Making a Choice to Jump

When I was ten years old, I waited until the very last day of summer camp to jump off the high dive. The camp was in Michigan on a beautiful lake. I can't tell you exactly how high the high dive was, but to me, it seems like it must have reached the clouds.

I remember everything about the moment right before I jumped. Climbing the stairs, the wind, the lifeguards, my cabin mates cheering me on, my worn-out swimsuit that had pilling all over the butt and was giving me a massive wedgie. I remember it all.

I lunged forward at least three times before I actually made the jump. I didn't look down. Finally, the whistle blew, and I had to do it. I just made the choice that I was going to do it, and I might die in the process, but I had mustered up the courage all week.

This was the craziest thing I had done in my decade of life.

When I stepped off, I regretted the decision immediately. The two-second drop felt like it took an hour, and when I finally hit the water with my feet, it stung like a mofo.

This was the '80s, and John Mellencamp's song Hurts So Good was popular, and I thought that this is what this song was about. It hurt, but at the same time, it felt so good.

I was on a high-dive high for at least a day, possibly the next decade.

Last Sunday, I was in the grocery store picking up stuff I had forgotten to get the other four times I was there that weekend when a woman standing behind me asked if I worked at Notre Dame.

I looked down to make sure I wasn't still wearing my name tag and said, “Yes, I do.”

“You're the marcher.”

And she laughed.

I had no idea what she meant. I mean, I work in music, but I don't march.

We chatted, and she told me that she works in housekeeping in the business school, and every day she sees me at the same time, with headphones on, “marching” through her building. She said it's funny because she knows it's me by my heels, and I look like I'm having fun.

This is not the first time someone has told me I am heavy on my heels. When my dad was in the hospital, he said he knew I was coming because he could hear me walking down the hall.

What the housekeeper must be referring to is the fact that I always have earbuds in my ears. I felt bad for not noticing her when clearly she was noticing me.

It isn't that I'm trying to avoid the reality around me by drowning everyone out.

It is that I'm making a choice.

I have mentioned this before, but I have a playlist for almost every occasion. Before I step out of my car in the parking lot at work, I select my playlist. It helps motivate me to start my workday, and it makes the 15-minute walk more fun.

What is on my playlist may surprise some people. I know it mortified Parker when he learned that his mom could recite every word of Caroline by Aminé. More urgently, why the hell does he know that song?

The nastier the gangster rap, the better.

No joke.

This is a choice I make.

Yes, there are days when I don't want to do things. Like go to work. But I make a choice to make it enjoyable, like blasting inappropriate, raunchy-ass music as I pass a campus chapel.

It makes me feel rebellious and wild, even though I just dropped off my boys at school, gave them all a kiss, and said something like, “Mommy loves you and knows you are going to have a great day!” while giving them lunches in bento boxes with the crusts cut off and baby carrots for a snack.

There are also times when my husband and I have been having the same argument for the past month, and I finally just make a choice to wave the white flag because it doesn't matter who is right or wrong.

I'm choosing to live the rest of my life with this person; I might as well make it enjoyable.

That is an adult example of hurting so good.

Thanks, John Mellencamp.

By shifting my thought process, I can make a choice to love rather than dislike. And trust me, there have been several times this year that hate or self-doubt has crept in, and I have to hit it like a Whac-A-Mole and send it back down.

And it will keep popping up, trust me.

But I have the power because I have the mallet.

As I'm walking into work, listening to music that I should have a hard time relating to, but somehow can manage to make it about my life, I see my reflection in a window.

I see a professional-ish woman in heels, with her hair tied back in a bun because she didn't have time to dry it. Whose makeup is the best she could do with drugstore concealer and lip gloss. Who is carrying the same Kate Spade messenger bag her parents bought her for college.

Who looks pretty damn good for what she has been through already this morning.

But when I look closely, I still see that little blond girl on the high dive.

Eager to jump, but scared.

In retrospect, I love that little tomboy.

I don't want to ever lose sight of her when I see my reflection.

Some days I do, and those are the hardest days. I have to make a choice to reconnect with who I am. At the very core of myself, I choose not to let that little version of me slip away.

Some days it is harder to see her, buried under all the adulting I have to do, or have chosen to do.

But beneath the mortgage, the bills, the marriage, the motherhood, the career, the responsibilities, and all the bullshit I have collected along the way, she is still there.

She is still the girl who climbed the stairs even though she was scared. The girl who didn't know what would happen when she stepped off the edge, but jumped anyway.

And today, what makes me happy is gangsta rap.

I don't want to become so busy being an adult that I forget her.

That ten-year-old version of myself is the one who will remind me to take a leap of faith into the unknown every single time.

I gaze a bit longer at my reflection—not long enough to find faults in my hips, but long enough to find the beauty that every child has, and every adult has if they allow themselves to see it.

Our kid spirit and drive never leave us. They are still there, underneath everything.

We just have to make a choice to see them.

And sometimes, we just have to jump.