How I know I'll (someday, in the future, years from now, and not now) make a good mommy

When I was 13, my cousin Julia was born. And I couldn't have been more ecstatic! Being an only child, I begged my parents for years to have another baby. "I want someone to play with!" I'd say. "You have your cousin Nicolle to play with!" they'd counter. And so it went. For years, we were the youngest two people in our family, the only cousins close enough in age and relation and physical proximity to play together.

Until my aunt, Nicolle's mother, remarried and got pregnant. And oh how happy I was! A baby! To play with and feed and cuddle with and teach naughty words to! (Ed. note: teaching a 1-year old to say "Truck you" is HILARIOUS.) And so a few days before Easter Sunday 14 years ago, very early in the morning, Julia Veronica was born. And she was cute and perfect and cuddly and awesome.

As she got older, I would go over to my aunt's house to help out. I'd let my sleep-deprived aunt sleep in while I got up with Julie and fed her breakfast, I'd change her diapers, play with her, teach her naughty words, everything I said I wanted to do with her.

And one day I was coming down the wood stairs in my socks. Julie was about 10 months old and wearing a fuzzy, white footy pajama thing with a big brown bear on the front--I will forever remember that. I must have just gone up to get her from a nap. I took three steps down the staircase and BOOM. My socked feet flew out in front of me on the slippery varnished parquet and I hit the steps hard on my back. My instant--and I mean INSTANT--reaction was to hold Julie to my chest with my left arm and cup the back of her head with my right hand, instead of bracing my fall or catching my footing. We slid all the way to the bottom of the stairs like that, her pressed against my chest and me stifling my screams so as not to scare her. At the bottom of the steps I propped her on my lap and looked at her, trying to determine if I'd a) killed her in the fall or b) suffocated her from holding her to tightly. She wasn't crying...she was just blinking. She had this half-dazed, half-sleepy look on her face like she was all, "Dude, what just happened?" And then she stuck her fingers in my mouth and looked towards the kitchen and I knew she was fine. I sat there for a good minute, just looking at her, thinking about what could've happened. The fact that I'd just descended 13 steps on my spine didn't even cross my mind.

I carefully got up and stumbled into the kitchen and put her in her high chair. Only after I put some Cherrios in her tray did I stop to examine my wounds: bruised butt, check. Bruised coccyx, double check. Bruised entire-lower-back area, check. Aching spine and head? Yup. Bruised elbows? Oh yeah. I pulled my shirt back down and looked at Julie. She was smiling up at me with whole grain O's all over her face. I took her tiny hand and said, "I'm sorry, kid. I promise I won't ever scare you like that again." And almost like she knew what I was saying, she squeezed my hand and pulled me closer to her face. "I'll take that as a 'you're welcome," I said to her.

The moral of the story? There is none. Just that 14 years later, she's alive and well. And you can tell from the picture below that she just loves that I still call her "kid."

Why do I hear Sarah McLachlan singing "It's a long way down" in my head?

My dad has a very similar picture of himself. And I wonder where I get my adventurous side from...

Summer is fast approaching (although you wouldn't know it here in New York, where it goes down to 47 degrees every night) and it has me thinking about all the fun outdoor activities that come with it. Here are a few I would like to someday partake in:

1. Learn how to play golf. I dated a guy who relished in teaching me proper swings and grips, and I was all about it--I even went to the driving range and I LOVED it. If I can ever afford lessons, I'm doing it.
   
2. Hike a mountain taller than 2,000 ft.
   
3. Go camping for more than one night, and without the car in walking distance.
   
4. Learn how to dive. I can swim like a fish, but I never learned how to properly dive into the water. Seriously, I look spastic.
   
5. Go whitewater rafting. I used to be against this activity. Mostly because I couldn't possibly fathom how wearing a life vest the size of a maternity belly while being jostled around and thrown out of a plastic raft into ice-cold water lined with giant, protruding rocks could be at all fun. But then I talked to someone who'd actually done it and he said it's not that bad. And since this person is related to me, I trust him.....somewhat.
   

And here are a few activities I have absolutely no interest in doing. Ever.

1. Kayaking. I'm informally known as the clumsiest person this side of the East River, so I'm thinking that an activity centered mostly around balance and coordination is not for me. That, and I have a major fear of the kayak turning upside down and not being able to get out.
   
2. Fishing. Been there, done that. Yawn. Not for me.
3. Bungee jumping. I swear this has nothing to do with a fear of heights or the cord breaking. Rather, it's all about the paralyzing pain that will overtake my spine when the cord has reached its maximum stretch capacity and my body is flung upwards like a ragdoll. Ouch.
   
4. Skydiving. This one is all about a fear of heights and the parachute not opening. I'm guessing that having time to think about your impending death before it actually happens isn't a great way to go.
   
