All In

The boys wanted to stop in Summerhaven so they could ride their longboards the rest of the way down the road to the cabin. It was about a mile of steady, in some places steep, descent. The first hundred yards or so had just been paved, so was seductively smooth, unblemished black asphalt, the stuff of a longboarder’s dream track.

They did a few practice passes, swooping like barn swallows in wide carving arcs across the road. I wanted them to wear helmets. They complained.

“I know what I am doing,” Sean argued when told to put on the helmet.

If I had my way, they would have worn protective arm and knee guards, thick gloves --  way more gear than they wanted.

Sean eventually agreed to wear a helmet. He had to take time to fiddle and fuss with the straps, which did not help to make him feel better about the enterprise. But he stuck it out, shaking his long blonde hair from his eyes.

He is tall and athletic. I feel the dwarf in his presence. He is now a varsity soccer player as a freshman. He is ahead of his peers, already the giant, the gifted specimen, wired with coordination, muscle, and stamina.

He began to roll down the hill toward the cabin and quickly accelerated to the point where he could not jump off without falling. I watched him shrink as he sped down the road, straight as an arrow, not able to brake by carving back and forth across the road. A rooster tail of dust kicked up as hit some gravel, but still he kept going, gaining speed. I was too stunned to be afraid. He was all-in, a state I have avoided my entire life. I do not know what it feels like to let go, leave off the brakes, to fly without restraint into a future or present full of potential, full of mystery.

We followed Kyle, who took a slower path. He took a slower line, but still realized that the road was too steep to descend.

Kyle, being equally gifted for the undertaking, but of sound mind, abandoned the adventure and hopped in the Jeep. We three drove down the road. I was preparing myself to find Sean injured, scraped up, maybe with broken bones, lying in the road or in the ditch. I might have to peel him off a tree, some demented part of me wondered. The risk and the consequences imagined pinned me to my seat, made my knuckles white as I gripped the wheel.

We saw him finally, walking uphill toward us, carrying his board, uninjured.

When asked how he survived, he just said he pointed the board up a side road and used it like a runaway truck ramp. He was shaken, glad to be in one piece. “That was enlightening ... and stupid,” he said.

Sean has the gift of nerve. He can stay with something that would make most of us bail in panic, jump to the side, to safety, or serious injury. He has the calm of a test pilot, the steady hand of a Formula One racer, the courage of a surgeon. He can stick things out, follow through.

By contrast I have become more of a jumper, a bailer, a nervous Nellie. Looking back at that speed --  a fast-motion, improbable, almost cartoonish acceleration -- he should have crashed. I think it was a miracle that he did not, a miracle or a gift.

The boy is charmed. He has some guardian angel, some serious luck mojo. I hope it lasts. And sometimes intensity is more important than longevity, mileage more telling than the year and make.