“Think we can cross it?” I asked Kasia.
She nodded.
We strapped on our enormous backpacks and clung to that rope for dear life as we battled the current. When we emerged on the far side, the backpackers cheered. I pumped my fist triumphantly. We raced to the wedding, hearts pounding, eyes gleaming.
Some two decades later, deep in the Adirondack woods, there we stood, at the edge of the jagged ice. These two moments felt like the beginning and the end of something, with our lives in the middle. Now our kids, ages 16 and 18, were almost grown. The oldest boy, who has a girlfriend and the keys to our car, was already one foot out the door. An empty nest loomed. Many of the weddings that we had attended, all those years ago, had ended in separation or stalemate.
“What do you think?” I asked Kasia. “Can we cross it?”
She hesitated, and I understood. Of course we could cross it. Or try to, anyhow. But was that really still the question? Or was it more like: Should we cross it? Given who we were now — older, wiser and, yes, more boring. We had a house, a 401(k), cars, kids and a dog. At night, we often lay awake in bed, worrying about our kid’s college applications and our parents’ health. All of it, the whole sometimes weighty lot of it, felt like the preamble to an impulsive decision.
Together we surveyed the frozen river one last time, then locked eyes. The river hummed beneath the ice, seductive and insistent, pulling us toward its edge, as if it understood us better than we understood ourselves.
“What would we tell our kids to do?” Kasia asked finally.
And that settled it.
We had flirted with the danger of the river just enough to send a jolt through our hearts, but we had enough sense to ignore its call. And it felt good. Because when you’re young, the river owns you.
Together we turned and followed our dog, who was already trotting back up the hill, commencing the long journey home.
Jake Halpern is an author and host of the podcast “Deep Cover.” He and Michael Sloan shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for “Welcome to the New World,” a 20-part series in The New York Times.
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