I will occasionally talk myself into doing things far beyond my comfort zone only to panic after I’ve reached the point of no return. This is how I ended up almost thirty feet below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, my lungs full of salty water, wondering how – or if – I was going to get out of this one alive.

I have never had a comfortable relationship with water, and, at some points, I have believed that water was actively trying to kill me. This belief was only strengthened by two disastrous snorkeling attempts in Mexico.

The phrase “scuba diving” had always been enough to strike fear into my heart, but, when my boyfriend suggested a “fun dive” while we were vacationing in Thailand, I agreed. We had been backpacking, having adventures, for several weeks at that point, and I felt invincible. Adrenaline carried me through the dive, and for the first time in my life, I had a truce (albeit an uneasy one) with water.

I had justified the dive as a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, but, less than two years later, my boyfriend suggested we get our open water certification. This seemed reasonable when he suggested it from the safety of our apartment in Brooklyn, but, once we were in a dive shop in Honduras, it hit me: I had just paid a substantial amount of money to engage in a very serious and potentially deadly activity underwater.

In order to get our certification, we had to complete “skills.” Without question, the worst skill was removing the mask completely underwater and then replacing it again. When we had to perform the skill in open water, I hurried through, pulse pounding. I thought I had successfully cleared my mask, but, when I inadvertently inhaled through my nose, my nasal passages were infiltrated by salt water. Surprised, I coughed, spitting out my regulator.

Before I realized what was happening, I had inhaled and filled with lungs with water. Desperately, I gasped for air, but, of course, there was none. In my panic, I couldn’t remember how to find my regulator. This is what it feels like to drown, I thought. I turned toward the surface and prepared to swim for it, knowing it was dangerous to ascend without properly equalizing but not knowing what else to do.

Thankfully, Alex, our instructor, returned my regulator to my mouth and cleared it. Water was still in my mouth and my lungs, but at least I could breathe. Alex led us to the surface, and I ferociously coughed the remainder of water from my lungs.

I knew that if I didn’t complete the dive, we wouldn’t get our certification. Bad weather had disrupted our certification schedule, and we only had that afternoon to complete two dives. I had come so far by this point; I couldn’t leave in failure. We returned to the water to complete the dive, which thankfully had no more skills.

There was one more dive and one more mask removal to complete before we got our certification. I proceeded through as methodically as possible, repeating the steps in my head as a desperate attempt to drown out the voice of panic. After a seeming eternity of exhaling and repeating, Alex tapped me on the shoulder. I opened my eyes. My mask was clear. I had done it. We had completed our certification. We proceeded triumphantly to the surface.

My certification photo is ridiculous – soaking wet, mascara running, wrapped in a beach towel, and grinning the cheesiest smile ever while someone holds a towel behind my head as a make-shift backdrop – but it’s also one of my favorites because it represents the day that I finally conquered my fear of water.

A large hatbox, tattered and patterned in flowers, sits on a shelf behind a wall where we store things. Today is the day I decide to throw it out, move its contents, old photographs, to a sturdier box.

I take a handful at a time, determined not to be sidetracked by curiosity, almost reflexive in the way it directs me to stop and peruse.  Memory is jarred, the recognition of faces that play tricks with time in revealing younger selves poised and posed.  It takes a certain patience to label and organize photos. The ones still in envelopes from the photo lab where they were sent to be developed years and years ago, negatives intact, at least comprise a grouping that defines some event, the smiles and hugs and candid camera moments brought back in a flash, living color even if a bit faded.  The ones in a jumble, mostly old black and whites, some sepia, edges perforated, fascinate me most. They are the ones taken by my father, or my mother, or some aunt or uncle or friend of theirs, passed along, tossed into the box, proof of those moments dimmed by time and the crush of memories. If I look closely, I may recognize a face, marvel that I can dwell on a scene from a past that belongs to me, in a way, even if I never had any part in it.  Feel a certain sadness at the simple truth it reveals: without my father, or my mother, or an aunt or uncle or friend of theirs, I am no more than a stranger to the story revealed in the photograph. I can only imagine it, and I do that well.

