Climbing
and other audacious adventures
A gardening employee drives up and parks his cart left of the garden shrub, looking to trim the edges. They look empirically trim already. Westlake School for Girls prides itself in its appearance; modeled after Ivy League schools, its pristine grounds reflect the caliber of a fine hotel, or an affluent private estate. Pure white walls, black trim and shutters with black balconies. These are not real balconies, though; each has a metal platform jetting out from under double windows to give the appearance of a balcony. It works. From the look of them, one could stand outside of the room to take in the California sunshine.
The Gardener is on a mission. Awkwardly, he climbs out of the vehicle (he’s not a young man) and he reaches into the back for his shears, but it doesn’t take long before he notices a very young student, a small girl, hanging from the balcony above, distorting her body in order to move upward toward the window. He drops the shears and runs to the administrative building to intervene on her behalf. Of course she doesn’t want intervention. She wants to make it to the top.
Another black mark on her resume.
That girl, the acrobat, she assumes privilege, free agency, when it comes to climbing where compliant children might sense this would be inappropriate. She lives for conquering trees in other people’s backyards, breaching landscapes belonging to affluent strangers in order to stretch out on a high limb, to see further than she can from her own backyard.
Disregarding sprawling, foreboding fences that stretch at least a quarter mile down the alley behind her home, she doesn’t hesitate to trespass into private estates in Beverly Hills, into designer backyards with concrete encircled pools and perfectly sculpted bushes. She covets unrestrained access, superimposing on them the illusion of privacy.
Sometimes, she breaches the boundaries in her own backyard. She walks an imaginary tightrope across their own massive playground equipment made of steel, directly behind the basketball half-court; this slide and swing set, at 15 ft. high and 25 ft. wide, is more appropriate for a park or a school. Alone, with no one watching, she walks across the top, no net.
What could explain the urge to put herself in harm’s way, to see the world as a series of opportunities to push further, to climb higher, to break past reasonable boundaries?
Mostly, I knew I could do it. And I knew I’d feel good about myself if I did. Happy. Free. The consequences didn’t make it to the forefront of my thoughts.
My parents were startled and yes, disappointed by reports of my reckless behaviors. They felt responsible to train me, to throttle my impulsiveness. The school removed me from my regular classes to discipline me by way of an in-house-suspension; for three days, I would still do my classwork, but in a room above the administrative offices. Isolation, and confinement. At home, typical disciplinary measures were applied, from spankings to chores.
Eventually, these efforts would lead me to see the virtue in respecting the boundaries of others. To stay out of other people’s backyards. To eschew scaling ivy covered buildings just because I could. But I haven’t forgotten the sense of competency I was seeking in those moments; truthfully, I was almost surprised that my efforts weren’t admired, applauded. I was being courageous.
In lieu of the familial respect I would never receive for these feats of bravery, I’ve come to applaud myself for the fearlessness, the outrageousness of these adventures. The gobsmacking bawdiness. I love that little girl with her swashbuckling, solo-accomplishments that left the authority figures in her life shaking in their boots.
I still crave that feeling.
In my adult life, I’ve become a boundary keeper. Maybe it’s one part respect for others, three parts fear of abandonment or retribution, but I’ve learned the art of staying in the lines. I know how to sit myself down when the urge to climb hits. But the climber is still here, looking up. Contemplating competency.
Considering my options, and calculating the risks.
