I wasn't tall enough to stand up in the deep end of Bay Pool. Therefore, I wasn't allowed to swim in the deep end. Unless, of course, I passed the swimming test. Seeing as I would be spending most days a week at that municipal pool with the rest of my much taller counterparts of Glenview Daycare Center, I was not going to miss out. I was going to be there in the deep end, jumping for shiny pennies and finishing their Marcos with my Polos. So I took the swim test. And I failed so bad, I was practically circling the drain. So I practiced like an Olympian - in the 3 feet section, of course - and stroked that water like the dickens. Then, I tried again. My second time, we called the hunky guard over during rest period. He was bronzed and hairy and looked too old to be guarding at a municipal pool. He told me to swim to the middle of the pool and turn around (b-b-but! how do I turn around if there's no wall to push off of?!?!?) and come back to him. I pushed off the wall and carved a line down that deep end like it was the dead sea and I was Moses. Somehow, I managed to turn myself around without my lungs completely filling with water. Combining my nerves and fear and a total loss of my bearings, I swam doggy-style back to that wall like I was clammering to come ashore on Normandy. It was my D-Day and when I was done, I nearly died at the cement wall. I looked up and saw the caveman of a guard nod his head. He gave me a red plastic badge that I was to safety pin to my suit all summer long. I was now officially certified for deep end cannonballing. Geronomo! I've always been a little bit unsatisfied with my lot in life when it came to the timing of things. I always wanted to advance to the next level of play when the present one got boring. I was never a particularly jealous kid. I just didn't like that feeling, like I was always catching up. And if you give yourself a head start, you can't be always gaining on the rest, right?

The first day that I would begin at the Catholic School was in the middle of the first semester. My family had moved and so I was once again starting the first day of first grade. Only at a new school with new kids and a new outfit. I woke that morning and looked at my new uniform hanging from the hanger on my closet. I was in a new house, so did that mean that my parents would still wake me for school like they did at the old house? I put on the new plaid jumper. It felt pretty comfortable, even though I had unwittingly pulled it on backwards. I walked into my parents bedroom. Gah! I had seen cartoons where this happened. My parents had slept in! On my first say of school! Good heavens, how could they be trusted!? I would simply have to make my lunch myself that morning. But how to make a lunch? I started to panic, thinking about my lonely lunchbox, about the empty Smurfette thermos - what did I fill that with, again? I would have to wake my parents! I waited for the creaking of the floorboards in their room to wake my mother who slept like a lid on a garbage can in a tornado. She looked up and groaned. My father woke up and looked at me and covered his face. I only know now that he was trying to cover his laughter because he has since then told me the story of the morning that I began first grade at St. Raphael School and how I came into their room at 3:30 in the morning. With my uniform on backwards. Ready for school.

I wasn't born ready. I've just always convinced myself that I was. Ready. For the next level of play. The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I taught myself to type without looking at the keyboard, filling out a spreadsheet of all of the colleges I wanted to visit between now and when I went to college. When I got accepted to college, I wanted to go register for classes the next day. By the end of my freshman year of college, I had all the brochures stacked neatly for my junior year abroad.

I had asked my sister and best friend to be my bridesmaids before I had a ring. I planned our wedding around law school orientation before I had gotten accepted.

Then, I started thinking about actually getting married. And actually going to law school. And all of the preparation gave way to a complete state of paralysis.

I'm always planning and preparing. I'm always suiting up into uniform and, yet, I don't even know how to pack my own lunch. So why? Why am I always ready to swim in the deep end, when I can't even stand there tippy-toed?

I think it's, again, because I don't want to be left behind. And you can't be left behind if you're always ahead of the curve. I just wish I knew how to live in the present, to gather up a fistful of roses and actually smell them before I am making lists of who's going to receive them. I don't know where I get my fast forward reflex. My mother is of the present; she is the original laidback gal who enjoys her friends and family as they are. My father is of the past; his politics are completely reactionary and he recalls his own personal history like an A & E Biographer.

So now, I sit here, always a little dazed, always a little on the verge of tears. I want the condo. I want the baby. I want the next level of play. But what am I missing by spending my time wanting? And what if I find that what's around the curve is just a lonely place where I wait for everyone else to catch up, to wake up? What if I'm the only one doggy-paddling here in the deep end?