"No Diving Allowed"

But it’s too high daddy!”, I said, as I climbed the cold shiny chrome ladder that Michigan winter morning.  The large Y.M.C.A., especially the swimming pool area, was all but deserted early on Sunday mornings as most everyone staying there was getting ready for church.  My dad was a handsome young protestant minister who had recently finished his education at Harvard.  He was a temporary resident at the well known men's Christian association, after my mother left the marriage and filed for divorce.  I can still feel the rough metal slip proof surface of the rungs under my feet, mingled with the chlorinated air.  I shudder to think what my mother would have said about my dad coaching me to high dive before I turned six.  Our diving lessons were hush, hush - both of us totally believing that she would have forbidden it had she known.  Dad and I did little that met her approval.  Her frequent criticisms of us both resulted in the decay of any attempt of ours to meet her expectations and served only to diminish our efforts.  Years passed before it became evident that the three men she married after my dad were likewise unable to meet her unattainable standards; leading everyone to conclude that, unlike what she chooses to recount, her relationship problems were of her own creation - not ours.

Refusing to look down, I proceeded up the ladder.  As I reached the large concrete platform hanging over the mass of water, I virtually willed my feet onto the deck.  Lifting myself to an upright position, I stood shakily on the 20 meter diving platform.  I could see there were about ten steps necessary to reach the edge; where all structural support ceased and blankness ruled.  I can still hear my dad coaxing me forward.  His voice rose from beneath, as his encouragement bounced off the surface of the water, with the unique and unusual echo of an indoor pool.  Anxiety and tension drained the saliva from my mouth.  Instinctually, I weighed my options - there were only two, retreat or conquer.  Quickly surmising that backing down the ladder was almost as intrepid as diving off into the water’s placid blue surface, I began my journey of headfirst descent.  Like two lone barricades against an attack, I stretched my arms firmly out and dove off the precipice.  Plunging deep into the olympic sized pool, I managed to salvage my bearings and push off from the bottom, instinctually following the small air bubbles escaping upward from my nostrils.  The culmination of my pursuit was met with a second parting of the water; this time from the underside.

I am hard pressed to describe the adrenaline that pumped through my core at that moment.  From that dive forward, a romance ensued between me and the sport of high diving which, with my dad's coaxing, has yet to dissipate.  Diving at the Y.M.C.A. in Detroit, every other sunday before church, became a ritual for my dad and me.  The fun we had together on those visits I awaited eagerly.  That’s how it was with us, me and dad; we simply had a good time.  My mother couldn’t appreciate the closeness we shared then, nor does she still appear to; forty some odd years later.  On the seldom holiday occasion the three of us are obligated to grace each other’s company, her demeanor suggests that there’s a hidden alliance between dad and I, which she diligently attempts to undermine.  Even at seventy-seven, she still has not ended her subtle attempts to impeach my father from my trust, and self righteously insists that any deviated character traits I possess, are attributable to him - hm-m-m-m . . . whatever.