Trust.

By the time I was a teenager, I couldn't play Trust.  You know, that game where you cross your hands over your chest, close your eyes and fall back into the arms of a friend standing behind you.  Your friend moves a little farther away each time so every fall is bigger than the last.  I just couldn't do it.  And I didn't much like being the catcher either; what if I couldn't catch the person?  The whole business made my stomach queasy.  

So it's amazing to me to watch my kids do daredevil things, all the while depending on someone else to keep them safe.  Getting tossed into the air, jumping into our arms off a high rock or ledge, being dangled upside down.  They just giggle and squeal with joy.  They trust implicitly.

I think Peter enjoys making me cringe while he does something crazy with Sonja, something where if he wasn't so deft, she may hurt herself.  But he also knows that I'm confident he'll keep her safe and that if she does bump herself a little, it's not a big deal.  Bumps, like mistakes, can be great learning opportunities.  And besides, it's no fun going through life being cautious all the time.  No fun at all.

I never learned to ski as a kid, I never played team sports or learned to swim, and I never had my own bike.  I sometimes think if I'd experienced one or more of these things that I would have welcomed a game of Trust as a teenager; I'd have had more physical and spatial confidence.  But I'll never know, really and it makes absolutely no difference to the woman I am now, nor the teenager I was then.  ...But I do intend to make as many of these things available to my kids as I am able, assuming they'd like to try them.


All that matters is that I know enough about myself to know that although I steered myself off a waterfall in a rubber raft, I still feel awful on the wrong end of a climbing rope, having to trust that the person on the other end will catch me if I fall.  And that's OK, because recognizing something I'd like to work on is the first step toward building something I'm proud of.