I Didn’t Know I couldn’t do it, so I did.

After being on a five month hiatus from my blog, I am pleased to share a guest blog from a good friend, Sandy Sarr.

Three nights ago, in my sleep, these words came to me:

I didn’t know I couldn’t do it, and I went forth and did it.

I often don’t remember dreams or words that come in the night, but these words insisted I remember them.

Today, seemingly unrelated to the dream words, I thought about climbing a hugh elm tree that became know as the “high spot” because no other kid in the neighborhood had climbed as high into the tree’s branches as I did when I was eight.  I climbed up and up and settled into a crook, where the branches cradled me, a perfect perch to look down at the ordinary world. My new friends marveled at my climbing skills.

I don’t know when I became afraid of sitting up there in the old leafy tree across the street from my grandmother’s house in Chaska Beach, Ohio. But I have a memory of my father standing beneath me, arms up stretched, saying “Jump! I’ll catch you!” And I felt more afraid of jumping toward him than I did sitting there and getting myself back down to the earth. I never jumped. I climbed back down from my sky haven to safety only to return to the high spot again and again.

That memory involving my father may be a childhood fantasy that took root in my imagination like the roots that held the tree and me aloft. I only saw my father three times growing up and never again as an adult. Perhaps It was a desire my father would be there for me, and that he would watch me and protect me from danger.

Whether he was there or not, I got myself to the high spot, and I got myself back down to the ground.

I didn’t know I couldn’t do it, and so I did.

And now something wants me to know that I can get to another kind of high spot yet again, if only by the mystery propelling each small movement forward to new vistas.

Sandra Sarr, is a writer and poet living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she works at Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine telling the stories of animals and those who bring them for healing. With bachelor’s degrees in journalism and sociology and a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing, she is revising her novel, The Road to Indigo. Her poem, Strange Currency, will be published in an anthology titled, Alone Together, in September.