Going Over the Edge
February 16, 2020

     If I had known what a huge financial risk I would be taking in moving home and starting my own law practice, I might not have made the leap. 

     And a leap it was.

   

     * * *

     I will forever remember the day I had to tell my supervising attorney at the firm in Oklahoma City – who also happened to be my closest mentor and a great friend – that I was leaving to go practice law back home.  I had been out of the office on some errand around lunchtime that day and was planning to go submit my resignation to Kevin as soon as I returned.  As I was walking back to our building, I just happened to see a couple of guys in repelling gear start a descent down the side of another building across the courtyard.  I don't know whether they were window washers or inspectors of some sort, or whether this was some kind of motivational exercise for a team at the business that occupied that other building.  But in any case, I glimpsed these two guys just as they were making that first backward lean off the edge of the building.

     I knew that backward lean pretty well.  I had been a ropes course instructor for a while, recall, and I had also done a fair amount of repelling over in the Ozarks of northwestern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.  So I knew exactly, and viscerally, what it was like to lean back over the edge of a high vertical face, knees bent slightly but body mostly straight like you're falling onto a mattress, going for something close to a 90̊ angle with the vertical surface, so that you're more or less parallel with the ground below as you descend.  I knew how the harness should be adjusted, how the ropes should be tied,  and where to place my brake-hand in order to control the descent.  I knew how the rope guide on the ground should hold the rope, the stance he should take to slow or stop the fall if needed, and the calls that the faller and ground guide would need to make to one another – "On belay?" "Belay on." – to make sure everyone was ready before the descent began.  I knew all of these things.

     I also knew how I never, ever, ever got comfortable with that initial backward lean.  It nauseated me no matter how many times I did it, or how many times I had helped others do it.  

    Now, I don't know whether God or the universe sends us signs.  I actually doubt it, most of the time.  So it could be, and probably was, just sheer coincidence that I saw these two guys going over the edge of an adjacent building just as I was about to head up to the top floor of my office building to tell Kevin that I was leaving the firm.  But that day, I took those two guys as a sign.  I got in the elevator, pushed 10, and headed straight for Kevin's office.  "On belay?" I asked myself.  By the time I knocked on his door, my heart was pounding and my breath was short.  Stepping into his office, I nervously asked whether he'd noticed the repellers on the side of the neighboring building.  He had.  "I know how they feel," I said.  Then I told him I was making a leap of my own. 

  

     Belay on.