Cliff Divers

Cliff Divers

This evening, while standing behind the ropes on the banks of a deep-water river, we stared up, shielded our eyes from the sun, and watched a young Mexican boy balance himself on the edge of a cliff. The young boy swung his arms back, then sprung off the edge. The moment he cleared the jagged jutting rocks, the boy straightened his arms and legs. The boy dived through the air gracefully and hit the water in perfect form, leaving only the tiniest ripple. When the boy’s head popped out of the water a loud applause erupted from the surrounding crowd.

I looked over at my wife. She was thrilled, smiling in a way I hadn’t seen her smile in a long time. She had her hands clasped in front of her chest, her lower lip was clamped between her teeth and her eyes flashed with joy. It gave me such pleasure to see her like that again. So much pleasure I even considered scaling that cliff myself, and leaping off the edge.

I didn’t of course. That would have been silly. Besides, we’d been plunging for a long time and hadn’t yet hit the water. So instead of leaping from the cliff, I seized my wife by her wrists and drew her close against me. I kissed her and for the first time in many months she kissed me back. “Maybe,” I said. “it’s time to put it behind us. Maybe it’s time to return to the hotel and try again.”