Dive

August 27th, 2021

It was a week ago that I was in New Hampshire.   One of the best vacations I’ve had in years.  How has it only been a week?  It feels like forever since I was there.  I spent time in VT and CT, too.  The funny thing is, I was unsure about going.  I made the reservations only a few weeks before.  It was kind of a last minute trip.  I got the deal of a lifetime for a sweet airbnb in one of the nicest areas of the Sunapee region.  A little town next to New London, NH, a quaint New England town with stores, boutiques, the only grocery store around and one of my favorite consignment stores going.  The airbnb was marked down per night because the owner thought that someone would rent it out for a month.  When I booked it for a week, he was surprised and so was I.  I got a gorgeous place for a bargain and it was fully loaded.  What I wasn’t expecting was to see a bear, which I did on the property and to go swimming at a beautiful lake I had never set eyes on, Pleasant Lake.  

From the moment I got to NH, every worry vanished.   I relished and took in a rustic barn from the early 1800’s with candles that I brought. I stared up at wooden beams and wondered, ‘if they could talk to me, what would they say.’   The place was so old with that old wood smell and the smell of a fire.   Cool nights, warm days, boats, lakes, ponds, delicious food with my family or on my own; life was good.  I would wake up and walk out onto the deck that I had all to myself.   I would get ready, and go to Pleasant Lake.  My cousin could not understand why I loved this lake.  For me, it was simple; it was gorgeous, like Lake Sunapee, but it was just a tad smaller with huge boulders and I loved the area where you lounged.  It was on grass near a dam with nothing but those boulders that I would swim out to.  5 to 6 feet boulders all over the place, like little islands that were beckoning you to come and visit and so I did.  The water was crystal clear and warm. I didn’t even bring a bottle of water, I just drank right from the lake.  It was the town’s drinking water.  The dam had a perfect cement perch above it that people used to jump off of but when I stared at it long enough, I had no desire to jump.  I wanted to dive.  There was a local there and I asked him, “How deep do you think that is?”  His response, “Oh, I would say it’s about 4 feet deep.”  I jumped in.  I wanted to find out for myself.  It was about 4.5 feet deep.  Some spots were 5 feet deep.  

I got out of the water and said to him, “Yeah, I am going to dive in.”  That’s all I could think about.  I kept looking at that perch and thinking, yeah, I “need” to dive in.  Need.  It was about proving something to myself.  I had walked around for months feeling this feeling of doing what you do when you are an adult.  Calculating every move, making sure not to slip, work, eat, pay the bills, living the not so American dream.  In fact, living a nightmare of responsibility.  This local became nervous.  “Yeah, you can’t dive in.  That’s too shallow and look at all of the rocks.  You could kill yourself.  Seriously, look at all of the boulders.”   I saw them.  I wasn’t nervous.  I looked over at him with a smile and said, “Yeah, I see them.  I am diving in.”   He jumped a little and said, “What’s your name?  I need to know.  No joke, if you knock yourself out, or…I don’t know….” and before he could finish I dove in.  I knew it was deep enough, I knew it needed a shallow dive so I did it.  And that’s all I needed.  I needed that because that dive would change the trajectory of my trip.  I knew from that moment on, it was time for things to change.  “Wow, wow, you did it.  Girl, you’ve got some balls.  I don’t think I have ever seen anyone dive in.  Good on you!”  

And so that night I told my cousin, “I am going to come up next summer for the summer, or at least for a month.  I am done.  I am so over Pennsylvania summers.  I want cooler temps and this.”   She agreed with me and said, “With the deal you are getting on this place, ask him how much it costs for the month.” I did.  Done.  I am stoked.  You can sit back and talk about how you are going to do it, or you can actually do it.  It was my parents dream to retire in NH, or at least spend half of the year there and they had the property.  My dad became sick and that dream soon vanished.  I won’t be spending half the year there like my parents had hoped for, but the summer is fine with me for now.  I’ll take it.  I didn’t and don’t feel like using my toes to tippy toe in, I’m all about diving.  Get in that water with the rocks, the boulders, the algae and swim with the big and small fish.  Just do it.  Dive into your life before it’s too late because you never know when your number is up, but most importantly because no matter how long you are here, you really should be doing what it is that makes you happy.  People talk about ‘when they retire’….but what about right now?  This moment right now, shouldn’t it be what you want it to be?  Make it happen.  Dive in.