Slaloming to Freedom

I don’t have to close my eyes to go there in my mind.

I didn’t close them when I was sitting in the second row of my grandmother’s funeral while my mind’s eye watched the summer breeze ripple the surface of Lake Sam Rayburn, my lime-green O’Brien slalom ski slapping against the water.

I felt the tug on my arms and my shoulders as I leaned hard right to cut outside the wake, my ski and I becoming one. We lifted above the water as we jumped. I heard the clap as we landed again on the surface. I cut left and felt Rayburn razoring against my ankles. I zoomed back over the wake and watched our boat’s spray rainbow over my head. I jumped the second wake, cut again, watched the spray, cut back, again and again until my arms and legs throbbed from the tension. But I couldn’t stop skiing. If I did, I’d cry, and I didn’t want to cry at my grandmother’s funeral.

I settled in my mind behind our blue and white Evinrude inboard/outboard boat, resting in the middle of the wake. I let myself be towed until I became bored. Then I looked down at the black boots of my ski, glanced right to check for tree stumps that dotted the lake, and then cut again—right, left, right, left, right. I did it until I knew I should just drop the ski rope and sink, slowly, safely into the water. But only quitters drop and cry, and my mother taught me to never quit, never cry, never let anyone see your weakness. She had to. When I was 5 years old and we were living in a decade when women couldn’t get credit cards in their own names, my mom became a young widow with two children to