I used to love tubing down the Farmington River.
For those who don’t know, tubing is when you pay a guy on the side of the river to borrow a large inflatable inner tube then ride it for a couple of hours until his equally shady cohort picks you up on a decommissioned school bus and drives you back to the start.
River tubing is basically summer camp for kids whose families don’t believe in things like counselors and safety.
The area we tubed was called Satan’s Kingdom for it’s three small sets of rapids that were fast enough to get your heart racing but short enough to justify the total absence of lifeguards or emergency call boxes.
Tubing through Satan’s Kingdowm was THE thing to do during my early teens when I was old enough to go unchaperoned with friends but still too young to properly enjoy my newfound freedom.
The unpredictability was the best part.
Even though we always got in and out of the river at the same spots, environmental variables created vastly different experiences every time.
Go tubing after a few days of consistent rainfall and you’d zip through the course. On these days we’d paddle to the side after passing through a section of the rapids then walk back upstream along the riverbank to keep pressing our luck and make the journey last a little longer.
Invariably, we’d stop after one of us came within inches of smacking our melon-soft heads against one of the rapid’s jagged rocks.
On the other extreme were dry days when we’d float excruciatingly slow and rub the sides of our arms raw paddling our inner tubes to get enough speed to make the trip worthwhile.
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was right (circa 500 B.C.) when he wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Though I doubt Heraclitus was referring to the pain of scraping your butt on exposed rock beds when it hasn’t rained for a while.
Tubing is exhilarating when the rapids temporarily seize control and spin you out of your comfort zone. But tubing is also monotonous sometimes causing you to rub your arms raw just to finally keep things moving.
It’s actually a lot like putting my kids to bed.
I know the path well, along with exactly where the pitfalls lie, but I never know how it’ll turn out until I get in there.
These days I’m far more likely to spend an afternoon helping my two-year-old daughter toss sticks into a babbling brook than I am to spin head-first into a river’s rapids with a bunch of knuckleheaded friends.
But the rhythm’s the same: tranquil moments punctuated by rapid escalations that are over relatively quickly and rarely cause lasting harm.
I’m talking, of course, about the emotional flare ups that precede most of our naps. The baby who goes from happily rolling over to inconsolably needing sleep; the toddler who’s suddenly overwhelmed by emotion when she’s told it’s time for her nap.
And then, other times, she’ll just happily ask for her crib or he’ll softly close his eyes, smile, and drift off to sleep.
It’s fair to say that several times a day I’m metaphorically transported back to Satan’s Kingdom with no idea how the ride will go.
I thought about this at length Friday when faced with the nearly impossible dilemma of whether to wake my four-month-old son who decided to take his afternoon nap strapped into his float in our pool.
I didn’t intend to stay in the pool for very long when we got in, but once he nodded off, I also didn’t want to disturb the peace.
So I waited.
And silently skimmed the shallow end over, and over again until my arms were numb.
At the risk of seeming presumptuous, I suggest a second verse to Heraclitus’ saying from a mere 2,500 years ago.
Just as, “No man ever steps in the same river twice,” so too does no baby ever slip into the same nap twice. They change so fast that, “it’s not the same nap and he’s not the same baby.”
The unpredictability is the best part.
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