Day 4: Enchanted Depths
Want to hear about a time I almost died?
TRIGGER WARNING: Near death- experiences
I almost drowned off the shore of Coronado Island when I was 13. In those days, my best friend Betsy and I loved to one- up each other like a couple of cocky boys. We raced headfirst into the waves with the chaotic abandon appropriate for this point in the summer (late) and this era of life (early). I leapt over the waves like hurdles, bracing for the THUNK that comes from landing your foot on the sandy ocean floor. Everything seemed perfect for body surfing.
Until I jumped over one wave and the bottom wasn’t there.
The tide pulled me out faster than I could swim. I swam straight for shore, but somehow the beach got smaller and smaller. I could barely keep my chin above the deep water. I started to panic. After minutes of swimming against the current, my arms and legs stopped. I tried to float, but every time I tilted my head back, cruel salt slapped me in the mouth. I choked. Is this how I die?
Not bad, I thought placidly. I’d lived a good life. I had a cute dog, my first kiss. I’d been to Disneyland. What else could there be? I stopped resisting and let myself sink, ready to become one of many lost at sea.
Underwater, a scene from Big Fish popped into my head. It was the scene where the boys look in the witch’s eye and learn how they die. Much later, as a grown-up, Ewan McGregor’s character gets lost in the woods. The trees twist around his limbs, threatening his life, like the ocean did to mine now. But then he remembers the witch’s eye.
“That’s not how I go,” he tells the trees. They drop him, and he goes free.
That’s not how I go, I thought.
Is this REALLY how I wanted to die? Drown at age 13? Did that make any sort of sense in the self- obsessed Wikipedia entry of my life I was constantly writing in my head?
Nope.
“HELP!” I screamed. “HELP! HELP! HELP!” Like Rose with her whistle in Titanic.
Before I lost my voice, a huge hot dog flopped around my middle and pulled me in. A strong lifeguard with enormous legs struggled under the weight of two kids as he kicked, slowly pulling me and another trembling kid to shore.
I shouted “SHOULD WE KICK?”
He gasped and nodded. I kicked. I hadn’t even been able to swim a few moments ago, but my legs roared to life like an engine on reserves of gasoline. I kicked for my freaking life.
I don’t know how long I kicked before my feet finally touched sand. Once they did, I ran to find Betsy.
I found her dad first. He was shell shocked and soaking wet. I collapsed into his legs like I was his actual kid. A few minutes later Betsy rolled up, laughing her ass off.
“My lifeguard was hotter than yours,” she said. I couldn’t even remember what my lifeguard looked like. I don’t even know if I thanked him for saving my life.
The rip tide came out of nowhere. It wasn’t uncommon for this beach this time of year, but we were on vacation and didn’t know that. If you get caught in a rip tide, you should swim parallel to shore. Swimming straight ahead just screws you. Now I know.
Even though I know the ocean is huge and deadly, I can’t stay away. When I float in the water, I feel part of something bigger. Sometimes when I’m way out, I think of Kate Chopin’s heroine in The Awakening, so fed up with Victorian womanhood that she swims out to sea and never swims back. I can drown any day I like.
But that’s not how I go.