Told to me on a blustery night as a rainy Nor'easter rattled the cottage windows...
What I love is that brief timeless and nameless moment between when you are thinking about something that is about to happen, and the instance you become aware that it is actually happening.
Like when you step into the cold ocean for a swim. The water feels brutal, but you tell yourself you've done it a million times before, and you can do it this time too.
You dive in and the pain takes over as you sputter for breath. You swim like hell for a moment, toward anything that catches your eye, such as a distant buoy. The cold bites in.
But there's the gentle rock of the waves...and the sun on your face...and a gull gliding over...the voices of kids from the shore...and the slow, rhythmic 'tink' of a pulley on the mast of an tethered sailboat...and, then...
...you realize where you are. You could have been swimming for a minute, or an hour.
It's no longer cold, and you tell yourself, "Hey, I am doing it, despite what I first thought." And right then the moment is over. You're back in reality, anchored again in time.
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