Here’s one: my mother sits on a chaise, my father on another. She is smiling, almost laughing, happy. So is he. On the back of each photograph, in the clear slant of her handwriting,  are words that place the photographs in time and space. Miami Beach, Florida. Hotel Embassy. Nov. 27 to Dec. 11, 1948.  She has even taken the time to write an address – 30^th St. and Collins Ave.  – and, for no other reason, I imagine, than to make the record complete, she has put her name (Florence) and his name (Larry) in the bottom-left corner of their corresponding photos. This would have been their honeymoon.  A year later, on December 12^th, they would celebrate my birth. Many years later my mother would make a request, no more anniversary dinners, no more cards or gifts on Nov. 27^th.  All the more reason I take a child’s pleasure, and a woman’s, in seeing them young and happy and vibrant, maybe even in love.

I place the photos back into the box, no idea what I’ll eventually do with them, struck by the unsettling reality that whatever sentimental value Florence and Larry on their honeymoon may have to me will be lost on my daughter, who barely knew them.  We all have our ways of cataloging our lives, reference points for some late-night reminiscing or the belief that a future generation will be glad for this glimpse of us, made easier, if less tangible, by the digital world.  Right now it’s easier for me to hedge, move the photos from box to box,  let time and circumstance play their part in determining which things demand being held onto and which beg to be let go.

Visit Deborah’s website here . . .

On paper, a visit to the Statue of Liberty’s crown has a lot going for it: the thrill of being inside one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, the unobstructed views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline, and even the exclusivity factor, as a relatively small number of people get to climb into the crown. Only 240 tickets are available each day – compared to the thousands of people who visit the island each day – and those tickets sell out months in advance.

When my boyfriend and I began to plan our visit to the crown in late July, the first time that two tickets were available on the weekend was November. In the midst of our debate over whether to select morning or afternoon tickets, we happened to click back to the July calendar and saw, much to our surprise, that two tickets were suddenly available for that afternoon. We snapped them up and hurried out the door.

We soon found ourselves beginning the climb in the base of the monument. I was so excited and nervous that I almost felt sick. I knew that we were lucky to have the tickets, but a part of me worried that I would freak out. The website had warned that the climb was not for the acrophobic or claustrophobic; I am both. I am also, however, determined, and I wanted to get to the top.

The first sets of stairs were unremarkable; it wasn’t until we reached a landing and were ushered behind a literal velvet rope that my heart dropped. The next set of stairs was a narrow spiral staircase that shot straight up through the body of the statue. It was the stuff my nightmares are made of. It was steep and it was narrow, and it took every single last modicum of my energy to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. That was the only way that I was going to make it up those stairs. If I let my mind stray from concentrating on my footsteps, it began shrieking incoherently, Danger! Danger! Danger! Stop! Danger! Obviously, that was chatter that I needed to keep out of my head.

The situation wasn’t improved when I had to step over a pregnant woman and her husband resting on the stairs. I turned back to tell the boyfriend I couldn’t go any further, but the sight of the stairs behind him made my stomach flip. I hurried up the stairs as quickly as possible, keeping my eyes only on the stairs in front of me.
The crown has a tiny deck where you can admire the view from the windows in the crown. The view was, as expected, amazing, but I had trouble enjoying it as I was clinging to the interior beams in unbridled terror.

When it was time to descend, I requested that the boyfriend to go first, thinking his body would block the dizzying view downward. This worked until he ducked into a rest point to take photographs of the belly of the statue. Unwilling to spend one additional second on those stairs, I blazed on, not stopping until I was on the monument base again. My heart was pounding, and my legs were wobbling, but I was off those stairs and I was still in one piece.

The moral of the story is this: the trip to the Statue of Liberty’s crown might sound great, but it is assuredly not for the faint of heart.