One weekend, during my high school years, some buddies and I packed up for a weekend and went cliff jumping into a lake. There is a ninety foot cliff called The Grand Daddy at a camp site a few hours from our hometown, and we set off to conquer it. There was a deep sense of being in over our heads when the actual moment came, so right then we made a pact that each of us would go, and one by one we ran and jumped.
Lately, I am once again discovering myself completely "in over my head." There is a high chair in my kitchen for our son who is due next month, though the chair is not ninety feet high, it symbolizes a jump from immeasurable heights. A realization of not having the slightest clue how to care for a baby is settling in. It seems that the Grandest of all Grand Daddies I stand upon, peeking over the edge, yet my reliance is on an impulse that suggests "just jump."
Go!
So this is me figuratively leaping the overhang, soaring through the air as an awkward naive soon-to-be father, free falling into parenthood, and waiting to hit the lake so I can look up in admiration at my jump. Images of belly flopping flash through my mind. At some point a man just needs to load the car for the weekend and go jump his Grand Daddy. The heights of everything always appear more frightening from the top looking down...
