My father threw me in a river once and said, this is how you learn to swim.  I don’t remember if I was scared.  Only gliding through water so clear I could see everything the world might be made of.

The weightlessness thrilled me.  And the cold that warmed me the longer I wore it.  I glued my legs together with the wish for a fish tail and propelled my mermaid self through uncharted waters and forgot all the things I thought I knew.