Flight

I am in Sin City, the town that goes out of its way to earn its nickname and then, outdo itself. Everything goes here. Here, everything goes. I feel a constriction in my throat. The sprawling humanity overwhelms. Landing, I want to leave immediately, but I am not here for the glitz and all that glitters. My sister and her family live here and a weekend visit is in order.

I have two nieces here and I enjoy doing all that can be done -  Onewheeling, trampolining, swimming, pickle balling -  in the minutes we get to share. Within ten minutes of our arrival, I run out to the trampoline to try to double-bounce them to the moon. Even though they are teenagers, there is much squealing that erupts from their throats. A trampoline creates children of anyone who chooses to bounce erratically on its surface.

Later, the youngest one begs for help with a backflip. We’ve been here before - her expressing her desire for a backflip and me trying to help her get there. When it comes to backflips, most people I encounter have quite the mental block to going backwards. Something in our mind signals to our body that this is a bad idea, unnatural, that there is no coming back from this. “What are you most scared of?” I ask, hoping a brief psychoanalysis proves useful.

“Breaking my neck,” she says, with her eyes big.

Fair. That’s a reasonable fear. I’m sorry I asked. And this is the trick in life, isn’t it? Not all our fears are irrational. There are some valid, big fears that need to be acknowledged. But then what? Depending on the fear and the human, sometimes people walk away from this moment, counting the activity to be not worth the risk.

But here we stand, her and I atop this undulating, black surface. I review with her what her head, arms, and legs should be doing at every step of this flip. She listens, gets into position, does a backflip with my hand on her lower back and the other ready to help push her legs over. She bounces, bounces, bounces, and flips on the bounce after her audible “Three!” She does nothing with her arms and legs. I push her over and she sprawls across the mat.

“What was that? Where were your arms and legs?” She of course doesn’t know. All her focus is on not breaking her neck. She has no room for details like when to throw her arms and when to tuck her legs, the details that will help her not break her neck. Humans.

We do more flips. My assisting becomes less necessary quickly. I’m barely touching her back now and she is managing to get her feet around. She is still under-rotating her flips, but no harm or potential harm is being exacted on her neck. With these repetitions, she begins to wrap her mind around her fear when compared to the reality before her.

I step back. She bounces, bounces, bounces, and then nothing. She grabs her face. “I can’t do it.”

I’ve been here before, perhaps we all have. There is a moment when the desire of our heart runs smack into the fear we hold so close. Sometimes it’s not even a choice. Sometimes it just feels right to hold onto this fear, subconsciously. There is no way around this fear or letting it go. The only way is through it.

She does multiple bounces, “One.” (bounce) “Two.” (bounce) “Three.” (bounce)

She balks. Her attention shifts to me, apologizing for not being able to do it. Her shame, even in this benign situation distracts her from the task at hand. Stupid shame. She never questions her desire to do this thing. She wants it, but she doesn’t know how to go through her fear, or if she is even able to do such a thing.

The sky is dusky blue, losing color by the second. Clouds drag their tendrils across the graying surface, lit up in vivid oranges and pinks and yellows. The sun falls off our western horizon. Dusk in the desert, and the fact that it is January, brings a chill as the light evaporates.

After a few more starts and balks. She pauses. “What do you do when you run into something difficult? What gets you through an obstacle that might feel impossible?” I ask. As I ask her these questions, I am trying to figure out what obstacles a 14 year-old girl may have encountered. How many obstacles can a young human have accumulated by now? What experiences is she bringing to the table at this moment? And I just don’t know. While I have been a teenager, I have no idea what it is like to be a teenage girl. And so I am curious if she has been here before and what happens next.

She thinks for a moment, then says, “Jesus.” I laugh. I was thinking she might have a trick or gimmick up her sleeve, some way of outthinking her fear.

“Do you want to pray or me?”

“You,” she says.”

And so we stand there as the last dregs of light are pulled from the evening. “Dear Jesus, we know you have a lot of stuff on your plate right now, like wars and famines and such, but if you would, we could use some help. Mia wants to get her backflip and if you could just help her get through this mental block, we would really appreciate it. We love you. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

We do one more flip with my hand close to her back. We touch, but not in any useful way. This is all hypothetical support at this point. “You are doing this by yourself. I am just standing here. And, you’re landing on your feet or near it every time. Your neck is safe.”

Her eyes are big with fear, perhaps this is also what determination looks like. She is caught in that middle ground - knowing and feeling her physical ability as she flips and the mind’s pull telling her she can’t do it, at least, not alone.

I’m there, but I’m not. She no longer needs me. I am a crutch. I am more in her way than I am useful, but I am there nonetheless. She bounces, bounces, bounces, and then soars into the air, leans her head back, and her body follows. I am on the edge of the trampoline. Her feet hit the mat and she falls forward. She jumps up. We start wooting and hollering. Her joy is big. Her joy is my joy.

“I’m gonna do it again.”

And she does. Then, another…and another. She has just unlocked a new skill and ecstasy pulses from her. A moment ago, she paused and hesitated to do even one, and now she can’t stop backflipping. This is hers. She will be able to backflip forever. No one can take this away from her.

I feel such satisfaction. This moment, with all the hollering and high-fiving feels sacred. There is something big and magical when present, witnessing a human push through some block in their life and they come out the other side with victory in their pocket.

She takes off down the terrible trampoline stairs, around the pool and into the house. She squeals the entire way. “Come watch me do a backflip.” The parents and sister and grandparents file out to watch her new trick. She wants to show the world what she has just accomplished, but it is less a showing off and more a sharing of delight. She can’t help herself.

She looks through the mesh enclosing the sides of the trampoline, and with her voice in a whisper, she says, “It feels like I’m flying.”

And so she backflips every chance she gets. She got a few more in before bedtime. She squeezed in a few before we left for Death Valley at 4 am the next morning. She can’t stop.

I am tempted to go into the mechanics of prayer. It is easy to whittle away at what happened here, but I am not sure I know. It is also easy to find fault in the answering of this prayer for a backflip when other children will go to bed hungry tonight, their prayers for food, as of yet, unanswered. Faith is not always ‘rewarded’ with a ‘yes’ answer. Prayer, this talking to God and making request of God, is a tricky thing. God doesn’t need her backflip, but in his excess gave it to her. I can’t chase my tail on this topic all day. In the end, I must land here - God is love and his wisdom exceeds mine. Sometimes his way ends in abundance and excess and other times, we are left believing that the abundance, as promised, is coming, or is it? Tonight, I am a happy witness to his excess. I just might do some backflips of my own because it really does feel like flying.