in my mind the idea that this country has many people who recognize the kind of integrity and intelligence we need now and summon their presence beside me. I am going to try to imagine a safe landing on ground that doesn’t give way, that holds. I am going to have courage that no matter what happens, even if the ground gives way, I will not.
And I am going to hope that sometime, perhaps soon, I will, like Finn, whoop with joy.
“We did it, we did it we did it!!