A story for my friends that encourage my sentimental side…
A passionate journal writer, I have never written about this story of a close call with drowning. Now is the time.
Awaiting a 45 min lay over on my flight to Hawaii I pulled out my journal to kill some time. I’d been though many journals over the years, they helped me work out issues and frustrations that life throws at you. Today I knew just what to write.
I had this story on my mind lately of something that happened a long time ago but I had never written about it. I uncapped my favorite pen and began.
Even at five years old I took like a fish to the water. I was so excited when my parents took us on vacation to the Bahamas to escape the unforgiving New York winter. One morning my mom, my younger sister, Colleen, and I were playing with sand pals on the beach outside the hotel.
“Let’s build a castle,” Colleen said. “We can fill the buckets and add a watery moat around it.”
“Don’t forget a drawbridge,” Mom said. She was always so protective. We needed more sand for the walls but after choosing the yellow bucket I was finely was ready get the water for the moat. I went down to the water, filled my little plastic bucket but was surprised as my feet sunk into the soft sand. They were hard to pull out. It was very interesting how the toes, feet and ankles drew softly down. The foam from the waves were bubbly and mesmerizing. I was curious what I looked like with no feet. The waves were rhythmic and musical.
Behind me, Mom and Colleen debated the reliability of their sand castle walls to protect the imaginary people of the castle from the waves and tides. I was not very far from them and they didn’t see I was walking into the waves.
I was following subsequent little waves as the little waves receded back into the sea. A large wave that I had not seen crashed into me and within seconds the sea was up to my neck. Proficient in the doggy paddle I started a swim back to shore. That’s when an even stronger wave pulled me below and my little body met with a dangerous rip current.
I didn’t alarm. I didn’t struggle. It did not seem like I was suppose to be afraid. It felt like a carnival ride and I did not realize that I was really being pulled a ways off of shore and into water that was well over my head. I observed my toes again and they were, along with my ankles buried deep in soft white sand in the sea bed floor.
It seemed I was standing there forever. I was amazed at the world that was around me! Fish swam between my knees and around my head, even ran circles around my middle and tummy. All types of sentient beings such as octopus, crawfish, angelfish and every color fish –orange, red, blue, yellow and green appeared as as if they were making a beautiful rainbow just for me as their game. A big, beautiful golden starfish moved slowly and sensitively onto a bank of light pink sand near me. Truly the starfish was a sign of peace I had thought.
The little fish tails brushed against my skin. It was like they were now friends, swimming over to say hello.
Even now I can not remember a time when I have felt more serene than that morning on the seabed floor with the, sunshine above in the clear blue waters magically filtering down as if light beams from heaven. I remember thinking that if I was granted one wish upon the angel starfish at my feet it would be to forever be in that peaceful place in this embrace.
Suddenly I was no longer in the waters watching my fish but I was in a lifeguard’s arms being carried a shore. She rubbed my chest and I coughed up seawater. Mom and Colleen were besides themselves with fears with the idea of possibly losing me. The exciting journey for me was over, and the overwhelming sense of serenity, was gone.
As I recapped my pen and closed my journal the gentleman sitting next to me leaned forward smiled and said that I must have been writing something very interesting for he observed my emotions as I wrote.
A bit flushed I stated “ I journal often”. The man gave me a expression that hinted that he wanted to know more. “ Well” I said, “I do not know why but for the past couple of days I have been thinking about a time when I was 5 years old and almost drowned”.
The man grew quiet and I saw a welling of tears in his eyes. “I did loose my five year old son to drowning many years ago”. He uttered.
“Oh dear” I said. What a sad thing I brought up. I felt a flush and then a tear in my own eye to join his.
“I am sorry” I said. “I know he’s in heaven now,” he replied. “The thing that still makes me feel a sad and bewildered is the thought how much he suffered, how frightened he must have felt drowning.”
“I would like to read you what I wrote, please, trust this, my story, you should hear”. I read my journal entry as I have just relayed it to you dear reader,… the waters pulling me gently, …the colors of the new friends, the excitement of seeing a land that I did not know existed but mostly how I have remembered the peace of my emotions that I have held close from this time as I child and that the feeling has not been matched since.
“My mother was unfortunately scared stiff that day,” I said. “But the memory remains with me as a strength in facing my own mortality. The event, on my end, was a truly happy and peaceful one.
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