I'll Catch You

My oldest brother Jerry was always sort of bigger than life to me, maybe because he was 21 years old when I was born. He was a junior high science teacher and a lifeguard at a local pool during the summer. His wife Charlotte often told me she knew the day she met the good-looking young lifeguard holding his two-year-old little sister in his lap that he was a special man. "A man who loved his baby sister the way Jerry loved you," she would say, "I knew he was the man I wanted to marry." And she did, and I was the flower girl in their wedding.

I spent a ton of time with Jerry and Charlotte when I was young, and I have many sweet memories from those years. In fact, if you go back to the very first blog I wrote, you'll find the story of the tree house that Jerry built for me and his two young sons ... and you'll also find the reason that's the name I chose for my blog. One of my strongest memories of Jerry, though, is of the day he taught me to swim. I can't remember how old I was, but I do remember the details of that afternoon ... I can close my eyes and see my brother with his dark brown eyes and jet black hair laughing and smiling as he talked with people at the pool.

After Jerry finished his lifeguarding duties for the day, he said, "Come on, Little Bit, today is the day you learn to swim." He then spent an hour or so working with me in the shallow end of the pool before he announced that I was ready to jump off the diving board. He walked me to the part of the pool where the two diving boards loomed out over the glistening water ... the low dive and the high dive. As I walked toward the lower board, Jerry tugged on my arm and said, "Nope, Little Bit ... you're going to jump off the high dive. If you're gonna jump, you might as well jump big." Even just writing those words causes my heart to beat a little faster ... I well remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I climbed the ladder toward the diving board, my legs trembling and my palms sweating.

I also remember what I saw when I inched my way to the edge of the wooden plank ... I saw my brother Jerry treading water beneath me, smiling from ear to ear with pride as he looked up at his baby sister on the high dive. And I will never forget what he shouted up to me as I stood trembling and frightened, wondering how I could climb back down the ladder to safety. "Little Bit," Jerry yelled, "Little Bit ... jump! I'm right here, and I'll catch you ... jump, Little Bit, jump!" I can hear him ... I can see him ... I can feel him. "I'm right here, Little Bit ... I'll catch you."

When I was 10 years old, Jerry was involved in a car accident on his way home from tutoring a student athlete who had broken his leg. He was going home to change his clothes and come get Daddy and me to take us with him to the junior high basketball game. The accident was bad ... Jerry was thrown from the car, and he died later that evening in surgery. I remember that night, too ... I remember that night. Jerry would have been 70 years old last December ... but the picture of him in my mind is of that day at the pool. I jumped, and he was laughing as he caught me ... laughing and smiling as he caught me in his arms.

There are times now when the same feeling of fear that I felt on the diving board that day washes over me. My legs tremble, and my palms sweat. I try so hard to figure out how to get back down the ladder to the safe ground below me ... to not have to jump, to not have to trust, to not have to swim. And yet, when I look ... when I gaze into the water ... God is waiting for me, calling out to me ... "Terrie, jump! I'm right here, and I'll catch you ... jump, Terrie, jump!"