Page 42 of Our Sadie

Since sex may not even enter into the equation today, I divert myself.

“You ready to get crazy up in here?” I holler at her like some DJ at a high school dance, attempting to get her to smile at me.

Newsflash. It doesn’t work.

She maintains a serious expression as she says, “I enjoy a decent challenge.”

Okay. I can cope with that. I drop any other silly antics.

“How about we start with an easy one?” Without pause, I back up to give myself a head start and race across the short distance of cement. As I leap into the deep end of the kidney bean-shaped pool, hitching my arms and legs close to my torso, I shout, “Cannonball.”

My entry disturbs the formerly calm surface of the water, and the splash drenches several feet of the floor on one side. Once I pop up, I find that Sadie hasn’t moved. She even looks a bit startled.

“And what’s the purpose of that?” she inquires.

“To create the biggest splash. Extra points for pushing water as far outside the pool as possible.”

Uncoiling to her feet, Sadie straightens her spine, squares her shoulders, and holds her nose high in the air. Then, with a slightly awkward gait, she skips forward and copies me, even yelling, “Cannonball,” like it’s a fucking war cry.

I love it.

When she reappears from beneath the surface, that long hair of hers is scattered all over the place until she dips back down and comes up face first. The grin she sends me is not only brighter than I’ve ever witnessed, it’s as if she just conquered a major obstacle. Like she just bested Everest or something.

It’s mesmerizing to see such a transformation occur. Is this how Sadie as a kid might’ve been like?

“That was fun,” she exclaims, and there’s a not-so-tiny part of me who wants to whoop in glee. “What else you got?”

So, I show her.

I demonstrate doing handstands, forward flips, and backflips underwater. We play the aforementioned Marco Polo, but only after she makes me promise her not to cheat. We practice doing different jumps into the water, everything from touching our toes to going spread eagle with our arms and legs all outstretched. Or as close to it as she can get with that paralysis on her left side. It doesn’t stop her, though. She’s actively participating, and I’m in awe watching her.

I’m in awe of her, period.

I know what it is to suffer something debilitating and still be willing to test your body to see what it can do, even if it’s no longer capable of what it once was.

That takes courage.

Yet all I’m feeling from her right now is jubilation. It’s almost like observing a toddler learning to walk for the first time. All that accomplishment and wonder.

Then, with the half-roll of quarters I brought, I introduce our next activity, a race using goggles to search at the bottom of the pool for one specific coin marked with a gold star. To make it fair, the person who throws them has to close their eyes and be spun by the other player before we both dive in for the hunt.

We switch off on these duties, the winning score staying close to even but with Sadie maintaining a slight edge over me. That’s likely from her having the home court—or pool—advantage. But I don’t mind. Instead, I up the ante.

“Change of rules,” I announce, flicking my wet hair from my eyes with a toss of my head. “No more goggles.”

Sadie’s treading water beside me, and my goal clicks with her instantly. Without the goggles, we’ll no longer have the ability to see beneath the surface clearly. We’ll have to stare at the bottom, then dive down and feel our way to each quarter. We’ll only know if we have the gold star after coming back up.

The level of difficulty will increase by a factor of ten. But Sadie is a competitor. She gives me a firm nod, swims to the side to climb out, leaves her goggles behind, and waits for me to do the same. I follow through, then we perform the quarter toss again.

And after several more rounds, she still manages to beat me.

I detest losing, but right now, winning isn’t the point. Having fun is, and we’re having that in spades. In that spirit, I intercept her as she paddles back up with some of the quarters in hand, not to steal them, but to seize her around the waist.

“Gotcha,” I murmur close to her ear once she breaks the surface, but she’s fighting me like a wildcat.

“What are you doing?”

“Improving the game,” I joke, but everything backfires as she flails about, all of her pressed up against all of me.

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