I remember countless times watching gymnasts during the Olympics on the balance beam. They'd delicately place their bound feet upon the bar and begin a dance with (what I can only imagine as) excruciating pain if they missed a step. I've never been so bold as to contemplate doing a flip on a bar only four inches in width and four feet off the ground. In fact, the visions of me attempting such a feat end in broken limbs or paralysis. Yet each day I live life...it is a balancing act.
A few weeks ago I wasn't on a balance beam or walking a high wire above kids hopped up on cotton candy and methane from the elephant crap. I was simply walking through my house, feeling secure that both my feet were planted on the ground. Then an encounter with a doorway shattered those illusions of safety. I thought if I didn't leave the house nothing bad could happen to me. A crack to the skull, a flurried call to my Aunt (the husband was out of town), and an emergency room visit later...I found out the oak-hard way that even in your own house, you're not safe.
It's not that I don't try dangerous things once in a while. I'm not always cloistered in my house waiting for the sky to fall. I've snorkeled in the Pacific (only briefly but I did it), bicycled down the extinct volcano of Haleakala in Maui, flown across both oceans, and I took the ultimate plunge and got married to someone of Norwegian ancestry. When I was snorkeling I fully expected to look down and see Jaws swirling beneath me while Richard Dreyfus tried to shoot the mighty beast with a harpoon. I also expected the volcano to awaken from its four-hundred year slumber and make me look like Anakin Skywalker in the last scenes of the Revenge of the Sith. What I didn't expect was that I'd injure myself on a door, in my house, while still in my pajamas with happy little Scottish Terriers on them.
Every time a gymnast sets foot onto a balance beam they are trusting not only their instincts and training but the hands of fate to guide them safely through the routine. Sometimes they fall, probably when they least expect it. The beam comes flying up at their face and they lay there stunned like a fish for a few seconds. Life is like that. A beam or a doorway to the face. What is important is that I know now what a bird feels like when it truly believes they can pass through that window. The initial shock, taking in the pain, wondering what happened. I'll hold onto that experience. Life is indeed a balancing act and if you're not paying attention there are a multitude of objects creeping around, waiting to teach you a lesson.