5. Paragliding. Think about this for a second. You are strapped into a man-made contraption with a wingspan of 20+ feet that has no motor, no brakes, no parachute, and no deceleration device. Your steering depends solely on your own ability to not crash into things, like trees or mountains. And should you come within mere feet of hitting an object head-on, you can't use your legs to brace yourself for impact because they're strapped into a sleeping bag-like shell and pinned behind you. No thanks. I'd sooner dive off a 20-foot cliff into running water than off a mountain attached to one of those things.

So am I officially a wuss? A pansy? A yellow-bellied coward? Even though I love riding motorcycles and jumping off boats into hundreds of feet of water and wouldn't think twice about going to any country in Africa? Think carefully now....

So have any of you guys tried one of the activities on my Never List? Was it fun? Did you almost die? Should I man up and just do it?

The time I almost accidentally let my best friend die

A few years ago, my cousin Nicolle and I (well, more her than me) planned a summer trip to The Motherland. We brought along some of our friends, including my BFF Natalie. (Hi Nat!) We rented an apartment in a little "town" that exists solely because of its proximity to a tiny inlet of beach.

The house. The first floor was ours.

View of the house from the "town."

Now don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining. The house was practically on the the beach of a European seaside village, and I fully appreciated its charm and overall awesomness. My one and only issue with the town is that it calls itself a town. Because to be a town, don't you need something more than a market and a restaurant that's only open for lunch? Just sayin'.

So we rented this super cool apartment at the bottom of a super-steep cliff, a cliff that has a total of one super-narrow road. A road not wide enough for two cars to pass each other, a road that, as of 2006, does not have guardrails. On the off chance that you've never driven on the cliff side of a 10-foot wide road with no guardrails while huge trucks are barreling towards you, I'll tell you now: it makes your butt do that thing it does when you think you might die. In fact, thinking we might die was an oft-spoken sentiment that summer.

That steep-looking road in the corner of this picture is nothing compared to the mountain roads on the other side of that hill. But you get the idea.

So because this "town" only has two businesses, and the lives of truck drivers are threatened every time they deliver goods to said businesses, the town doesn't get much traffic. As such, the trash is only picked up once a week, and from a dumpster at the bottom of that steep hill. And so every other day, my vacationing friends and I would gather up our trash, put it in the trunk of the car and drop it in the dumpster on our way out of town. It was on such a day that I almost let my best friend of 15 years die a tragic, unnecessarily embarrassing death.

We piled into the car on that scorching hot day, our trash in the trunk, ready to spend another day exploring The Motherland. As we approached the dumpter, Donna (hi Donna!) who was sitting front seat, and Natalie, who was behind her, exited the vehicle to deposit the trash. Unbeknownst to our valiant and brave driver, Nicolle, I opened my door to get some much-needed air. (Anyone who's ever gotten into the backseat of a car that's been sitting out in the sun all day knows what I mean.) As Donna got back into the car, I closed my door.

So Nicolle at this point had heard two doors slam and assumed that we were all safely back in the car. Only we were not all safely back in the car, as Natalie was only halfway in the car. Nicolle put the car in first gear and the car rolled back slightly, causing Natalie, who is 5'9" with the longest limbs I've ever seen, to fly forward as she unsuccessfully attempted to get the rest of her body into the moving car. I witnessed this, but for some inexplicable reason, didn't say anything. Nicolle then stepped on the gas and began to accelerate, causing Natalie to this time be thrust backward, while still attempting to get the other half of her flailing body into the car. Again, for reasons known only to the dumpster gods, neither one of us spoke up. As the speed of the car increased and the image of Natalie being dragged behind the car and off a cliff became slightly more real in my head, I started screaming something that sounded like, "Cole! Natalie not in car, legs out, CLIFF!" Nicolle, glancing in her rearview mirror and realizing that her friend was hanging out of a moving vehicle that she was operating, slammed hard on the brakes. This of course caused Natalie to be slammed against the open back door with a very unpleasant thud. A little stunned but otherwise okay, she got back in the car and we all took a deep breath.

Once we saw that she was okay, we couldn't help it. We tried not to, but it really wasn't under our control. We started laughing....hard. The realization that she could've been flung out of a moving car and thrown against a dumpster was just too much for us to handle. Newspaper headlines ran through our heads and we laughed even harder. "Girl dies tragically taking out garbage." "American has deadly encounter with trash bin." "Deathly dumpster dive leaves woman dead." If humor can be found in something as awful as your best friend letting you die in dumpster, then leave it to my friends and I to find it.

While scary at the time, Natalie was able to laugh about it afterward. And while I've apologized many times for watching her almost perish, I feel I should now do it publicly: Nat, I'm sorry I almost let you die that day. From now on, I promise to always make sure you're all the way in the car before the driver takes off.

Although if you do somehow end up in a dumpster, I can't promise I won't make t-shirts.