By Beata Stasak
Fear prickling my feat try to ignore the pounding in my ears
five meters beneath me
the dark water swirling gurgling in murky green currents
on the rusty water pipe I stand…
I looked back at my teenager’s years
my left hand and my right
a row of white knuckles gripping the same rail
I did jump.
Now in ‘mid-fifties’
my 14 years old sons
folding their giraffe legs
squeezed through the gap
counting to three
the pair of them
leapt from the bridge
plunging into the deep
I hold my breath
waiting for them to emerge
and here they are
laying on their backs
hooting and punching the air
I like my midlife now
watching my own teenagers
Tackling their own fears
From sideline
or am I?
I steeled myself to jump
but a flicker of movement
caught my eye
a beefy bloke
was swinging one hairy thigh
over the guard rail
he settled with a thump
beside me,
“Time to let go, eh,” he said.
I winked at him
and he was gone,
halfway down
he hugged one knee
then a depth charge
of a layback “bombie”
before I could blink
he was slicing
through water
with strong freestyle arms.
As years go by
we become more aware of passing time
more careful not to get hurt
less worried about what people say…
What fear overcomes me first?
My fear of heights,
fear of falling or fear of drowning?
Holding on for dear life?
Or letting go
and learn to fly?
Our everyday dilemma
minutes before
I’d been too
Comfortably
grounded
on the riverbank
just like I see people
now wading out
to waist height
or relaxing on the sand.
Sucking in a lungful of air
I stifled the voices in my head
and released my grip
on the guard rail,
for several moments
I teetered on the pipe,
the safety barrier
was now
beyond my reach,
the only way out now
was down.
I Love my Life…
Beata Stasak is an Art and Eastern European Languages Teacher from Eastern Europe with upgraded teaching degrees in Early Childhood and Education Support Education. She teaches in the South Perth Metropolitan area.
After further study in Counselling for Drug and Alcohol Addiction, she has used her skills in Perth Counselling Services. Beata has been a farm caretaker on the organic olive farm in the South Perth Metropolitan area for the past twenty years.
Beata is a migrant from post-communist Eastern Europe, who settled in Perth, Western Australia in 1994. She came with her husband and children to meet her father, who she never knew. He was a dissident and refugee from Czechoslovakia, after his country was taken over by Russian communists after the unsuccessful uprising against the communists in 1968.
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