Chapter 1 - Someday I'll Try

I look out across the sea, into the dazzling blue that is an endless ocean of wonder. And I’m standing on the side of the cliff looking down into that deep darkness, that blue nothing fringed with white foam that could be the very edge of life and death. I sit on the edge with my feet dangling into the void and I breath in the salty air and wonder what it would be like to be freefalling forever off the cliff and into the deep water below but I know I’ll never try because my dad refuses to teach me how to swim.
Then sometimes I really do want to jump off. I want to know what it would be like to drown. I wonder if maybe I’ll jump off and then when I hit the water God will take pity on me and turn me into a fish. Wouldn’t that be something? A fish who doesn’t know how to swim.
And then there was that time when my shoe fell off. This was the last time I wore my shoes to the cliff. I had my feet dangled over the edge and along came a wind and carried my shoe right off my foot and into the waves. I almost jumped after it, but then I remembered the water so I grabbed back my balance and watched as my shoe floated out to sea like a little boat. A message in the bottle. “Hello this is Kristen and I’m giving you my shoe so that you can find me and take me somewhere new and exciting where I can learn to swim and not be like my Momma and Granny and Sisters who are ignorant and do not want to swim except Lisa because she’s the only other smart one. She tells me that she’ll find her some wood and build her a boat and float all the way to America where girls can swim and go to school and then she’ll get a flying machine and come back to carry me away. “I tell her that they’re called Planes and that if Papa heard her talk he’d whip her good but she doesn’t believe me and just keeps on dreaming.” And that is why you have to rescue me.” That is what the shoe message said, but not with words and I know that no one got it anyway because I found it the next week when I was looking for shells on the shore.
That is what I do now. I collect shells to put in my little box. A piece of the sea. And sometimes I imagine that the shells come from all over to see me, only me and to be a part of my famous collection, but Momma says this is nonsense and to get back to my chores.
Maybe someday I will fly. I will get so sick of it all and I’ll just take off and fly. Over the cliff and the ocean and into the sky where I’ll stay forever, living in the clouds. And then I’ll come back for Lisa and I’ll show her to fly with me but when I go to show Momma she’ll laugh and tell me that she’d rather keep her feet on the ground like a sensible woman. Well I do not want to be a sensible woman I want to fly. That’s what I’ll do. Maybe someday I’ll figure it out. Yes. Someday I’ll jump off the cliff and fly away. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year… but someday I’ll try.

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